21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Is swinging back? “In 1974 I was living in San Francisco when I got a phone call from a man who said, ‘I’m having a few people over to have sex with my wife, would you care to join us?’ Back in the 1970s, people like this were called swingers. I politely declined. To my amazement I was recently invited by a couple in their sixties to go to one of London’s secret swinging parties with them. This one, they assured me, was for the ‘older swinger.’ (I didn’t think there were any still alive!) To swing or not to swing? That is the question I never thought I’d ever face again. It was a kind offer, but frankly I’m too old for those sorts of sexual shenanigans. And besides, the thought of all that drooping, flapping flesh and those dangling wobbly bits bumping and bouncing in a bed — and that’s just me naked! — put me off. So again, I politely declined.”