Touchy

We're so tired this evening that we're not even enjoying our customary hour in front of rubbish telly before bed. Nathan tells me he's too tired to knit, which is a genuine first!

I was too busy scoring this morning to go down to Cecil Sharp House for the first audition session. I had a bit of a panic, in fact, when I woke up and realised quite how much I have to achieve in the next few months.

I got enough done in the morning to justify going down to Camden in the afternoon and arrived in a state of low-sugarness, immediately chowing down on an entire pot of Co-op hummus. It did the trick. The director of the project thought I was incredibly eccentric for having bought a jar of salt with me to sprinkle on the tomatoes I ate with the hummus. It struck me as a fairly sensible thing to do... But I guess the definition of an eccentric is one who doesn't sense his own eccentricities.

We had an interesting debate in the bar last night about sexism. As a man with very few male friends, I have always considered women as every bit my equal. There are things I acknowledge that men do better than women and vice versa. Beyond the obvious things, like the fact that, on average, men are stronger and faster and have penises, I think there are differences in the way that men and women respond to emotions. I know it's a somewhat unfashionable view...

Anyway, last night we were talking about women in the arts, and the two girls that we were with were making a very interesting point that women tend to only be allowed to excel in art forms which can be completed alone (novels, singer songwriting...) I don't know what I think of that point: it's certainly not something I recognise. The majority of my bosses have been women, but maybe I'm in one of the few industries which are more gender equal. Or maybe, as a man, I don't tend to notice gender disparity. Hmm.

Whatever the case, I asked a question, which went down like a tub of sick at a party, namely whether there are certain jobs which not many women do as a result of not many women actually wanting to do the job... Just as you don't get many gay football pundits, perhaps there are certain jobs which fewer women actually fancy. I sometimes wonder whether fewer women want to go into politics, for example. The woman I was talking to got so angry with me at that point that she immediately withdrew from the conversation and went somewhere else! Apparently just as many women as men would want to be prime minister... That was me told.

...some people are so touchy!