The Null Device

Squelching noises

Times columnist Caitlin Moran's latest column takes a very sensibly British view of sex, in particular casting a jaundiced eye over the virtues of the much-vaunted all-night sexual marathon:
Despite decades of insistence that all the best sex lasts 15 hours, spans a minimum of nine positions and has both parties hammering dementedly away at each other's nether regions like a pair of autistic woodpeckers, it seems the truth is a little different. Well, totally different. According to a poll of 50 sex therapists, the most desirable sex lasts, in actual fact, mere minutes. Between 3 and 13, optimally. Or, to break it down another way, a span somewhere between Penny Lane and the second half of an episode of My Family. The time it takes to get from Finchley Road to Wembley Park. Barely enough time to toast a muffin.
Similarly, whilecertainly a great fan of “sexual intercourse” - I find it a refreshing alternative to both arguments and jogging, and believe it to be the only civilised way to end a game of Scrabble - life is, tragically, short. Very short. However wonderful being borne aloft on the wings of ecstasy, etc, may be, there are also an awful lot of Neil Finn albums to get through, hats to wear, air-guitar to play, anecdotes to tell, and clips of cats falling off things on YouTube to watch. I don't believe that these activities are necessarily better than physically uniting with a loved/drunken one. It's just that I wouldn't sacrifice them in favour of 19 hours of a really quite repetitive act. Honestly, if you can't achieve what you set out to do in half an hour or less, it's possible that you just might not be doing it properly. I'd check all available diagrams, and try again.
Further down, Moran mentions the sad decline of birdsong in England, with ambient noise levels causing birds to not pick up each others' songs, and an all-birdsong radio station going out of business.
When I read the first of these reports, I realised that they were right. The dawn choruses of my childhood seemed immense - whole treefuls of birds exploding with the sun, and sounding like the orchestral wig-out in A Day In The Life. These days, however, the dawn chorus sounds like three rats coughing behind some bins - a pitiful collection of bleeps, squawks and rasps that no more welcomes the dawn than the sound of a brick being thrown through a window.

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