Dare to bare an earlobe and keep the tea warm with your Mrs 39 hat

THE woman who hasn’t had sex for 39 years knows the exact date of the fortieth. It was the late husband’s last birthday at home. The bit of sex was his birthday treat. That’s “his” treat. By then the woman who hasn’t had sex for 39 years wasn’t interested that much anymore, if at all.

I suppose the present of the bit of sex was cheaper than a shirt. Mrs 39 didn’t have much. Her husband spent most of the money, usually on drink and sardines in brine. The sex was easier for her in many ways and it didn’t take very long. The late husband was more interested in the destination than the journey. And there was no need to wash and iron sex or hang it up on a hanger or scrub the grimy cuffs and collars. Men didn’t know how to iron back in those days.

There was a man giving out the other day about the way his son was being blackguarded by his daughter-in-law. “The poor boy has to do the hoovering,” he said, “and cook the dinner and do the ironing. The next thing is she’ll have him wearing an apron.”

“Ah but,” says I, “they were the great days when the women did all the work.”

The ironing irony went straight over his head. I remember another old boy telling me “the ideal missus is a chef in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom”.

Mrs 39’s husband ran off with another woman. And he never came back, until they brought him home in an urn. Mrs 39 didn’t go to the funeral. But she did go to her local TD to find out if the widow’s pension was worth more than the deserted wives and to see if she could draw the two at the same time, or bits of the two.

But the TD was at the husband’s funeral and she never voted for him ever again.

So I say “will we celebrate the 40th?” “No,” she says. It was a “no” no, that didn’t beg an “ah come on, we’ll have great oul’ sport all the same”. Her point was that if we celebrated the 40th, it would mean we were also celebrating the late ex-husband’s birthday, as the two fall on the same day.

Thinking back on it now I’m pretty sure Mrs 39’s mother was the cause of most of the bother.

It’s not what you might think either with the mother telling her men were animals and to keep her two legs in the one stocking which was the only form of contraception before they allowed women to take the pill in Ireland back sometime in the 1970s.

Her mother told the young Mrs 39 “to always have her husband’s dinner ready on time and to never refuse him sex”. He didn’t eat much, bar the sardines in brine. “The husband was always sick from drink but he was mad for sex,” said Mrs 39.

“Would you blame him?” says I, “and he married to a fine woman like you.”

She cackles a staccato laugh like a ruler being dragged along a row of bars on those iron works you find at the front of old Georgian houses.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” says Mrs 39.

There was a shortage of sex back in the old days because contraception wasn’t allowed and people used to take notice of the Church back then. I’m not sure though if contraception made much of a difference as the chemists or some of them came up with a rule that they would only dispense one condom once a month. Which meant there was only sex once a month in Ireland back in the old days. And judging by what I’m told by Irish men, anecdotally, it hasn’t got much better ever since.

We hear so much about the housing crisis and the banking crisis, but there’s not a word about the sex crisis.

“He used to nibble my ears,” said Mrs 39. “I liked that. Have I nice ears, do you think?”

I decide to tell the truth. Mrs 39 has been so open and honest I feel obliged to reciprocate.

“I don’t really know, Mrs 39. I have never seen your ears.”

Although truth to tell, sometimes, in the very rare times we get a fine day in Ireland, some of her lower lobe slips down from underneath the

The sex didnt last very long ... her late husband was more interested in the destination than the journey

woolly hat she wears winter and summer.

Maybe she lets the lobe show deliberately in the way some women used to open an extra button of the blouse back before the insulated-like-a-hot-tank-padded-bra ended displays of cleavage forever in Ireland. Maybe the women got fed up of the men taking sneaky peeps or maybe the bra was keeping up appearances.

“I’m not taking off my hat,” says Mrs 39, adamantly. You’d swear I was after asking her to take off her knickers. And it’s not even a hat. Mrs 39 has a tea cosy on her head. There are two holes. One is for the handle and one is for the spout. Funnily enough, Mrs 39 is short and stout.

Now that Mrs 39 is becoming so famous with thousands of men offering to help out, I was thinking of knitting and selling Mrs 39 hats, which are very practical.

Here’s the theory behind the innovation and invention. It’s a well-known fact most of the heat of the body goes out through the top of the head. The hat traps the heat in. Home you go and make the tea. On to the tea pot with the already warm cosy hat and the tea is kept warm for longer. Anyone of you who likes strong tea is bound to be interested in the Mrs 39 cosy hats.

Many people ask if Mrs 39 really exists. She does. Mrs 39 is real, but sometimes I throw in a red herring to preserve her anonymity. For example, the late ex-husband didn’t like sardines.