The Curmudgeon

For we have television, radio, and even the telephone. The papers arrive at the sub-post office at much the same time as anywhere else - although we do have to collect them ourselves. No youngsters left to do paper rounds, you see.

But there is one mode of the media which can dilly-dally a bit on the way to the Dale and that is the oldest non-verbal means of communication known to man, the book.

Now books are so expensive these days that Mrs C and I rarely buy one: they are usually about celebrities we have never heard of (how can you be an unknown celebrity?) or kiddie creations about witches and wizards, builders or trains sets.

We do, however, support the mobile library, which rumbles into the village once every Ice Age. We use it because it is under threat of being axed by the council.

And so it was that I stumbled upon a book which has, quite literally, changed my attitude to life in my dotage years. For scientists have proved something I have known since I was three but have never dared mention for the past 40 years.

You see, men and women are different. Not just physically different (thankfully) but mentally different. Their brains, and their senses, operate in different ways.

This has been proved in hundreds of different experiments in which men and women performed different activities while hooked up to machines that registered their brain activity, says this marvellous tome, "Why men don't listen and women can't read maps".

Written by an Anglo-Australian married couple, Allan and Barbara Pease, it was published amid much furore from feminists two years or so ago but has just arrived in Beggarsdale.

And I would recommend it as a wedding present for any modern couple old-fashioned enough to get married - because it will save hundreds of rows.

For instance, men and women hear differently. A man can happily snore on through the sound of a baby crying, which wakes up the mother immediately, but will snap awake at the sound of a twig snapping outside in the garden.

The reason: thousands of years of evolution programmed women to be carers and nurturers whereas men were the tribe's protectors against attack, either from other tribes or wild animals.

Men and women also see differently. Women, who went out gathering berries and the like while keeping an eye on energetic young children, developed a vision with a wider peripheral range

In other words, they can see better out of the corners of their eyes whereas men developed finally focused tunnel vision to concentrate on animals they were hunting. They also didn't talk while they were hunting for obvious reasons - which explains a lot. But it also means women have difficulty reading maps.

When a man is concentrating on, say, watching the TV or reading the paper, he closes down 70 per cent of his senses to concentrate. Tests show that he is virtually deaf.

And this is the time, of course, when his wife wants to chatter because, with her multi-skilled brain, she can gossip, read and watch the TV at all time. How many rows could have been averted by that little gem?

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.