The rules

“We understand that mistakes happen…!”
The headline on the ad is quite eye catching. Underneath it is a picture of an unattractive larger woman, with bright blonde, straw like hair, and dark roots showing through. She is sitting on the side of a bed, wearing a diamanté studded bra top. In the blurred background, a thin man is lying back against the bedstead, with a very troubled look on his face.
I’m guessing the situation here is what the guys at work would refer to as a double bagger; where you sleep with a woman so ugly that you ask her to put a paper bag over her head, and put one over your head as well, just in case hers slips off.
But back to the ad: it turns out to be an ad for car insurance for people with criminal convictions. So it seems that committing a crime is in the same league of mistake as somehow finding yourself in bed with a woman you don’t fancy (or possibly have paid for). I don’t really know where to start thinking about this. I spend all day in the office with people who think it’s acceptable to refer to the women they used to work with as “the witches coven”; who refer to a colleague as Pippa, which it took me a long time to realise was not her name, but a reference to her apparently shapely backside. Another is a “carpet muncher”, because for reasons I fail to understand, she is perceived to be a lesbian. I think the basis for that theory is her tendency to work late and wear lipstick that doesn’t suit her. Clearly a lesbian then. My boss often pulls my hair in a “funny” way. Yep, and it sure helps with the professional gravitas. Anyway, whatever really. I can’t change the world, and it has been a world that is very pleasant to me, so the frustrations one occasionally comes across are ultimately trivial. I am well paid, and I am leaving in a few weeks, so I can go and occupy myself with baking and dusting, or whatever it is I’m expected to do. Can’t be clever and pretty, thems the rules.