Hilary Fannin: Love, sex and Oedipus in the personal ads

I was reading the latest issue of the London Review of Books, a watery sun illuminating the erudite paragraphs. Beyond the gracious windows, the sea gently frolicked, and in the spring-stirred garden the peacocks strolled among the budding crocuses. Pulling my antique silk kimono around my delicate shoulders, a tincture of raspberry tea wetting the space where my tonsils used to be, I thought: “Oh life, sweet life . . .”

I’ll start that again, shall I?

I was reading the small ads in the back of the latest issue of the London Review of Books; immediately prior to that, I’d been bleaching the toilet. I’d found the periodical tucked behind the cistern.

My husband is a subscriber to the magazine; he keeps it to hand as a philosophical shield to avoid participation in the maths homework or lively conversations about sausage meat and the very latest treatment for varicose veins.

The small ads in the LRB are pretty entertaining, full of enticing, rentable rural idylls in which to begin your putative novel, and bijou Parisian attics to lie around in while succumbing to the stresses of producing your steamy masterwork. One can happily spend many stolen minutes sitting on the bathroom mat, ammonia tickling the nostrils, imagining the kind of life that could be lived, or the choices that might just be made, if bidet Bohemia wasn’t about as distant as the great big dough ball moon.

Heaney bog country

Running alongside advertisements for bed and bookish breakfasts in historic English market towns, creative workshops in Mykonos and poetic breaks in “Heaney country” (where you can unearth your creativity amid the bog asphodel and myrtle), there are also invitations to have your squint sorted out and myriad offers of professional help self-publishing your memoir (possibly about your days as a tabard-wearing pottery enthusiast who always planned to write, write, write).

Furthermore, should your foray into the wilds of creative life have left you feeling a little depressed, anxious, stuck or confused, there are the telephone numbers of several open-minded, cultured psychotherapists who would be more than happy to part you from your sweaty-brow-splattered shillings.

But the ad that caught my attention, as I leaned back against the U-bend, breathing in the remaining 1 per cent of noxious germ life that the doltish bleach had left under the rim, was in the personal column at the bottom of the page. Lurking under the subheading “Oedipus – Schmoedipus!” was a request from a man who described himself as “academic (60), Jewish, genial”, who was looking for “a slim older woman with whom to spend agreeable times”.

Maybe it was the Domestos fumes, but I found his search uplifting, cheering even. Not necessarily because he wanted to sleep with his mother; although refreshingly upfront, I didn’t find that element of his request particularly intoxicating.

It’s gratifying to be reminded, however (how shall I put this delicately?), that there can be a bit of kick left in the cocoa; reassuring to think that romantic and sexual possibilities exist beyond the onset of sexagenarianism, a condition that once confined the sufferer to wide-fitting footwear, sturdy gussets and feeding small, yappy dogs unmasticated mutton under the dining-room table.

No desire to live with men

They say (I love these “theys”) that of the more mature among us, looking to find a new partner later in life, men look for a private relationship (someone to come home to), while women look for a public relationship (someone to go out with). And that although, statistically, marriage is on the rise among older people (we live longer, we trade in the mahogany elephant set to go on fanciful Floridian cruises), women, while still seeking men’s company, don’t actually want to live with them.

For many older women who have negotiated their way around the matrimonial block already, and are now weighing the odds between another round of domesticity or something a little more independent, the wish to enjoy occasional encounters in unknown cities, with the bus pass safely tucked into the money belt, rather than get familiar once more with someone's odd socks and lovingly tended Johnny Mathis collection, seems like a reasonable aspiration.

Anyway, older men often marry much younger women, perhaps because they’ve lost their glasses and need someone to decipher the instructions on the Viagra box.

“One-bedroom apartment in tranquil 17th-century farmhouse – parking, broadband, central heating.”

“Rustic medieval coach house, within reach of a boulangerie.”

“Villa – coconut palms, migratory birds and a coastal orchard.”

The list goes on.

I crawl off the bath mat.

Middle-aged female in search of sanity. Rarely genial. Genuine offers only.