UK TELEGRAPH — April 1 — If you want to know the secrets of a long and happy marriage, ask Gran. Jennie Hawthorne is the 88-year-old author of a new book on finding the right partner called Meet Your Match. Jennie's mission is to revive the troubled institution of marriage. She and her ex-squadron leader husband have notched up 65 years with 7 children. Has she ever considered divorce? "Divorce, never! But murder, often." When reading recent statistics that show the suicide rate among young men to be the highest ever, Jennie, a financial services expert, decided that divorce and loneliness were the most pressing issues in modern life. Men don't cope well on their own, so she wants to help them (and women, too) find the right partners – and stick with them. "Girls these days push to get on, but young men don't seem to know where they are going," she observes. Her precepts for long-term happiness include putting more emphasis on common interests, less on looks and passion; offering more compliments, less brutal honesty; showing more self-knowledge, less impatience. Surprisingly, her dating book advocates old-fashioned morality in a contemporary setting. Escort agencies, speed-dating, agencies specialising in vegetarians, the protocol of internet dating: she describes them all with gusto.
The full article was originally published at The Telegraph, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: This isn't an April Fools posting. However, I couldn't find Jennie's book on Amazon yet; just 14 of her books.