Recent events have shown how unwise it is to throw about emotive words like "cripple". Oddly enough however, regarding the disgraced Paralympics Correspondent of the Sunday In- dependent, Mary Ellen Synon, no one has yet seen fit to complain about the apology made by her editor, Aengus Fanning - an apology which he said was "absolute, fulsome and sincere."

Fulsome, is it? I seem to recall our eagle-eyed letter-writers jumping on the misuse of this word before. Fulsome doesn't mean full, it means, according to The Times English Dictionary, "excessive or insincere, esp. in an offensive or distasteful way." Undoubtedly this is not what Mr Fanning meant. Or if he did, then maybe Miss Sin On, when using the word "cripple", meant healthy and full-bodied, and by "wobbling" meant moving elegantly along in a straight line, and we have misunderstood her completely.

Meanwhile this newspaper informed us, slavering as we all were for more dirt on Mary Ellen, that she is a non-smoking, non-drinking vegetarian who is said to be charming company in private but "has a public reputation of being an ice maiden".

I know loads of women just like her. The odd thing is that I am mad about them all, though you could take them to the finest restaurants in the land and you would be absolutely wasting your time trying to press a cigarette or a gin-and-tonic or a good lump of bloody beefsteak on them. They are impervious, or imperturbable, or something like that - sure you know what I mean, I can't be looking up the Times Dictionary every minute of the day, it weighs about half a ton and the print is tiny.

This is how these women, all of whom (I need hardly say) are just as scrumptious-looking as Mary Ellen, get the public "ice maiden" reputation. You could be there with any of them at your table in L'Ecrivain or Ballymaloe or Paddy Guilbaud's in the Merrion, blathering away at the top of your voice about the latest shenanigans at the Arts Council or the chances of Aidan O'Brien's Giant's Causeway in the Breeders Cup Classic at Churchill Downs or the fabulous . . .diminuendo of Dan Shipsides' bamboo scaffolding on the Carlton, and what response is your companion making?

None. None at all. Not a single word out of her for the entire night. She sits there, poised, serene, occasionally inspecting her perfectly painted bright red fingernails, taking the odd mouthful of Evian water, toying with a forkful of spinach and gazing into the middle distance.

Does this mean she is. . .boring? Good God no, not at all! Sure the woman has you transfixed, along with every other man in the room. She is dropdead gorgeous of course, immaculately turned out and perfectly groomed, but that isn't it. Oh no. It's the assurance, the languor, the carelessness, the casualness and the icy cool, that's what does it, man, that's what has you in the state you are in, gradually and irrevocably reduced to a gibbering idiot, until the moment (just as stalactites form on the ceiling) the equally enslaved waiter arrives with the bill, you press your card on the fellow with a 40 per cent tip and are swept out of the restaurant in the freezing slipstream of your completely unimpressed ice maiden.

And what awaits you then? Ah! Perhaps you have forgotten the bit about the ice maiden being "charming company in private". Barely half an hour after leaving the restaurant and the entire public domain you are alone with the woman in her boudoir, hardly knowing or indeed caring how you got there. Instantly, the beautiful creature commences defrosting.

It is a sight to behold and any man who hasn't experienced it hasn't really lived at all. Away from the public gaze the ice maiden warms up like lightning, and in no time at all she has reached the standard human temperature of 98.4 with a large pudddle of water surrounding her on the floor.

Does she stop then? She does not. Away with her up the thermometer scale. In a few minutes you are urgently fiddling with the radiator, trying to turn off the central heating. As you turn around, the woman is right beside you and it is like standing in front of a steam vent and the only thing icy about her now is the chilled bottle of champagne she begins to pour into two tall glasses and suddenly she starts to talk for the first time that night and the voice is warm and husky and -

Seamus, give us a couple of pints of cider there! Lots of ice, good man, we have ourselves worked into a right sweat here.

bglacken@irish-times.ie