I had to fill in a form for a medical thing the other day and it asked for my marital status. Now I know, that maintenance of my liberal bona fides requires that I call someone over and demand they disinter the form’s template from whatever NHS administrative database it resides in, demand the question’s instant removal and the names of all in the chain of command responsible for its appearance. But in all honesty I was a bit tired and the chances of this being accomplished in time for me to get home and watch last week’s The Good Wife before I had to go and fetch the child from school seemed discouragingly minimal, so I didn’t.

But I did wonder what possible use anyone – even if the form was first written by Patriarchy McPatriarchface – could ever have thought it would serve. There was another space for emergency numbers and the name of whoever was coming with you for the procedure (“No one. Am looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet. Lay me out in waiting room and I will call taxi when conscious”), so it can’t have been connected to that.

I know what I would like it to be used for. I would like to tick “married” and be sent a monthly care package comprising:

1) The contraceptive pill (and/or a one-off big sign saying “Yer joking – gerroff”).

2) An allowance of phlegm-thinners for him and Valium for me, in case the phlegm-thinners don’t work.

3) Vitamin and iron tablets, because this till-death-do-us-part gig is hard work even without sex.

4) Updates on the latest research in phlegm – its production, potential commercial or domestic use, past evolutionary advantages, how we might explain to evolution that those advantages are now gone: anything, anything at all, that might help.

5) High blood pressure medication.

6) Prescription for separate houses.

I suspect that’s not it. Still, it gives me something to ponder while I wait for my taxi.

Don’t mess with my Aled

Aled Jones has beaten Zayn Malik (formerly 20% of One Direction) in the charts with his new album, One Voice. Jones’s parents recently found unreleased recordings of him singing folk songs as a 16-year-old, and the album has him duetting with his younger self.

This makes me incandescent with rage. Partly at the waste – why not let us hear that perfect, evanescent treble again, so unexpectedly resurrected, in all its extraordinary purity? Hearing it any other way is like watching Astaire from the waist up or George Clooney from behind – and partly at the realisation that I am entering a stage of life in which I can become genuinely enraged by people not cleaving to my vision of what an Aled Jones album should be. I may ask for a cyanide capsule to be included in my next care package.

To Chumpo, from Floopface

I made the mistake of going out last week, only to find someone introducing himself to me with the words: “Hi, nice to meet you. My name’s Charles. My friends call me Chumpo.”

That’s a forest of dilemmas I’m suddenly in, a quagmire of quandaries. What do you say? Options range from “I’m so sorry”, to “Nice to meet you, Chumpo! I’m Floopface! Drink till we’re both insensible?” with an almost infinite variety of possibilities in between.

Am I being invited to ask for the nickname’s origin story? I barely made it through Wolverine, and that starred Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber. My chances of staying alert through the parturition of Chumpo are virtually nil.

Am I being invited to be his friend? What if I’m not? What if he says, “No, sorry, I said my friends call me Chumpo. It was just a bit of extra info for you in case you ever hear one of them calling me and wonder, ‘Who’s Chumpo?’”

I settled for “Nice to meet you, Chrmflsrssghrh” and ran home. I’ve put a rush on that cyanide capsule.