It isn't just that they are pretty and delicate - they are always nice and oppressed too, which arouses my protective instincts. With their small faces, dark hair and retrousse noses, they are really something special. Is this normal?

Perhaps I should go on holiday to China, and try to find myself one of these meek, and yet passionate and irrascible, oriental beauties.

I must make plain that this is entirely different to all the other despicable women to be found in the far east, in such places as Vietnam, Malaysia and the like. There you find brazen hussies, wanton women who stick it out for 5 dollah.

I don;t want owt like that - I want a woman who has been through the fire of a totalitarian regime trying to destroy all essence of the private individual, unscathed. A woman who can keep her mouth shut when hiding in the bushes from a border guard when said guard stands on here little finger and breaks it. A woman who can make pretty dresses from linen sheets and fish for food in the river.

The only problem is that the cultural revolution was some time ago now - anyone who was grown up at the time is now knocking on a bit. Therefore I think I will settle for a simple peasant girl who was a child at the time, and was brought up in the wilderness of rural Tibet, under the regime of the Chinese imperialists.

I shall find one. I shall.