Ruby Grimshaw is on a manhunt

Only a few weeks ago I was deploring the lack of dandelions, now it’s the absence of men (my age I hasten to add) that I am moaning about. What do all the men my age who have retired and not yet popped their clogs do with their spare time? They can’t all be playing golf or doing the garden can they? Yet every evening class or lecture I attend in Brighton is heavily weighed down with women. I have recently started helping voluntarily with RDA, a wonderful charity that gives disabled adults and children a chance to ride. So far, out of about 30 women, I have met two male volunteers, and I think they were husbands who were adhering to the old ‘if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em’ adage.

It is the same with my excellent creative writing group in Newhaven. Last week we held an open evening and invited our friends (and long suffering relatives) to hear each one us give readings from our work at the Hillcrest Community Centre in a relaxed café-like atmosphere and it was a most successful event. But while I was enjoying listening to one of our members reading out his amusing slightly naughty story I reflected that even in our group of 14 there were only four men.

“I’m sure this must be breaking some equal opportunities ruling”

A friend I was grumbling to about all this said it was the same with dating agencies for the elderly. One she had approached recently was not accepting any more women but were giving discounts to any men who applied. I’m sure this must be breaking some equal opportunities ruling or other. Perhaps this is something different for the European Court of Human Rights to waste time on. Yet I think I know the answer to my own question.

I did a short stint some years ago with meals-on-wheels (short because I hated it and they said I was hopeless because I kept getting lost). All the drivers were men, which also tends to be the case with the voluntary NHS drivers who take patients to and from their hospital appointments. Meanwhile a couple of my friends’ husbands help out with sport at their grandchildren’s schools and another is the referee for the local soccer team. So it appears that I must join voluntary projects which are concerned with cars and football if I want to meet men. In that case I don’t think I am that bothered after all.