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a.k.a. Mrs Angela Fytton of Francis Street in the town of L—, in the year of 19—, in the process of decomposing.
    Did all human beings need to shag on a regular basis in order not to go crazy? Like the old-fashioned idea that if men didn't get It on a regular basis they went off pop. Or became serial rapists and paedophiles. Now - hello, equality - were women getting the same treatment? Post-feminism, it was imperative to have sex. No sex for some time meant imminent disaster. This way to the loony bin, via infanticide, kleptomania, peculiar eating habits, hemlock for hubby and all those other well-known things the average potty, sex-starved female is heiress to. Never mind that some of the most dangerously peculiar women she knew were having lots of sex all the time and imploding all over the place. To be seen to be unshagged was definitely outer darkness.
    'All that sexual energy' indeed. She vowed never to pick up that particular magazine again. Country Life was much better. And much more useful. For wasn't she here, on this beautiful spring morning, because of it?
    She changed into fifth gear, glad to be nearing the end of the motorway now, and overtook a silver Saab. Cars for boys, she thought grandly, and nipped on, allowing her brain to expand once more to its true and mighty size. You see, it got to you if you weren't careful. At least, once upon a time, women had the right to say no. Now they seemed to have the right only to say yes and make sure the world knew about it. She suspected it was the same for men too. Otherwise why would rock bands, as she had read, have to put shuttlecocks down their trousers when performing? Her stunned mind went walkabout for a moment. A shuttlecock? Why a shuttlecock?
    She glared at a distant lone donkey in a field. Sex was not, she told it, the problem. Sex was always out there if you wanted it. Even if you had two heads and a third eye, there was always someone, somewhere, advertising for just that combination. Of course they were. You just had to believe in yourself. If George Eliot could get a man of thirty-nine when she was sixty, after being told by at least two suitors that they rejected her on the grounds that she was too ugly (one hoped she head-butted them out of the room with that remarkable nose of hers), then anyone could do it. Celibacy as failure? Not at all ... No one, male or female, needed to be without sex if that was what they wanted. But it was not sex that people sought, not really; it was love. She had loved every minute of loving her husband and being made love to by him. There was never a time when it was not a delight to welcome and be welcomed into his arms. And frankly, when you had known that the prospect of a quick shag with someone as a way of dealing with 'all that sexual energy' was wholly unedifying.
    On she primly drove.
    No, the country with its promise of peace beckoned and was best. No need to worry about where the sexual energy was leaking out once she had established herself in the pastoral. She would be too busy with her half an acre and a cow, or whatever it was. She'd buy a book. She'd hire a man. She nearly swerved into the outside lane ... No, no, she would not hire a man. She would do it all herself. And she was bloody well going to enjoy it. Of London, truly, Mrs Fytton, aged forty and a half, had had quite enough.
    She would grow old there gracefully. Learn to live without benefit, or oppression, or cosmetics or hairdressers. Unless there was a way to do it in the self-sufficiency method. Berries or crushed newts or something. Women have always known how to get what they want in the looks department. In Newgate did not Moll Flanders keep her teeth pearly by rubbing them on her hem every day with a little soot?
    Her spirits rose as the car sped further and further away from the horrible place, London. London, which contained more lunatics of the male rampant variety to the square mile than anywhere else on earth. This was a fact. Rosa,