Is it a good idea to have a relationship with someone who is much younger? Well of course there is the skin, the smell and the excitement of youth, and the carelessness of youth too. But I have just spent an hour on the telephone with a friend talking about the difficulties he was having with a girlfriend who was much younger. He wasn’t being realistic, he was saying that his 17 year old girlfriend should come home early and cook for him, she had disappeared to Oxford and had turned off her telephone. She was happy to collect his cash but not happy obviously to be pinned down. I suggested that she should be at school.  He didn’t hear.

Meanwhile, yesterday, Sam Taylor Wood announced her engagement to  Aaron Johnson, a man 20 odd years younger than her. Well, he is gorgeous, so I sort of understand. I mean, why do we have to follow rules and hang out with men our ages? Women today look good most of their lives, whilst the man have let themselves go.  I look on with admiration. But when I did kiss somebody much younger than me, my hands became eighty years old immediately, and then there was all the mess of youth.

On the other hand, men always seem very satisfied with a downward age-gap. I was texting with an old, and older, conquest this morning, and he opined that the age gap in Sam T-W’s case was ridiculous. I said there were 16 years between me and him. If it had been the other way round, I would have been in my eighties now – a thought that horrified him. When I said I might be well preserved then, I got the dead letter box. So all I say is you can’t choose with whom you fall in love. I think that after a while you no longer see the person’s age, just their actions.

Incidentally, it is more interesting to discuss whether Sam Taylor Wood directed a good film, than whether or not it is wise to fall in love with her fiance. Her film, Nowhere Boy, was an amazing adaptation of John Lennon’s life, and Aaron’s interpretation moving and therefore successful. And just in case you have time for it, check out an earier film she made on a peach and a hare.

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