There is a special strain of man, an offshoot of homo sapiens that has had his home overrun by the fairer, more duplicitous sex. It’s mostly his own doing, having married the old one and proceeded to sire the others in quick succession, and thus he is not really deserving of the full gamut of our sympathies. Even so, one cannot help but feel this was never really part of his grand plan.

Now, enter a suitor. Some well-meaning young turk with designs on one (or perhaps both, the wily cur!) of the house’s daughters. For homo emasculens a new male face about the place is a rare and wonderful event! Beer is to be proffered, toot is to be talked, thighs are to be slapped and a thoroughly manly time is to be had by all. All this puts the poor lad in a very odd situation indeed. On the one hand, here is an odd old bugger, strange in his ways and long in his tooth. A man who, if seen propping up a bar, would perhaps be given a wide berth indeed. On the other hand, he totally wants to sleep with the guy’s daughter, so what’s a boy to do?

Generally a boy is to humour the old coot past the point of all decency and get a good scolding from his embittered paramour, but hey, worse things have happened at sea. The Marie Celeste, for example.