Sitting in my Uber, with the heat beating down on the main road and no sign of ameliorating, my driver had all four windows open. At forty miles per hour this created a pleasant, if artificial, refreshing breeze which whipped and twirled around my head. Hair flying back and forth. Eyes closed. Mouth open (slightly). And thoughts, twirly whirly swirly thoughts, to match.

Because sometimes all it takes is a moment.

Back in Nottingham, my days were punctuated more often than not by Rodge and Shell having sex. They were a couple, or at least they were for a while. They continued to have a lot of sex even after they’d broken up. What with my friend Blaine the human sloth being loved-up with his girlfriend, and our French housemate having an apparently real (but possibly invisible) boyfriend, I remained – despite hot drunk girls walking randomly into my bedroom and holding urban parties just around the corner – the only single one in the house.

A memory danced into my head along with the windspren in the Uber. Rodge, who usually ate about six or seven slices of cheese on toast after his morning shags, had someone who was pretty, loud, fairly uninhibited and clearly highly sexual, judging by the noises they made (whether or not she was a girlfriend or just a regular lay). Blaine, despite sleeping 16 to 20 hours a day like a male lion, clearly had something going on with Sarah. The French girl was French.

I had no such arrangement back then, and I do not now.

In my 20s I lived with my parents and had girlfriends who I did not live with. I spent a lot of time with them – specifically with my second girlfriend, who lived in Oxford and that’s less than an hour away by train – but our visits were more an attempt at moving towards cohabitation than regular drop-in shags (no matter how much sex we actually had). I may have had a couple of run-ins with others – like Alicia, or Lilly, or even snowdrop – but that was always me visiting them.

Someone pretty visiting me for sex was an idea that beguiled me back then. The desire I had for it, from a fleeting memory on flying winds, buffeted its way back into my brain. Twenty years on and here I was still thinking about it. Living independently in a London flat with a wife who doesn’t have sex and a job to which I actually go (not to mention a disability which may make it difficult to actually have sex).

The idea of someone coming over for a little morning delight still manages to entrance.

Why? I asked the wind. Why, when I am married, busy, lazy, disabled and less than conventionally attractive, does the back of my mind even entertain the possibility? Soft porn and erotica have the trope. But they’re fiction, of course. I read blogs which have some of the same stories… but they don’t happen to me. They never have, the wind told me. And they never will.

I’ve never had my incel moment and I don’t intend to start. I don’t consider myself to be owed anything. I certainly don’t expect to have more or a right to sex than is to be reasonably expected. Hell, I don’t expect it any more. I don’t mind not having sex, I really don’t…

…but the back of my brain lets the wind tell me differently…

…because sometimes all it takes is a moment.