Hi °C | Lo °C 
Graham McKenzie put it like this: "Chronological. Women think chronologically. That's how they take so long to tell you anything. They always go back to the very beginning and remember every cough. She said to me ... and then I said to her."
Stewart Mackay suggested women could use a good sub-editor to edit the way they take short stories and turn them into mini-series.
For a man, the edited highlights are usually sufficient.
I said it is the subplots that kill you. The tendency to drift off the main story to let you know what everyone was wearing at the time.
On the other hand wives sometimes complain that men talk like telegrams. As if the words cost fifty pence each.
My good friend Carol Boyd recently confided to me that women are not comfortable with brief factual statements and prefer to take the scenic route where instinct still counts for something.
Graham, Stewart and I are three old newspaper hacks from the era of typewriters and carbon paper who get together for lunch every now and then to relive some of the better bits of the good old days and stare blankly at each other as we struggle to remember names.
To his credit Stewart finally remembered to return a book I loaned him 40 years ago.
I'd forgotten who I'd loaned it to and he'd forgotten who had loaned it to him. It was called How To Develop A Superpower Memory.
I told Graham it was a very good book and offered to lend it to him. For some reason he declined.
A load of bankers
After decades of financial executives awarding themselves lottery win sized pay hikes, you begin to wonder if they understand the subtle difference between bonus and embezzlement.
The bite of autumn
I like autumn. Like the way the trees change colour and that cool nip in the mornings reminding you that autumn is just a promissory note for winter to come.
I like the way cars swish by leaving a chorus line of leaves dancing in their wake. And even find some harmless amusement observing how some people continue to dress as if they lived in California as frost glistens on their belly buttons.
But the chill wind is not the only thing that bites you at this time of year. The confidence tricksters are all back from their holidays and can't wait to start fleecing the elderly again. Sometimes it is the cold callers at your door offering to power-hose the roof; tar the drive or merely use the phone while an accomplice nicks your pension.
And there are deadlier versions. Like fake letters arriving to tell you you've won €615,000 on the Spanish Sweepstakes Lottery. Got one from Madrid last week. All I have to do to collect this mythical fortune is to mail them my bank details so they can strip the account clean. They send these letters to pensioners all over Europe in the sure knowledge that they'll find a few of us addled enough in the mind to believe some Spaniard is going to give us a fortune for nothing.
It is a cruel con. As is the letter from the Asian Mortgage Broker pretending you've inherited money from a relative you've never heard of.
They all wish to pick clean the simple minded. Don't let them. We simple minded must stick together.
Self-esteemless
"Sir. I have left my body to medical science. However I fully expect them to contest the Will" - Mark White. (Letter to The Times)
Memory lane is closed for repairs
"This old age thing is all in the mind, which fortunately is becoming less retentive as I get older, so I keep forgetting more and more of the problems" - Brian Lockhart
