For eighthly he stays the night.

For ninthly you cannot wait to see him again.

For tenthly this does not happen for several days.

For having achieved his object he turns again to his other interests.

For he will not miss his evening class or his choir practice for a woman.

For he is out nearly all the time.

For you cannot even get him on the telephone.

For he is the kind of man who has been driving women round the bend for generations.

For, sad to say, this thought does not bring you to your senses.

For he is charming.

For he is good with animals and children.

For his voice is both reassuring and sexy.

For he drives an A-registration Vauxhall Astra estate.

For he goes at 80 miles per hour on the motorways.

For when I plead with him he says, ‘I’m not going any slower than this.’

For he is convinced he knows his way around better than anyone else on earth.

For he does not encourage suggestions from his passengers.

For if he ever got lost there would be hell to pay.

For he sometimes makes me sleep on the wrong side of my own bed.

For he cannot be bossed around.

For he has this grace, that he is happy to eat fish fingers or Chinese takeaway or to cook the supper himself.

For he knows about my cooking and is realistic.

For he makes me smooth cocoa with bubbles on the top.

For he drinks and smokes at least as much as I do.

For he is obsessed with sex.

For he would never say it is overrated.

For he grew up before the permissive society and remembers his adolescence.

For he does not insist it is healthy and natural, nor does he ask me what I would like him to do.

For he has a few ideas of his own.

For he has never been able to sleep much and talks with me late into the night.

For we wear each other out with our wakefulness.

For he makes me feel like a light-bulb that cannot switch itself off.

For he inspires poem after poem.

For he is clean and tidy but not too concerned with his appearance.

For he lets the barber cut his hair too short and goes round looking like a convict for a fortnight.

For when I ask if this necklace is all right he replies, ‘Yes, if no means looking at three others.’

For he was shocked when younger team-mates began using talcum powder in the changing-room.

For his old-fashioned masculinity is the cause of continual merriment on my part.

For this puzzles him.

Rondeau Redoublé

There are so many kinds of awful men –

One can’t avoid them all. She often said

She’d never make the same mistake again:

She always made a new mistake instead.

The chinless type who made her feel ill-bred;

The practised charmer, less than charming when

He talked about the wife and kids and fled –