Partners come in handy

Sweetie, if you wanted a romantic for a husband, you should have married a Frenchman!
I've lost count of the number of times I've told the good wife this, after forgetting our anniversary, forgetting how we first met, or forgetting to wake her up before sex.
But I had to say it again the other day, while we were out shopping for some nursery items and she tried repeatedly to hold my hand.
Now I know she's a tad emotional at present, what with her being in the family way and everything, but like many normal Aussie men, I've never been one for public displays of affection.
I'm romantic enough in my own way - she's pregnant, after all - but hand-holding is something for teenagers in the first full bloom of lust, don't you reckon?
It's not the Aussie way - and I think that comes from the realisation that if you've got one hand around a stubbie and the other cradled in your squeeze's hand, how the bloody hell are you going to pick your nose, scratch your ring or answer the mobile?
It's why I always laugh when I see TV footage of our pollies with their spouses. Fair dinkum, these guys are generally in their 50s so they probably hardly talk to their wives any more, yet every time you see them in public they're holding hands like teenagers on a first date.
George W at the steps of Air Force One clasping Laura's hand as if he's on a promise; Peter Beattie holding grimly onto Heather's hand after a function, probably to make sure she doesn't try to drive; our Labor pollies in the recent leadership stoush joined at the palms to their better halves like Simon-Crean twins.
How do you expect to believe anything these clowns have to say if they can't even be honest about the state of play in their family lives?

They say love is blind, but obviously top sporting people aren't! It's amazing how many of our sports heroes - and I talk mainly about the blokes here - end up with drop-dead gorgeous girlfriends and wives.
I mention this only because the local paper ran a picture the other week of the partners of our gallant losing Wallabies, and as we read the morning paper in bed, the missus asked me to give all the girls the once over and then pick the one I'd most like to talk to.
Now isn't that quaint, readers? The one I'd most like to talk to! Sure, talking's nice, so I decided to play the game and prove that I do have a romantic side after all.
I fluffed up the pillow, squeezed my lower lip in deep thought and checked out the various glamours that our Wallabies had somehow miraculously managed to fall in love with.
It wasn't too hard a task, really, because there didn't appear to be a rather plain and chubby check-out chick amongst them.
"The blonde up the back there. She looks like a nice person," I ventured. "I could talk to her till the cows come home."
"The brunette on the right there. I could give her a good talking to, that's for sure.
"The redhead up the back. I could talk her brains out. Especially if the two in the front there got to watch."
Now the missus isn't talking to me which I think is pretty unfair. She's the one who asked for my opinion, after all.

Frank Mullet's book, Looking Up the Dresses of Unsuspecting Marching Girls, is no longer available at leading bookstores and newsagents as charges are pending.