A decent proposal

The poll revealed that a staggering 91 per cent of those in a relationship would not be proposing to their boyfriends this leap year. Those Sineads and Colleens want their men on their knees - or rather, one knee.

One quarter of those went further and said it was a “man's place to do it”, while 20 per cent of women felt it was too forward and they would be scared of rejection.

Do I detect a girlish titter?

Let us stop and ponder the word "rejection". It seems that many women, when it comes to taking a guy out to some chic over-priced Etruscan restaurant and staring in a long, soft-yet poignant way, while getting the guts to say “Will you … ?” are scared of rejection.

Reject the triumphantist urge men! What would we know about rejection? Remember Ursula of the tight jeans and very loose t-shirt who you followed around for six weeks when you were 12 and all she could say was “bugger off dog’s vomit”? Remember the therapy bills.

My step-father was a pilot officer in World War II in Europe. He asked an English woman to marry him half a dozen times but she’d always say, “No, I don’t want to be a widow all of my life”. He used to try and put that thought out of his mind every time he cranked up the Lancaster.

Interestingly, 79 per cent of Irish women who were not in a relationship said they wished they were in one. This showed that many women are not only traditional when it comes to proposing marriages but are also hopeless romantics who would prefer to be wooed than single.

Don’t you love the word “wooed”. It’s up there with “giggle with all those vowels and consonants crammed together like couples at a bar.

My girlfriend proposed to me on December 11 some years ago in a bar in Acland Street, St Kilda. I said what? She said do ya wanna? And I said “yes” thinking she meant something else. It has been gravy all the way.

And that’s why women need to overthrow this last bastion of male tyranny. They need to gird their loins or loin their girds. Forget the dour and sour emotional litigation if the man hasn’t popped the question. Assume the active voice and leap in first this February 29.