Home Page

Dear Sir: Paramore

I was sitting in my living room the other day, idly wondering if the only way to kill Jackie Chan would be to fight him in the middle of a large, empty warehouse when two of my flatmates, William and Paul, entered the room.

“I’m telling you, Paul, Michael Douglas was not allowed to marry Catherine Zeta Jones in 2000.” William announced in his thick, middle class, oily baritone. “He was too old.”

“He was not.” Paul insisted, swilling the brandy around his glass and adjusting his monocle to better fix William with a cold stare. “They were twenty-five years apart. Sure, he’s old enough to be her father. Or even her Grandfather in medieval Italy, but it’s different when you’re that old.”

“That’s an unacceptable gap.” William declared with rock-hard certainty. I shuffled my feet off the coffee table to give William room for his discarded Top Hat.

“Well it is if you’re our age.” Paul said. “If I were going out with someone twenty five years younger than me, they’d be one, and I’d be a bitch for someone called Spike in Strangeways Prison.”

“Yes, but not because of just that.” William rubbed his head. “Look, there’s this system, right, which you use to work out if you’re allowed to fancy certain women or not. What you do, you halve your age and then plus seven. That’s the youngest you’re allowed to pork. Or even think about porking.”

“Ahh.” Enlightenment spread across Paul’s face. “That does make sense. So in 2000, when Michael Douglas was fifty-seven, he was morally allowed to shaft a woman over thirty five and half. Anything under, and he’s a bad, bad man.”

“Exactly.” William beamed. “And with Catherine being thirty-one in 2000, that means he’s too old.”

They may have carried on their conversation, but they could have been talking about flying pigs having gay sex with the Pope for al the attention I was paying. This system, it seemed to be infallible logic. Half your age plus seven. I am twenty-five. What’s half that? This was going to take some serious maths. I pulled my mittens off and prepared to count. Then I ran out of digits and removed my ski-boots and found some toes. Twelve and a half. That’s half my age. Plus seven… I had to sever half a toe but there it was. Nineteen and a half. I had to have a girlfriend who was nineteen and a half or more, but who fit into that group?

Than it clicked. Hayley Williams from emo-rock band Paramore. Lovely, lovely Hayley. She has just turned nineteen and a half! I was shocked when I realised that, and I composed a letter informing her of this immediately. I hope she turns up soon. I’ll be twenty-six in a little while, and that pushes the potential girlfriend age up to twenty, and I don’t know even know anyone who is twenty.