WE'VE often been told that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, which offers us a believable funny way of recognising different behaviour patterns. Do men and women share more similar behaviour than this suggests? Rather than this theory perhaps we could look at the old fable of the tortoise and the hare.

The hare sets off with speed and enthusiasm but soon stops to rest while the tortoise plods steadily past to the finishing post. It's an amusing way of looking at human behaviour. There are people, men and women, who begin a big project with enthusiasm - then run out of steam: the garage partly tidied; the hall wallpaper stripped but taken no further; the study course abandoned when the essays mounted up. We can see this same problem in relationships and even in our Christian lives. Sadly, it's not popular to be a slow, plodding tortoise.

REVEREND CATHERINE CAMPBELL HYDE, Superintendent Minister, Malvern & Ledbury Circuit Methodist Church.