Dear Dave

  Trousers are more important than Grand Theft Auto

Dear Dave,

Famously, the last time I went into the city to buy trousers, I came back with an Xbox 360 instead. It was a couple of years ago and I made the mistake of going into GAME at the start of my trip. I was so surprised to find the consoles in stock, I bought one immediately. I hadn't counted on how much they weigh. I was an aching, sweaty mess within minutes. I half-heartedly glanced round the menswear department of John Lewis and headed home.

Bearing in mind that my second-best pair of trousers had a hole in the knee so large that it kept catching on furniture as I walked by, I should have dumped the Xbox in our hall and headed straight back to the shops. I hate clothes shopping, though. Psyching myself up to go twice in one day was beyond me. (Not to mention that I had a new games console to play with.) The following Saturday seemed soon enough to buy trousers.

Unfortunately, it was another three months before I bought any. We were staying with my parents in rural Norfolk and I ended up going to the nearest small town to buy some. The situation was desperate by that stage. Even my best pair of trousers had developed excess ventilation. There was only one shop in the town that sold clothes that I might wear and that were in my price range. It was a case of buying anything which fitted. I did that.

The results looked fine and I had no more clothing worries until a six weeks ago, when I discovered my current second-best pair of trousers had a gaping hole. It wasn't in the knee this time. I got by for a while by coordinating my underwear with the trousers but it wasn't really a long-term solution. I had to return to central Edinburgh and brave the horrors of Princes Street in search of something to keep me decent.

A few years back, a couple of menswear retailers weren't doing so well and I saw an interview with a director of one of the companies on Working Lunch. He basically blamed us for his woes. With a touch of irritation, he noted that men in an age range between twenty-five and forty-five don't buy clothes.

This isn't entirely true. We do buy socks and underpants when our partners insist. We also need two sets of work clothes (one to wear, one to wash). Housedads even need five sets of work clothes (one to wear, three to wash, one to beat with a stick until it stays still long enough to be incinerated). Then there's a few t-shirts for sunny weekends, a new pair of pyjamas every decade or so and, erm... er... ...

Yeah, anyway, we do buy clothes. What the guy was really saying was that we only buy what we need to keep us warm and to prevent us getting arrested. This is true. My mission objective as I boarded the bus was purely to find sufficient apparel to stave off hypothermia and custody. Avoiding looking ridiculous was desirable but not essential.

Since it was last Tuesday, everywhere was plastered with adverts for Grand Theft Auto IV. I ignored them. I had to concentrate on buying trousers. I had to not think about it being release day for one of the greatest computer games ever made.

Trousers.

Must buy trousers...

It was harder than I expected. I don't mean steering clear of GTA. That was easy - every shop selling it was too full of people wanting their copy for me to be able to get inside. I'm talking about finding trousers I liked enough to cough up the asking price. As it's a while since I regularly went clothes shopping, my expectations were out of kilter with reality. I was looking for trousers that had fallen through a worm-hole from 1995, complete with a 1995 price. Worse yet, there were shops I used to patronise that I walked into and felt almost too old for. I can probably carry off wearing faded jeans at the moment but in a year or three? I doubt it. Considering how infrequently I buy clothes, this was an issue. I didn't know what to do.

My feet took charge and carried me into Gamestation on autopilot. After fighting my way past all the people buying Grand Theft Auto IV, I discovered that Wii Fit was in stock. (The emergency team digging Nintendo's minions out of a mountain of cash must have hurried the job along so they were ready for a call-out from Rockstar.) I had games to trade and some vouchers to spend and, well, one thing led to another and I found myself without new trousers but carrying a heavy piece of interactive hardware. This felt spookily familiar.

I considered going home with my prize but I knew I'd never live it down. Perspiring slightly, I continued my quest.

Luckily, the Wii Fit balance board isn't quite as cumbersome as a 360. It is close, though. I resolved to find some suitable clothing as quickly as I could, before my arm fell off.

Things didn't improve. Everywhere I went, there were more bizarre clothes that would have needed to be half the price for me to take a chance on them. I thought one pair of trousers was OK until I realised the legs zipped off to turn them into shorts. I'm sure that's a feature my kids would love to experiment with endlessly but I wasn't so keen.

It was all a succession of baggy sacks with too many pockets, odd jackets and pink shirts with blue stripes and matching purple ties. I was tempted to flaunt some of my rips and get arrested, just so I'd be able to wear some decent coveralls.

Then I walked past British Home Stores. I stopped and walked back. I didn't feel quite old enough to shop there but I decided I'd better have a look, for the sake of completeness. Sagging from despair, weariness and the knowledge I'd turned into my dad, I went inside and took the escalator up to the first floor.

I was greeted by row upon row of chinos in unremarkable colours. They were even in the sale.

I had come home.

Despite it being lunchtime, there weren't many other shoppers around. I can only assume they were off buying Grand Theft Auto IV somewhere. The couple of blokes I did see hunting through the racks were fifteen to twenty years older than me. This was disturbing. I'd apparently moved up an age bracket in my consumer preferences. Who knew what I was going to start feeling the urge to purchase? Slip-on shoes? A cloth cap? A newspaper that didn't come free on the bus?

I found myself called towards the tartan slippers.

Trousers...

Must buy trousers...

I concentrated on the task in hand. I was surrounded by suitable trousers and I needed four pairs. Which ones to buy? First choice was black. I'm not keen on brown. It lacks the style of black. White was out of the question. It needs washed more often than other colours (like black, for instance). Beige (or biscuit or light brown or whatever it is) was nice but almost as impractical as white - I need something which doesn't show grass-stains and dirt. You know, like black. I considered getting a grey pair but, although I'd wear them, I'd be wishing they were... well... black.

Basically, I was thinking black.

I couldn't quite bring myself to buy four pairs of identical black trousers, however. I opted for two black pairs and two dark blue pairs. I'll probably only wear the blue ones in emergencies but, hey, I tried...

I bought some plain, white t-shirts as well and checked to see if they had any shirts in my colour (light burgundy). They didn't but the three I have already will last a while yet - they're only threadbare, not full of holes. Who cares that one has paint on and the cuffs are frayed on another? At least they still have most of their buttons.

I cut my losses, went home and collapsed. Mission accomplished. More than that, Wii Fit had given me its first work-out and I hadn't taken it out of the box.

Why is it so hard to buy clothes? I like to think it's because I don't care what I wear and so it takes me ages to get round to it. The truth is more that I'm incredibly fussy about what I wear and I know that it's going to be a real effort finding the things I want. These things are smart-casual, trousers (preferably black), plain t-shirts (white or black) and collared shirts doomed to a life of unbuttoned crumpledness (burgundy) i.e. what I always get. I should simply walk into shops, point to myself and go, 'Do you have this, except without the holes and stains?'

I could change my look but it's not worth it. When I got contact lenses as a teenager, one of my friends said, 'Why do you have those? You looked better with glasses.' Six months later, when I couldn't wear the lenses for a few days, the same guy said, 'Why have you gone back to glasses? You looked better without them.' Since then, I've never been much bothered by fashion.

I like the way I look and other people have either got used to it or just don't care. Why mess with that?

I'm going to regret not buying more of those black chinos...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: stuff, Wii, Xbox 360

  11:20 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Living without Wii Fit

Dear Dave,

I forgot to pre-order Wii Fit. I will probably be the only person in the country not spending the weekend hopping on top of a white plastic tea-tray in the vain hope that a videogame can make them slim and athletic.

Since everyone at Nintendo is currently buried under an ever-increasing mountain of cash and it will take a while to dig them out, there may not be any more stock for some time. What am I going to do? I was relying on this game to make exercise fun and enticing. What better way to lose weight and increase muscle tone than by jumping up and down on a plastic slab in front of the TV in the comfort of my own living room? I've been chain-eating biscuits in nervous anticipation.

Now I'm going to have to go outside and run around or something...

Wait! Surely I must be able to avoid that. Let's see... Hmm... How about...? Yes... These things should do it:



Bear with me while I try a quick work-out...

...

gasp... wheeze...

... ... irk... gasp...

... boing... ...

ouch... wheeze... ... ...

... twiddle... Argh!

wheeze...

Ooh... thud...

...

...

limp...

...

OK, well, that wasn't so bad. It transpires that I already have enough interactive entertainment to get myself leaping about in an aerobic fashion. I could have been slim and athletic years ago. If only switching the stuff on and putting the right disc in didn't seem like such an effort...

I started my work-out with a shot on Sony's EyeToy, the motion-detecting camera for the PlayStation 2. Once I'd blown the dust off it and booted up one of the many minigame collections, I spent quite a while waving my arms about frantically to wash windows, set off fireworks and slap ninjas. Getting the lighting right was tricky and navigating the menus was a pain but I'd forgotten how much fun the thing is. The maraca-wielding antics of Sega Superstars are particularly invigorating. As with all the most energetic EyeToy games, however, it made my arms sore pretty quick but didn't really utilise the rest of my muscles. (At least I didn't put my back out this time, though.)

In an attempt to mimic the full Wii Fit experience and exercise my entire body, I played EyeToy while hopping up and down on one leg. This worked great for the five seconds until I fell over. Then I tried it on the trampoline. This was maybe a little ambitious - my scoring went out the window. It was nearly followed by me.

I moved on to Wii Sports, the collection of sporting simulations which comes bundled with the Wii. You know you're out of shape when pretending to hit a baseball thirty times brings you out in a sweat. I switched to tennis and spent a couple of minutes leaping round the room like a loon, trying to smash a backhand winner past my cartoon opponent. Then I remembered that sitting down and flicking my wrist every so often would work just as well. It wasn't as much fun or exercise but I was getting tired and I didn't care.

I took a breather and did some bowling. After a while, this made my elbow twinge, so I opted for Mario and Sonic at the Olympics (also on Wii). There was something deeply surreal about waggling my arms really fast in an attempt to get Bowser to win a gold medal. I broke some world records, got sore shoulders and was hugely glad that I don't yet have man-boobs big enough to require a sports bra. I quickly changed games to Link's Crossbow Training and started shooting targets with the Wii Zapper. My arms started to complain almost instantly once more and, again, the trampoline didn't do wonders for my high score.

Last up was the dance mat. This was a bit more like it in terms of getting my whole body moving. At least it would have been, if only I had rhythm and coordination. The good feeling from the exercise was counteracted by the frustration of being rubbish at stepping on the correct pad in time to the beat. It was like a Twister-related torture device. I collapsed in a contorted heap of limbs and gimmicky videogame controllers.

I crawled off to play Tomb Raider. I knew I needed to do some stretching as a warm down but I was too tired. I decided to watch Lara do some instead. Unfortunately, this somehow made me lose track of time and I forgot about going to collect Marie from nursery. I had to sprint along the road in order to avoid being overdue and getting a telling off from the teachers. This was easily a harder work-out than everything else put together. I did look rather a sight as I panted and perspired my way into the cloakroom, though.

The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that being late for things results in more effective exercise than videogames. It's cheaper, too. The videogames just ensure there are fewer witnesses. So, if you have managed to get your own copy of Wii Fit, the best way to maximise its potential is to close the curtains before you switch it on and then hide all your clocks. (You know it makes sense.)

Now... I'm going to go have a lie down.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: computer games, stuff, Wii

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Different priorities

Dear Dave,

Good to hear the routine is settling down and you're managing to get out of the house before half past ten in the morning. Shame you need to be back by eleven in order to give Daisy her third breakfast and change her nappy... before heading back out to collect Sam from nursery... only to hurry home for an early lunch... allowing you to go out for a walk to get Daisy to have a nap... so she'll wake up in time for a change and second lunch... before you have to go out again to take Sam to swimming lessons... and then rush back to give Daisy tea promptly... in the hope she'll feel peckish again before Liz gets home ready to burst and requiring a hungry baby to prevent her from exploding in a milky fashion.

It can be quite tricky fitting everything into the day when dealing with young children. Any delays, such as an unscheduled nappy full of evil raisins or a toddler taking exception to the colour of his left trouser leg, is liable to throw things out entirely. You can find yourself needing to be back home before you've left. This isn't too handy when you really need to get to the shops because all that's in the freezer is breast milk.

Lewis didn't finish his lunch, so I've enclosed half a cheese sandwich to keep you going. (Probably best to disinfect it, or something - I think he might have sneezed on it.)

As I said in my last letter, faffing with bottles can slow things down. Not having the handy, take-anywhere baby feeding attachments is certainly a disadvantage that we housedads have compared to our female colleagues. It's one of the obvious ways that life differs in a role-reversed family. Another is that both parents get to be home for the length of maternity leave. As you know, this makes the arrival of a new child easier to cope with but can have serious financial implications. All in all, there are many pros and cons to the way we do things. Even the lack of attachments can turn into an advantage for a housedad at three in the morning. (Don't look too happy about it as you hand over a screaming baby and go back to sleep, though. When Daisy starts teething, you'll be the one blearily watching baseball on Channel 5 for half the night as she cries and tries to eat the remote control.)

Yep, there are plenty of practical issues. You were wondering, however, whether housedads have a different approach to the philosophy of bringing up children than stay-at-home mums? Do we raise children differently through a mixture of genetics and principle?

It's hard to know. Parenting is a complicated business and to pin any particular part of the process down to gender would be a wild generalisation.

Tempted as I am to make wild generalisations anyway, I just can't bring myself to do it. So much of childcare - the rough and tumble, the nurturing, the discipline - is down to role as much as gender. Plus, my sample size of housedads I'm regularly in contact with is somewhat limited to you, so that would be a move beyond generalisation to straight forward invention. The best I can do is suggest that housemums and housedads may have different priorities.

For instance, I was in much less of a hurry to get my kids using cutlery and open cups than most mums at parent and toddler. This was maybe as much to do with Fraser as to do with me. He was so good at spilling drinks when he was small, I continued giving him beakers with spouts until he was nearly four. As for food, he still won't eat anything with sauce and is only just coming round to the idea that hot food can be quite tasty. When a huge proportion of what you eat is sandwiches, fresh fruit and raw vegetables, cutlery really isn't necessary.

That said, I did have to insist on a spoon for breakfast cereal so he stopped scooping up a handful of Rice Crispies and shoving them into his mouth in a way which dropped half of them. I really don't like a crunchy kitchen floor. (He eats his Crispies dry, by the way.) Maybe mums prefer civilised children. I'm just glad when the food goes in their mouths rather than on my socks.

I've also been relatively tardy teaching the boys to pee standing up. They hardly ever need the toilet, so there's no real incentive. The time we would save each day would be more than cancelled out by the time I'd spend doing additional mopping each week. Perhaps if it wasn't my job to clean up after them, then I might feel differently. I might believe that it's some kind of male rite of passage to learn to urinate while vertical and insist that they got the hang of it. Maybe housemums are more eager than me to encourage their sons' aiming skills because they have these kinds of expectations from their partners to placate. I'm just glad when the pee goes in the toilet rather than on my socks.

As for maintaining the balance between stimulation and unstructured play, I tend to leave the kids to their own devices more often than many mums seem too. This is perhaps down to having three children close together, though. I simply wouldn't have had time to sit either of the boys down and teach them to read, for example - I was always too busy chasing after a younger child. As for Marie, she's started teaching herself and she goes around pretending to read things already. The other day, she squinted hard at the instructions on a bottle of soap and said, "It says, 'Put on your hands. Don't put it on your teeth.'" (This was surprisingly accurate.) I suppose I could teach her properly but I'm in no rush. The school can handle it. Some mums attempt to educate their kids at an early age as something to do in order to avoid being driven mad by Teletubbies themselves. I have a high tolerance for boredom, however. I can think about nothing much for hours. I'm just glad... I have clean socks.

So there we have it, I suspect that if there were more housedads, more children would eat with their fingers, pee sitting down and be able to work DVD players themselves. Everyone would have clean socks.

Then again, maybe that's simply me.

Do housedads raise children differently? Never mind that - I think it's probably safe to say that every parent has a different approach to bringing up children. We all have successes and make mistakes. We all screw them up in a unique and interesting fashion. There's nothing to be done about it.

Just love them, do your best and get on with the job. Some priorities may vary but those are the ones we should all have in common.

Hope you get to the shops soon.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Good news if you don't like baseball! The BBC iPlayer now works on Wii. Download the Internet Channel, surf over to the website and voila! You can watch most of the last week of BBC output in jerky, VHS-o-vision from the comfort of your armchair, even in the middle of the night. Better get in there now while you have the chance - it only works in the UK but I still hate to think of the bandwidth usage if it catches on. Can you hear that shrill, almost-silent scream? That's our little corner of the internet dying...

Labels: housedad, Wii

  10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  The bread bin strikes back!

Dear Dave,

Happy PlayStation 3 price cut in the UK day!

Well, sort of...

You were thinking about whether to buy a next-generation console and I'm not sure the choice has got any easier. What are Sony doing? That exec has been at it again. I can only imagine the meeting went like this:

(Two men sit in a large, spacious office. The Sony Exec sits at his desk, frowning at some papers. A member of the marketing team sits opposite, squirming).

Sony Europe Exec: I don't like the look of these sales figures. We need to stir things up a bit. How about we knock the price down to £350.

Sony Marketing Bod: We can't knock seventy-five quid off the price just three months after launch. That sends all the wrong kinds of signals - like we have enormous warehouses full of stock that no one wants to buy.

Exec (looking shifty): Yes... I mean, no... I mean... Er, no we couldn't possibly have them thinking that... But we do need to sell a few more units.

Bod: True, but the videogame industry is driven by confidence. No one wants to buy a console that's failing. They want to back the winner to ensure a continuing supply of good games and thus protect their investment. They buy the console they think everyone else is buying. A price cut boosts sales in the short-term but may only bring in customers who were going to buy one anyway and were waiting for the cut. Others may just be made more nervous. They may wait longer to see who's going to win the console war.

Exec: We are going to win it, obviously.

Bod: Yes, I know - it's my job to say that.

Exec: Then why aren't you saying it?

Bod: Because this is a strategy meeting and we need to separate fact from propaganda. (Sighs). Besides, you're never going to buy one anyway, are you?

Exec: Of course not. I haven't tried one yet where the thing actually makes toast properly. (He motions over to a corner of the room where a number of dead PS3s are heaped. Some of them have slices of bread poking out of the disc-drive. One appears to be leaking the remains of a Pop-Tart). Let's keep that secret, though. Don't want to put off any consumers, do we?

Bod: Not a problem, I for one certainly haven't been talking-up the PS3's ability to warm bread products. (Notices two PS3s being used as bookends on a shelf). We do, however, need to figure out a way to sell more of them. Some way that doesn't involve an early, desperate price cut.

Sony Exec: Well we won't actually cut the price - we'll bundle lots of extra stuff with it. How about another controller and a couple of games?

Bod: So people think they're getting better value for money.

Exec: Exactly. We can claim it's a large price saving while keeping the price the same.

Bod: That might work. People like to think they're getting a bargain. It'll still cost £425 but with £115 off extra content. I can sell that.

Exec: And when we sell the console on its own in November for £350 we can claim we're so confident of success that we're actually putting the price up.

Bod (holding head against the pain): Because... the box will be £75 cheaper but contain £115 less stuff?

Exec: People will buy it because it's cheaper but be confident that demand is high because it's become more expensive. They'll rush into the shops just to make sure they get there before we slash prices even more.

Bod (Shifts himself uncomfortably in his seat. Realises it is made of PS3s): Maybe a simple price cut is the way forward after all. It's what Sony America have done.

Exec (going over to a drinks cabinet): They've reduced the model with the 60Gb hard-drive by a hundred dollars and introduced the 80Gb model at the old price. I've had a word with them, though, and they're going to discontinue the old model as soon as they've sold all the ones they already have.

Bod: That may take a while.

Exec: It's possible. (He opens the cabinet. There is a bottle of whisky inside, a handful of glasses and a rip in the fabric of space and time. Through the tear can be seen a mountainside on which stands a monumental stack of PS3s. At the base of the monolith two apes are fighting. They are whacking each other over the head with consoles). Drink?

Bod (in shock): No thanks.

Exec (closing the cabinet and returning to his seat): Technically, it's not a price cut, it's a specification upgrade coupled to a stock clearance.

Bod: I... I... I'll go see about bundling those games and that extra controller. (He hurries away).

Exec (calling after him): Good lad. Let me know how it goes. (He opens a drawer of his desk. Inside is a PS3. Molten cheese is oozing out of it from every port and socket). Damn, there goes another one.

I'm still not buying one and you might be worth holding onto your old PS2 for a while yet - things aren't going much better for the competition, either:

Bill Gates contemplated buying Norway to hide all the faulty Xbox 360s that have been returned displaying the three red lights of death. It turned out in the end to be (fractionally) cheaper to admit the problem and extend the manufacturer's warranty in those cases to three years.

Nintendo have sold so many Wiis that their president, Satoru Iwata, is now too busy counting cash to actually authorise the production of any new games worth playing. They're drafting him some help but it's going to take them a while to clear the backlog. (And that's before Pokemon Diamond and Pearl go on sale in Europe).

This console war is still wide open. The PS3 is good value if you have an HDTV and want an HD movie player. The Xbox 360 is cheaper to start with but you have to pay extra for HD movie playback, wi-fi and online gaming (a lot extra). The 360 has a much wider choice of games at the moment, though. The Wii has a handful of fun games but nothing to really keep you playing for long. The graphics aren't much better than a GameCube either.

My advice - buy a second-hand Xbox or GameCube and hoover up some dirt cheap pre-owned bargains from your local GAME or Gamestation. That should keep you busy long enough for the future to become a bit clearer (and less expensive).

Happy gaming!

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: computer games, corporate madness, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360

  11:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post