The Lincs Effect: by Mary Whitehouse

This weekend I visited Nottingham.

I amusingly join in with the Nottingham piss-taking, at times, although I do feel that the place has a hard time. It's crime-infested sterotype came from a one-off article in the Sun about 3 years ago. If we believed everything we read, my home town would also be the easiest place to get hold of hard drugs in the country, and my old secondary school would also be the most violent of all schools. Thanks to The Guardian and the News of the World, respectively, for those snippets. Nottingham is a place that I am reasonably familiar with and on Saturday I enjoyed a lavish lunch with an old friend in my favourite restaurant, and a relaxing afternoon.

However, as is typical in my blog posts, the story takes a sorry turn. But my reason for posting is not the usual cathasis; today I would like some advice.

In order of celebrating a friend's birthday, 7 girls from Lincoln arrived in Nottingham for a meal and a boogie. Although I wasn't particularly in the mood, it is always great to see my close friends, and so I was looking forward to a drink or two and a chat. However, I was utterly appalled at the behaviour of some of the people in the pubs and club that I'm afraid I didn't have a great time at all.

After our meal we went for a drink in a busy bar. A middle aged man was dancing nearby and stuck his lardy bum on my friend's back for a while (we were sat down - she is not just incredibly tall. Actually, she is quite tall...). As I do not take kindly to men leering about I promptly told him that he had no right to do this and should stop being so vile. He reacted by swearing profusely at me and dancing off like a wanker. His friend apologised, and I was mildly calmed. However my friend who had been on the receiving end of this arse jive looked embarrassed for me having kicked up a stink. This really riles me: men have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to drape their hands (or arses) on people. It is precisely because people do not berate them enough that they think it is OK to do it. Once we had arrived at the club, I almost got in fights 4 more times. I'm not saying that the female genre do not partake in groping behaviours themselves from time to time, but I began studying this behaviour and the men certainly were leering for most of the time. I was mightily offended. The worst thing was that as soon as I would politely(ish) inform these men as to the error of their ways, they would look at me as if I had no right to do so, and I was the rude one.

Now I know I don't go out dancing as often as I used to, but I can scarely believe that things have changed this much over the past few months. I am outraged by the females who find it complimentary when dirty men drape themselves about. I am disgusted by the fact that you cannot go out just for a dance anymore: activity in clubs consist of mating rituals only. And finally, I am absolutely horrified by this:




Yes, folks, it's a machine selling not only thongs (in case you're wearing your big pants when you get lucky, or your other cheap diamante thong snaps) but also... pregnancy tests. My mother only recently discovered that you can buy vibrators from machines in some public toilets. I, too, find this a little odd. However she has also informed me that you can buy spray on pheromones. And I don't mean the Ramones' tribute band (sp. PheRamones, though, of course). I worry where these pheromones came from. Anyway, I think that Nottingham's pregnancy tests are a whole new milestone in the downward trajectory of vileness.

So, my questions to you are as follows: am I out of touch with the going out thang? Is it just Nottingham (I certainly doubt it)? Is this a natural reaction that matures with age? Or am I just an arsy prude?

Moon. xxx