Frankly, I've no idea...
What is the going rate, these days?
The things I pick up in the doctor's waiting room...
Actually - at very real the risk of sounding like a grumpy old git - this is a far cry from the days of my youth when there were no National Heath Service leaflets to tell you What's What and when items of this nature were only obtainable from pharmacies (and if they didn't have a male assistant, you simply had to purchase yet another toothbrush) or from the hairdresser's salon - then called the barber's - where you might possibly be asked if you needed "something for the weekend" - presumably on the basis that sex was an exclusively Friday and/or Saturday night affair!
Run by St Pancras Hospital, the freedoms-shop.com web site -- No! You really don't have to check it out... Oh, you just did! --- is, for a fogy born in the Dark Ages, a somewhat startling experience! A kind of Amazon.condom, it has a cheery sales pitch that is up front and proud of it! For example: "Check out our popular freedoms box, which offers fantastic value for money, and looks pretty damn good too."
Seriously, whilst my mock outrage conceals a deep-seated jealousy that today's generations are so better catered for in the sexual knowledge department and lack most of the hang-ups that hung over those of us of an earlier generation, I fear for them in that the worldwide statistics on the AIDS & HIV epidemic show a rise from 8 million people in 1990 to 38.6 million in 2005 and the figures are still rising.
If only there were a way for those of us who lived through the Reign of Terror - especially those who loved and lost in that era when knowledge was sparse and fear was rife - to explain to today's generation that the price of freedom is always responsibility and, in the case of sex (whatever your particular cup of tea might be) that means a responsibility to health and life...
That said, the NHS and St Pancras Hospital have probably got it right...
1 comment:
I'm enraged whenever I hear a younger person to complain about the price of condoms... specially when they say they have no money to buy something that (for instance) would avoid an unwanted pregnancy to his girlfriend, but brag about the pot and cocaine they enjoy during the weekend.
See... they won't complain about a god-knows-where-it-came-from (but most likely stashed in a bodily orifice) dose of illegal drugs, possibly adulterated, possibly overpriced and surely more expensive than a pack or condoms.
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