What have I learned this month? Two things. Many of my women friends go for younger men, much younger in a couple of cases. I've been busily conjecturing why and what it means for a middle-aged grey haired dome head like me.

Conjecture first: is it that there's a certain status in having a younger fella ? The "I've not lost my looks and can still pull a youngster full of sap"? Is it something maternal ?

Or is it this, there's still a wet behind the ears innocence, these young men have which in the eyes of my friends means, at least, they have n't been corrupted and succumbed to what every man becomes in the end - human, conflicted and flawed?

What this trend means for me is that looking at the average age difference between my women friends and their erstwhile beaux, which is about ten years, then for me to become some one's toyboy, I'm going to have to be the target of women in their late fifties. I have no problem with that, but I want to be seeing a woman of that age when I'm that age. Not earlier.

The other thing I picked up this week, appeared one morning, out of that liminal, threshold state between sleep and wakefulness, and it was these three perplexing words - odd socks again.

I know, a strange phrase to begin the day with, any day in fact, but it did, and my deeply symbolic mind has been churning through all manner of possible meanings. The lead possibilities are that I really do have a hitherto unrecognised collection of orphan odd socks, and it needed a poke to my subconscious to let me know, or it's a less than elegant metaphor for my partner less state.