Everyone knows a 'Bastard Dave'.

We do. And therein lies the bald truth.

We were brought up to behave in a way we would expect others to behave towards us. for girls and women that’s multiplied by the powers of family, culture and society. That’s a non-starter (give me a shout out from the ladies). Every one, from when you are five years old, knows a Bastard Dave, or a Bastard Nigel, or Steve, or Andrew, or some other bastard’s name. It’s the secret society keeps.

Our village was a nest of abusers - I used to deliver the papers by stalking my prey, peering through hedges and not stepping on the gravel to avoid the weight of my eleven years alerting Fred who lived in Nissan Hut Cottage. The girl we all knew whose father was also her grandfather, and then she had a child underage. That was ‘baffling’, but then, there’s nothing like family. He used to wait for the paper and openly masturbate in the sitting room window.

I would like to add to this adventure, that I used to deliver papers to a pair of confirmed bachelors (for years, over ten years, as I used to fill in, but I had known them all my life) Stan and Ernie, who had lived together forever and still had one of the 1950s kitchens, and they used to leave the paper money inside the kitchen door, with a Viscount biscuit when I was a nipper (mint, obviously), and a KitKat during my latter paper years, plus 20p, every week, on top of the biscuit, PLUS a ten pound note at Christmas. Ernie grew all their vegetables in the garden, and used to grow flowers in between and would often leave me a bunch of flowers for our mum. Sweet Williams. Not all men, etc.

Yet, here we are. By 14 or 15 I was either indifferent to, or had gained sufficient defence mechanisms against, the arseholes of this world. If they intend to hurt me with violence is quite another thing, but flashers and molesters are the paddling pool of pesting that young women must survive when you live in the middle of fucking nowhere.

London, a different challenge. The relentless Tube boners and the cat calling and the lad banter. A whole new terrain to navigate. A whole new realm of self-doubt.

Let’s not forget that loads of people, regardless of gender, are ‘nasty bastards’. But we all know at least one nasty bastard. The one who is always going to make the comment, do the thing that everyone else knows no one should, even if they want to.

We are surrounded by Bastard Daves all the time, and act accordingly. Because we are the victims of these crimes. Appointing, promoting, and rewarding Bastard Daves only creates more victims, which seems most reductive in Bastard Dave’s particular institution, and society in general.

We will never be rid of the Bastard Daves of this world. But we don’t have to reward them for it.