Now I’ve retired I’ve adopted a routine whereby I get all my chores done first thing so the rest of the day’s my own.  This morning, for instance, I’d read-the-paper and had-the-shit so I settled into my shed in front of the log burner, put the coffee machine on and started thinking.

All sorts.

And every argument I had in my head I won by clear philosophical thought.

Now after an hour or so my mind turned to one of the great imponderables; is it more painful for a woman to give birth to a baby or for a man to get a kick in the nuts?

I found this quite intractable for a while, not least because of the impossibility of head-to-head comparison.  A man can’t possibly imagine the pain of childbirth and a woman can’t imagine the pain of a kick in the nuts.

Eventually however, I did solve the conundrum and can announce to you all unequivocally that it is the man who suffers the greater pain.

And here is the proof.

Sometime after giving birth a woman will often say, “I think it would be nice if we had another baby”.  But you never hear a man say “I think it would be nice to have another kick in the nuts”.

Always thinking, me.