45s AND OVER

It is Official Singles Week this week, I kid you not. A whole week devoted to the unattached members of society who have yet to form a meaningful relationship with a member of the opposite sex.

Moves are afoot to drop the words spinster and bachelor because they are perceived to hold negative connotations. Instead, the argument goes, they should be replaced by either the word "single" or, please no, the ghastly "singleton". Singleton, for those of you who haven’t read Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding, is a popular British surname. Fielding, for those of you who haven't read Bridget Jones' Diary, is a position in cricket, rounders and baseball. Jones, for those of you who haven’t read Bridget Jones' Diary, is a town in Indiana.

I quite like the word spinster. It's the fact it uses "spin" at the start that really appeals to me. It makes single women out to be whirling dervishes, twirling from room to room. It makes me dizzy just imagining it.

Bachelor, by contrast, sounds like single men are produced in huge batches from a factory in one of the old Soviet Bloc countries. Which is strange because the old Soviet Bloc countries are doing their utmost to entice the bachelors into marrying their single women.