There was I sitting at breakfast at the excellent Messinian Bay hotel here in Kalamata. The tourist season has not yet started so there are few other guests. As ever, I grabbed a corner table well away from the herd so that I could tap away at my keyboard without disturbing folks. I checked my twitter feed and an Australian columnist who I admire greatly tweeted her shock at news that doctors had felt the need to warn millennial women that the new craze for putting a wasps nest in their underpants posed severe vaginal health risks.
Could this really be true? I realise that vast numbers of the snowflake generation are daft as a brush in a pathetic and decadent sort of way but could they really be this silly? The Aussie columnist is a sane woman and not prone to tweeting fake news so I hit the link.
I am not sure which paper I landed on but at once a women blurted out from my screen in loud estuary English "I want to shape my perfect vagina". I closed the page at once, conscious that those sitting behind my back may well have heard and now be under the impression that the man in the West Ham T-shirt was some porn chasing perv who was prepared to indulge in his filthy habit at the breakfast table.
I thought briefly about turning to explain that I was a journalist investigating whether millennials birds really did stuff wasp nests into their underpants but decided that this might be lost in translation. Anyhow hopefully most folks had not heard or were from Norway. What is the Norwegian for vagina?
I sat there staring at the screen for a good twenty five minutes, not even bothering to stand up to refill my coffee cup. All those who might possibly have heard this particular Vagina Monologue had, by then, left the room. They will all be gone from Kalamata within days and they, hopefully, do not know who I am. I am not going to pursue this particular tale which could just be an urban myth. But in this crazy world where I feel increasingly old I would not be that surprised if it was true.