Since I wrote about Maca I’ve had a few emails asking about more powerful aphrodisiacs and my promise to blog on the human mind. Okay. The most powerful that I know of is fantasy. But you have to know how to use it. You have to know what’s likely to turn your partner on, and your partner has to know what turns you on.

Even couples who have been together for years have little or no idea of one another’s fantasy lives so I always suggest beginning with a fairly innocent suggestion.Next time you’re making love you could say something like:

• Last night I dreamed we were having sex on a beach and people were watching
• I wish I could have been in your changing room today with all those men/women.

If your partner responds, all well and good. If not, drop the idea for the moment and try some other fantasies another time. You can be pretty sure your partner does have a fantasy sex life. It’s just a question of discovering what it is. Once you’ve teased it out so you can develop scenarios together, taking turns to move the ‘story’ forward as you make love.

I should warn you, though, that just like pills and powders, fantasies can have side effects. Be careful you don’t try a fantasy that turns your partner off rather than on.

From time to time I try out various entirely legal substances reputed to enhance sexual desire or performance. Back in the early days I had a go at Viagra and there´s no denying its power but the side-effects in my personal case were so unpleasant as to make it pointless taking it. You don’t feel much like sex when you have a bright red face and a splitting headache.

Recently I’ve been testing Maca (Lepidium meyenii), a plant from the high Andes of Peru and Bolivia, and I’m fairly convinced it works as a performance enhancer. I can’t prove it, because it’s very difficult to disentangle the psychological effects from the physical. But properly-conducted scientific experiments do seem to suggest it gives men a genuine boost. It’s not like Viagra where the results are rapid and unmistakable. It’s a tonic you take every day, usually as a pill. However, I like the powdered root. It has a delicious vanilla flavour which goes well sprinkled on soya yoghurt.

But the best aphrodisiac/performance enhancer I know is the human mind. I’ll be blogging about that soon.

Weekends are usually working days for me. I prefer to take time off when the pistes and the beaches are at their quietest. But my partner slips over to Roses on a Sunday morning and brings back a newspaper. This week it was the Sunday Times. I see that even columnist India Knight, writing in support of Cherie Blair, rather damns senior sex with faint praise (see my A Writer’s Life entry yesterday). Cherie, she asserts, is ‘striking a blow for womankind by alluding to her pushing-60 sex life’.

But then India spoils it all by writing: ‘This isn’t a plea for everyone who is no longer a spring chicken to start volunteering the lurid details of what they get up to in bed.’

Well, they should. Because surveys show that the Over 50s have much better sex than the youngsters. They have more time and they have more skill. Younger people could learn a lot from them.

And what’s with this ‘lurid’ anyway? Every part of the body is holy, as I explain in Get Intimate With Tantric Sex. Sex is beautiful, not lurid.

India, you’re doing quite well but I’m afraid you’re still suffering from guilt and inhibition. You need to work on it.

In this section of my website I’ll be very happy to publish any useful tips from older readers. And I’ll be blogging quite a few myself.