Sisybus

My Dear Fellow,

No matter how many work-weeks I kill off, Mondays always return. Here is the Sisybus, ready to commute me to another week of nonsense.

Actually, today wasn't too bad. A quiet day, spent listening to a podcast about Alfred Hitchcock's very first directing gig - "The Pleasure Garden", a silent film shot on location in Italy.

The film featured a scene in which the hero rescues a young lady from drowning. Hitch looked around to find his actors gathered around, muttering in consternation. The actress can't go in the water, they told him.

"Why?" Hitch asked. "Is she afraid of the water?"

"No, no, it's not that", they said. "It's - " They paused. No-one knew how to put it. Someone told Hitch it was delicate.

Hitch was in no mood. "Oh just spit it out," he said.

"She's having her 'woman's time'."

"Eh?"

"It's the time of the month."

"It's the third week in April. What has that to do with anything?"

"Oh for goodness' sake. She's on her period."

"Her what?"

The actors looked at Hitch. He looked at them, unblinking.

"You know. Her menstrual period."

"I have NO IDEA what you are talking about."

Horrified. The actors slowly realised he wasn't joking. And that is how Alfred Hitchcock learned the facts of life from a film crew by an Italian lake.

"I was 22 years of age, and I knew nothing," he confessed.

One wonders how our grandparents ever successfully bred. Yet here we are.

Parsones