The reason we feel sad is that happiness is a fluid of which there is only a limited amount

The reason we feel sad is that happiness is a fluid of which there is only a limited amount to go around, and by making it available to the woman, the man necessarily denies it to himself.I suppose you could, if you are of a romantic or socialistic temperament, find something sweet in that A sort of altruism of sex. Not my mistress has my heart and I have hers; but my mistress has my semen and I have nothing Its implications, though, are bleak. It means that except for a microscopically tiny period of fluidal interchange – that moment of handing over which we rightly deem to be ecstatic – man and woman are doomed never to be happy together.Not everyone agrees with De Sade, or Bataille, that eroticism is essentially violent, that in sex we make a bonfire of our resources, that we seek to dishonour what we love and find beautiful, that repugnance and horror are the mainsprings of desire But at least there is dignity in that picture. The eroticism to which we give ourselves, explained thus, is a paradoxical matter worth our attention and worthy of our energies We become priestly in it for a while We divine and refute nature’s intentions. We go to hell, as Don Juan understood, in a good cause.But what good can come of our knowing that happiness is a teaspoon or two of discoloured liquid, part potassium, part sodium, part glycerylyphosphorylcholine, produced by the testes, stored in the epididymis, and flushed from the urethra?Mankind cannot bear too much reality, the poet said Myself, I don’t mind reality. It’s too much chemistry I can’t bear.Physics, biology, mathematics, geography – I mentally refused them all at school.

Whatever sought to explain us by numbers or otherwise alluded to our material constituency I turned my back on. But chemistry, with its tables, its symbols, its evil-smelling origin-of-life test tubes, and its depersonalised laboratory attendants – wordless spooks, every one of them – I rejected with my soul. Over and above the symbols and the smells, it was the dismal principle of chemistry I could not abide. Other people might be 90 per cent water and 10 per cent leaking glycerylyphosphorylcholine I was 100 per cent ideas.I still insist on this.

They can take happiness away from me, teaspoon by teaspoon, but they can’t get at the abstraction.In the end there is nothing we can do about being beholden to a sperm for life A fact’s a fact But we don’t have to be beholden to it for felicity as well As my mother advised me years ago, just say no
More from Howard Jacobson. For romantics, it conjures up images of summer more readily associated with Provence To farmers, it is an annoying weed. But, love it or loathe it, the poppy is painting the British countryside red. The seeds can remain dormant for 30 years.”Experts say the damp, warm spring encouraged the poppies to flourish in growing crops, and more land is available, “set aside” to aid bio-diversity..

A study has been launched to discover why Britain’s woodland bird population is in decline, with numbers of some species falling by more than 50 per cent in the past 30 years. Overall, the population of 33 woodland species has fallen by 20 per cent in the past 25 years.The survey will follow the 2003 and 2004 breeding seasons, looking at the birds’ distribution on 350 mainly woodland plots across England, Wales and part of Scotland. The decline among woodland birds has coincided with the disappearance of sparrows from urban areas, which has been well documented by The Independent.The study was launched yesterday by the minister responsible for forestry, Elliot Morley, at the British Trust for Ornithology’s headquarters in Thetford, Norfolk. Mr Morley said the survey would help determine the causes of the decline, one of which might be the isolation and generally small size of Britain’s woods. “Expanding and linking of woodlands are two key aims of the Government’s England Forestry Strategy,” he added.Richard Smithers, of the Woodland Trust, said: “If we are to give our wildlife half a chance in the face of climate change, we need urgent action at a landscape scale.