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

  HD-DVD RIP

Dear Dave,

When I was small, my parents' TV had a remote control with a handful of buttons on it. You could turn the set on, select a channel (from a choice of three) and maybe even change the volume. It worked by sound rather than infra-red but it was probably pretty swish for the time. Pulling the curtains shut quickly did always switch the programme over to ITV, though. The remote apparently never functioned quite the same after I buried it in a bowl of washing powder, either. Oh, and we had to wedge a matchstick under the power switch on the set itself near the end. Still, getting to watch Button Moon was a simple affair: Turn on at exactly mid-day, insert matchstick, press button three. In the event of unwanted BBC news due to remote control failure, close curtains violently. Sit back and enjoy.

It was quite a contrast, yesterday, when Fraser rushed upstairs while I was giving the other two a bath and demanded to know how to pause Ben 10 so he could go to the toilet without missing anything. I suggested the old-fashioned method of waiting for the adverts and then making a mad scramble for the facilities. Unfortunately, he'd already wasted half the ad break coming to find me. I didn't want to leave the two younger ones alone in water, so I had to attempt to explain to Fraser what to do. This was tricky because the show was playing from the TiVo but he was watching it in the kitchen. The TiVo isn't in the kitchen. For the remote to work, he needed to turn on the video sender. Turning on the video sender was liable to switch the TV to the AV channel, though. This wasn't likely to go well.

The alternative was to fire up the TV in the lounge and control the TiVo locally. Except, of course, there was no guarantee that the lounge TV would be displaying the correct AV input. Also, the TiVo control in the lounge is kept out of the reach of children, so he'd need to fetch the one from the kitchen - if he could even be certain which was the TiVo remote from amongst the pile of five controls. More than that, we don't normally let the kids touch the TiVo remote in case they somehow delete things, so he would probably need to bring the remote to me, in order for me to show him which button was 'Pause'. Since he was unlikely to figure any of this out before the ads ended, I knew I would also have to teach him how to rewind. This was bound to go badly.

I told him to just go to the toilet and that I'd sort it out later.

Luckily, he had substantial business to attend to, so, before he was finished, I was able to safely nip down, turn on the video sender, rewind, pause and tell him how to get it going again. Phew!

Twenty minutes later, he came and found me to complain that the Wii wasn't working in the lounge. I realised the problem instantly. Since the video sender was on, the AV auto-switching was automatically disabled. He needed to switch the video sender off. He's not normally allowed to touch the video sender, however, because... Well, I don't know, he just isn't. I gave him precise instructions what to do. He came back and told me that the video sender had more buttons than I remembered.

I lost it a bit.

After I'd calmed down, I left Marie under a towel and went to check. Fraser turned out to be right. I switched the thing off, the Wii came on and Marie finally got dried. It was all a bit of a palaver.

Thinking about it later, I really shouldn't have got frustrated with Fraser. Babysitters frequently give up trying to get our AV equipment to show them anything other than blank screen, Mario or CSI. These tend to be what come up by default and viewing anything else can be fairly complicated. This is partly because we've got too many gadgets chained together but it's mainly because electronics these days can be very confusing.

Take our DVD player, for example. The remote control has forty-eight buttons. Most days, I get by with five of them. I normally only ever use sixteen of them. This means that two-thirds of the buttons I haven't touched since I was fiddling around with it on the day we bought it. (Actually, that's not entirely true - I have accidentally touched most of them a few times but I've always regretted it...)

I can only imagine that gadgets are designed by people who use short-cut keys. The kind of people who can press Control-Shift-#-K followed by Alt-Tab-Backspace-Q and then Escape-/-[-H and make their computer download The Matrix, burn it to DVD and print a label while they're still reading the online version of T3.

The average consumer doesn't use short-cut keys. I've been using computers for twenty-five years and I still save files by clicking on the menu. I was quite pleased with myself for utilising the 'Home' key the other day...

I like technology and I'm not stupid, so it makes me wonder how everyone else is getting on. How many buttons on their DVD remotes are they ignoring? Almost all of them, I suspect, and that's turned out to be very bad news for Toshiba.

Yes. HD-DVD is dead. Long live Blu-ray! The great high definition disc format war is over.

And do you know why? It's because modern TVs are too complicated for the assistants in electronics stores to operate.

Let me explain. HD-DVD had a head start and cheaper players so it really should have done better than it has. A million machines sold globally? That makes the Dreamcast look successful. The problem is, an HD-DVD player is pointless without a high definition television. So, before Toshiba could convince us to buy HD-DVD players, they had to convince us to buy HD-TVs.

That really hasn't gone hugely well. For a start, television technology has already changed a couple of times in the last decade, with both widescreen and integrated digital taking off. The kind of people who want a large TV have shelled out for one relatively recently and don't necessarily have space and cash for another. On top of that, there's not much high definition stuff to watch and most of what there is involves significant extra expense. HD-TVs aren't the obvious objects of desire that manufacturers thought they would be. We need them sold to us. Heck, it's only about five years since I was watching Buffy recorded Long Play onto VHS from a fuzzy aerial signal. That was good enough. Now I can watch Galactica on DVD in widescreen. It's like a cinema in my own home! How much difference can HD make?

Which is where those assistants come in. I should walk into the electronics section of a department store and be blown away by the clarity and resolution. For some reason, however, most places that sell HD-TVs don't seem to think it necessary to set up their display models properly or to feed them with an HD source. In fact, most of the sets usually look like they're showing something recorded on Long Play VHS. Considering a decent HD-TV costs two or three times what I paid for my pin-sharp 'normal' telly, this doesn't make for a hugely tempting purchase. And that's before getting into the nitty-gritty of contrast ratios, response times, pixel counts and AV sockets.

I barely go out, I'm a keen gamer and I watch DVDs all the time - I'm a prime target for being sold a high definition entertainment combo. Admittedly, I was never going to be in the first wave of those buying HD-TVs but, if I'd got one a year ago, I might well have also got the HD-DVD add-on for my Xbox 360. That I haven't got an HD-TV yet was always going to spell HD-DVD's doom.

Sony meanwhile (at great expense) has slipped Blu-ray into ten million homes via Trojan PS3s. Sure, PS3 games look better on an HD telly, but you don't need an HD-TV to give a PS3 purpose. Sony is hoping that, as people get round to buying new TVs, they'll discover the joys of the Blu-ray player that's already in their living rooms and start buying discs in a big way.

I'm not so sure that's going to happen, though. Just because HD-DVD has lost, doesn't mean Blu-ray has won. Not yet, anyway.

I'm curious as to how many people are playing Blu-ray movies on a standard TV via the composite AV output of their PS3 and are wondering what all the fuss is about. Word of mouth from that can't be good for future sales.


Even those who know what they're doing may not make Blu-ray the success which Sony hopes. Personally, when I do finally get an HD-TV, I'll almost certainly get a PS3 now because they're still relatively cheap as Blu-ray players and far more versatile. I'll even rent some Blu-ray discs. I'm not going to buy many, though. Replacing my DVD collection isn't worth the expense and DVDs are more useful anyway. We have at least nine devices in the house capable of playing DVDs. I can watch DVDs everywhere apart from in the shower. More importantly, I can sit the kids in front of a DVD anywhere, whether we're at home or not. I can't see Blu-ray replacing DVD. Yeah, it will be nice for a bit on the big telly in the lounge but I'll still be using DVDs most of the time, right up until digital downloads finally take over.

The only way Blu-ray will survive long term is if digital download devices remain a complicated faff to use. However, if Toshiba can quickly turn their resources to producing some really simple ones, they may have the last laugh yet. How simple? Well, let's just say that the testing should involve a harassed adult two floors away from the equipment relaying operating instructions to a seven-year-old who desperately needs the toilet. If the thing functions correctly without inducing frustration, sarcasm or warm dampness in any of the test subjects then they'll be onto a winner.

I'd be in the first wave for that.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: PS3, stuff, TV

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Looking back

Dear Dave,

Well, here it is - my one hundredth letter to you. Yeah, a few of them were quite short and several were the unhinged ramblings of a man who hadn't had enough sleep but it's still a milestone in our friendship, I feel. If this were an American sitcom there'd be two possible ways we could mark the occasion:

1. The expensive option: I could draft in a celebrity to guest star.
2. The cheapskate option: We could sit on a sofa and reminisce via flashbacks while everyone laughs at how our hair used to look.

Guess which one you're getting...

At least, I would reminisce if I could actually remember anything much from before last Saturday. One of the things about parenthood is that you quickly end up living in the here and now. The kids' bedtime looms so large in the future that beyond it is a mystery. Repetition and lack of sleep make the past a woolly fog in which events swirl without context or chronology. Some occasions stand out clearly but I have lost whole months and years in that temporal soup. If you ever find out what happened to 2003, let me know...

I am aware, however, that a few things have changed for me since I started writing to you. For instance, the baby department at John Lewis now feels like a forgotten world. I was there yesterday, looking round for a suitable present for Rob and Kate and Squirtle. (Turns out they had a false alarm on Tuesday. Still, any day now...) As I stared at all the shelves and shelves of gadgets and gizmos, it was like opening a drawer at home and finding flared trousers, a vinyl LP and a ZX Spectrum. Although the stuff brought back fond memories, I was heartily relieved I didn't need it any more. Marie still uses a cup with a spout, the buggy continues to cling to life and carseats will be with us for a few years yet but almost everything else is behind us. There's no more faffing with sterilisers, nappies, folding toilet seats, musical mobiles or high chairs. A year ago, we were getting there but now we're very definitely past the baby stage.

My sympathies to you and Liz as you prepare for all the fun of breast pumps and frozen milk when she heads back to work. It's good to be able to feed my kids any old thing that's lying around rather than spending my time stopping them from feeding it to themselves.

Unexpectedly, as I hunted about amongst the baby stuff, I noticed that technology has already moved on from 'my day'. Double-decker buggies are now much more common and someone has finally made rubbery ice-cube trays specifically designed for freezing portions of home-made baby food. The foldable baby bath didn't look very convincing, though. The foldable potty would have collapsed under the weight of any of my remarkably large children.

I'm much more cynical about these things than I was back when I was a fresh-faced prospective parent. I've bought my fair share of baby gizmos that didn't work, from a baby-listener that kept losing signal to a portable bottle-warmer that used an exothermic chemical reaction to turn cold milk into almost tepid milk in the length of time it took for a baby to give up and fall asleep. I've had non-spill cups that leaked everywhere and others that my kids couldn't get liquid out of even when they were trying. Neither of these were ideal. I was particularly fond of the plastic bib with a lip at the bottom that caught half-chewed food in one handy place as it fell - all the better for Fraser to swivel the bib round and tip the contents in his ear...

It's probably for the best that I don't have to go back to parent and toddler. Before long, I would have been the grumpy old man in the corner. 'When I was looking after babies, we didn't have any of this new-fangled video-on-demand nonsense. We had to make do with CBeebies, no matter what was on. I lived through the great Tweenies Bank Holiday Funday of 2004. You youg'uns wouldn't understand, but I was there. I still have the mental scars. You hear me? I still have the scars!'

As the flashbacks started to build, I decided to choose something quickly. I got them the same clip-on pram/carseat toy arch I get everyone and beat a hasty retreat.

Yep, things have changed. Not least, the kids are growing up. Lewis is at school now but it feels like he's been there forever. I can't really remember what it was like when he was still at nursery. Fraser has been at school forever but I guess it's his reading ability that has really come on recently. Of course, it's Marie who's changed the most in the last year. She's sleeping properly, eating properly, generally using the toilet and has become quite a talker. A year ago, she could say things like, 'I like pink!' and 'I go kitchen.' Now she can say things like, 'We're having a party in the lounge, so we need to be tied up!' She can also grin mischievously and say, 'Babies aren't nice... for eating,' before laughing in a scary fashion.

These conversational gambits do have a tendency to worry and confuse visitors but I only have myself to blame:

Sarah: What do fairies make?

Marie: Cakes!

Me: Yep. From teeth.

Marie: OK.

Ho, well, she'll grow out of it soon. It's a while since she believed everything I told her and it won't be long before she starts arguing with absolutely anything I say. Sigh. Enjoy having a really little one while you can. Daisy will be stomping around whining before you know it.

I suppose if it ever gets to me, though, and I long for the simple days of caring for a baby who only complains about basic, physical needs, I can borrow one of the slimy little critters from Rob. Then I can hand it back, go home and sleep without being disturbed.

Result.

It's been a long year but things are on the up. All the best for the next one. Thanks for the letters, advice and encouragement.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS The extra peace and quiet I've had recently has given me a chance to check out DadLabs more closely. They do humorous videos about dad stuff. Worth a look.

Labels: stuff

  10:15 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  What I really wanted them to get for Christmas

Dear Dave,

Well, we've been back a couple of weeks now and I've had time to evaluate the kids' Christmas presents. All in all, they haven't done too badly this year. The unexpected drumkit from Chris and Catriona has been successfully smuggled to a charity shop without the children noticing but, apart from that, the gifts have generally been appropriate and reasonably appreciated. Now we just need to work out where to store all the loot amongst all their other stuff.

The boys got a huge construction set consisting of scores of wooden wheels and poles and joints. It's quite nice but comes in a tin drum the size of Wales. On seeing it for the first time, I gave a little sigh, unsure where on Earth we were going to keep it and fairly certain that none of the kids would show the slightest bit of interest. We've had Duplo and K'Nex for ages - stacks and stacks of it that they've hardly touched. It's filling up shelves that could be better used to house their boardgames and the army of cuddly toys. This new set is very like K'Nex. I expected them to ignore it.

To my surprise, however, they've had great fun building rockets and robots and towers almost every day. Maybe it's the novelty of it being wood rather than plastic... or maybe it's just that the drum got left out in the middle of the lounge because we couldn't think where else to put it. Who knows? Whatever the reason, they've got quite into it. Perhaps there's hope they'll like Lego yet. To my mind, having a legitimate excuse to play with Lego again is one of the reasons for having children.

I had a Lego moon base when I was a kid that I played with all the time. I designed all kinds of lunar vehicles and buildings myself with the help of cannibalised parts from other sets. If I saw one in a charity shop, I'd buy it instantly, even if it had teeth marks all over it like my one did. (My dog was frequently hungry and permanently stupid). The Mars Mission sets call to me whenever I wander through a toy department. I drag children along with me, hoping they'll attempt to pester me into buying some, like they do with every other shiny bit of plastic in the store. Doesn't happen, though. The girl wants to play with the pink, sparkly trikes and the boys want to know when we're going to the computer game section.

Annoying.

I guess it's for the best, though. It probably wouldn't be as much fun as I imagine, just as finally getting my hands on a copy of Hungry Hippos turned out to be far noisier and less exciting than I was expecting. The children would get me to do all the work putting together the Lego and then they'd merely muck about with the moving parts for a bit before leaving it all to lie around the floor waiting to be stood on. Unless they were prepared for a bit of construction and make-believe themselves, there wouldn't be much point to it.

Disappointingly, the children haven't taken a second look at Playmobil stuff either. I had the mobile hospital set of that when I was Lewis' age. It was superb. As for Action Man, I had a tank but I was desperate for the submarine and the death-slide. I tried to make my own death-slide tower out of cardboard but over-specced the project and never completed it. With hindsight, I could have just tied one end of a length of string to the latch of an upstairs window and the other end to the back gate, cuffed Action Man with a bag-tie and sent him screaming across the garden to splat into the woodwork. (He could take it. His normal experience on exiting an upstairs window was having his parachute fail to open and then plummeting head-first onto the patio.)

One of the boys got an Action Man a while back that I would quite happily have bought all kinds of gadgets for but it's long since been left lying in a twisted heap at the bottom of drawer, abandoned to spend a hundred thousand years biodegrading in his injection moulded underwear.

It's all quite distressing. As I said, maybe the kids will get into Lego now. I can't see it ever happening in a big way, though. Marie might conceivably want Playmobil stuff soon, if I suggest it often enough, but the submarine isn't going to happen unless there's a lilac version which comes with fairies. (The Barbie covert infiltration and assassination range!) I feel I'm missing out on one of the perks of parenthood i.e. the chance to buy all the toys I wanted when I was a kid but didn't get.

In reality, it's all a little silly. Do I really want to play with Lego? These days, if I want to create, I can make something more lasting and more useful. Shelves, anyone? If I want to imagine, I can write. If I want to play, there are plenty of computer games.

What I really want is to be seven and play with Lego. I'd like the freedom to just run around with a Lego space ship without people staring at me. I'd like to be able to create and imagine without feeling the responsibility to produce something useful; to be able to relax without feeling pressure to recharge before the end of my scheduled downtime.

That's not going to happen, unfortunately. Not even if I buy the totally enormous space station thing. I should probably stop hankering after it and start directing the kids towards stuff that I would actually find fun in the here and now.

The boys already play computer games, so that's a beginning. Our taste and ability occasionally overlap. One day we'll be able to play co-operative Halo. In the meantime, I need to start getting them interested in games involving little plastic figures and dice with an improbable number of sides.

Is there a Pokemon version of Risk?

Yes, a readily available supply of strategy game opponents - that really would be good and might be achievable. I should go poke around in the loft and see what games I've got lying about that I can get my little minions playing.

Being an adult is actually pretty good sometimes.

Still, there's one thing I can fairly easily do for the part of me that will forever long to be seven again. I'm off to find that Action Man, a bag tie and a very long bit of string...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: christmas, stuff

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

  eBay comes to us all

Dear Dave,

"They want fireworks?"

"Yep," said Rob, sitting across the table from me. "And not just a couple of rockets and a sparkler. They want our names written in flame."

"Oh, goodness." As his best man, I'd gone round to his flat for the evening to chat about the impending celebrations while his fiancee, Kate, was at my house, receiving wedding wisdom from Sarah. "Are you going to arrive in a vintage car to the sound of bagpipes and then be ushered in for caviar nibbles and the gentle melody of a string quartet?"

"Something like that. Kate's parents have pretty much given up on her brother ever settling down, so this is their one chance at wedding glory. Money's no object and it's all going crazy. Have a look at this catalogue."

He handed me a glossy brochure which was at least half an inch thick and I began to flick through it.

I glanced at my stopwatch. "You've only got a minute left, by the way."

"I'm thinking."

"Don't think too long," I said, "or I'll rip your arms off and feed them to you."

"OK, OK, I'm a little out-numbered here. You won't be laughing so hard when it's my turn to play the Genestealers."

"We'll see. Forty-five seconds."

Well, we told the women-folk we were going to chat about the wedding but the table wasn't exactly spread with seating planners. It was covered with squared, cardboard tiles representing the interior layout of a derelict spaceship. Up one corner, a handful of little plastic figures marked where Rob's space marines were cowering in fear from an imminent assault by my encroaching horde of four-armed, slobbering aliens. We were playing Space Hulk. Littered amongst the bits of board were counters, dice, snacks and beer.

I didn't feel too bad, though. We'd mentioned the wedding on occasion and at least I was looking at a catalogue. It appeared to be entirely full of outlandish cakes, however. Each was oddly evocative of a three-way collision between a fairground ride, a flower arrangement and a confectionery shop.

"Gah," said Rob in frustration. "I'll move this guy here and put him on overwatch. And move flamer guy along..."

"Thirty seconds."

"And then my last guy will panic and shoot blindly down this corridor while swearing loudly."

"Fine," I said, handing him some dice. "You need a six."

He rolled a five. "Do I get any bonuses for the swearing?"

"No, but you've got two more shots and fifteen seconds to take them."

"OK," he said. "Give me the dice."

"I just gave you the dice."

"No, you didn't. Give me the dice."

"You just rolled one of them. Look. Here." I picked two dice off the table where he'd put them and handed them to him again. "Three seconds." He flung them down and they ricocheted off a tub of Pringles, bounced and flew up in the air. One landed in a jar of salsa dip and the other danced off the table and disappeared under the sofa.

The stopwatch beeped.

We looked at each other and then both leaned forward and peered into the jar. "Chunky," I said. The dice was beginning to sink but it clearly showed a two. "Better go find the other one. You need a four."

"You were rushing me," he muttered as he got down on his hands and knees and started poking around under the furniture. "Did you see where it went?"

"The dice are your responsibility during your go." I turned my attention back to the catalogue. "There really isn't anything in here but cakes... Oh, my mistake, here are some swans."

"Technically, it's now your go," he said, his voice somewhat muffled from beneath the table. "Want to come help me look under here?"

I munched on some Pringles and sucked spicy tomato from a numbered cube. "It's not my go until that shot is resolved. Is there anything in this catalogue other than cakes and swans?"

"The swans are cakes, too," Rob said, emerging somewhat dustily from his search and handing me another, even glossier, brochure. "THIS catalogue is for the nuptial livestock."

"You're kidding..." I took the book from him. "You're not kidding. Tell me you're not planning a release of live butterflies."

"Nah. I was thinking more along the lines of some white doves. Someone lets a couple go every so often and that's our cue to pull out a pair of Uzis and shoot at each other in slow motion while various bits of scenery explode."

"A John Woo theme," I said, rubbing my chin. "Interesting. How's that sitting with Kate's parents?"

"They're not so keen. Mike's up for it, though."

"He's just humouring you. When it comes to the actual day, you'd better be taking things seriously. You've picked the wrong minister to mess with. Any sign of doves and he'd whip a shotgun out of his robes and fill them with buckshot before we got a chance to move. Then he'd get on with the service as if nothing had happened. You know it's true."

Rob considered this for a moment. "It is, isn't it?" he said, slightly nervously.

"Uh-huh," I nodded. "And don't think you're done when the wedding's over. He'll grab you by the shoulder every few months, look you in the eye and ask you if you're keeping your vows. It's part of the on-going customer service."

"He'll get on well with my future mother-in-law... Are you going to have your turn?"

"Oh, yeah." I'd forgotten about the game. Rob's under-the-sofa shot had hit (allegedly) but I was still in a strong position. As the alien player, I also didn't have to race against the clock. I took my time. "I'm going to move this slavering monster with big teeth up the corridor while your guy shoots at it..." Rob rolled some dice and then swore. "...until his gun jams. Then these other slavering monsters with big teeth..." I moved a counter into his marine's line of sight, flipped it over and replaced it with three plastic figures. "...are going to use their enormous claws to turn him into mince." I rolled some dice. Rob rolled some dice. I banged my head on the table.

Rob smirked as he removed my three Genestealers from the board. "What are the chances of you rolling a total of eleven on nine six-sided dice?"

"I don't want to think about it," I said, in between bangs. "Tell me what you're expecting me to do for the wedding."

"You're best man. You've got to organise the stag night for starters."

I moved some more little plastic aliens. They all got shot or flambeed. "Are you sure that's wise?" I replied. "My idea of a good evening is going to the cinema, having a couple of drinks and then grabbing a bag of chips on the way home."

"I was thinking more of a weekend than an evening," said Rob, starting his go. I reset the stopwatch.

"See. I'm just bound to get it wrong. If I'm in charge of a weekend, we'll end up knitting."

Rob wasn't having any of it. "Take us go-karting, or something. Come on. A weekend away from the kids! Must be tempting."

I contemplated a couple of days with a group of younger, salaried blokes whom I didn't know very well. It's the kind of situation I cope with much better if I have my three small human shields running round me. I couldn't really say no, though. "OK, I'll look into it," I sighed. "When's the wedding going to be, anyway?"

Rob shrugged. "Not sure. After the baby's born, definitely. Kate's getting big already and she doesn't want to look like a fairy that's swallowed a blimp in the photos." He paused in the middle of moving one of his pieces and looked worried. "Just don't tell her I put it like that, all right?"

"Wouldn't dream of it..."

My mobile rang and I answered it. "No, this isn't Kevin... Nope, I don't know anyone called Kevin. You've got the wrong number." I hung up. "That's the third time today. It's different people phoning up to offer this guy job interviews. I've had a couple of texts as well."

"Don't think I'd hire someone who got his phone number wrong on his CV," said Rob without glancing up from the board.

"Tell me about it. Two minutes left." He continued dithering over his marines. My eyes wandered around the room. The walls were stacked floor to ceiling with books, games and objects of geeky desire. It was like a rift in space and time had opened and half the stock of the local Forbidden Planet had fallen through. "It's a shame your study's going to have to go," I said. "What are you going to do with all this stuff?"

Rob looked at me blankly.

"Er..." I said. "This flat currently only has one bedroom. You're going to need two bedrooms. You have four available options: the kitchen, the bathroom, the lounge and this room. I would advise against the kitchen or the bathroom and your big telly is in the lounge. If, however, you were to replace the desk over there that's covered in computer equipment with a bed, this room would make quite a nice bedroom."

"Don't be daft," he said, concentrating once more on his marines. "A bed wouldn't fit in that space."

"True. You'd need to move the bookcase full of Deep Space Nine videos, the Lego Star Destroyer and the life-size cut-out of Lara Croft to fit a bed in, but you wouldn't need quite so much space for a cot. You might want to leave a decent splatter radius, though. Cleaning vomit out of Lego is a real pain - you have to use a toothbrush. One minute."

I was hoping I'd distracted him enough but he made sure to finish moving before he replied. His surviving marines had almost escaped and had thrown up a wall of flame behind them. My remaining Genestealer turned into a pile of ash and teeth.

"Hadn't really thought about it," he said. "Won't the cot be in our room?"

"For six months or so. Maybe longer. Depends whether you ever want a sound night's sleep again... or if you're planning any more."

Rob choked on his beer. "Give us a chance. It's months before the first one arrives."

"Three months. Might be less. It'll take you that long to off-load all this stuff on eBay." He looked horrified but I pressed on. "You could always move house instead but that's going to take time as well and, if you're faffing with mortgages, you're going to need to consider how much of the next few years Kate is going to be on limited pay. Or if she's going to be off for as little time as possible and you're going to be home. Or if you're both going to work and you have a wadge of nursery fees to find. How many children you're intending to have will affect all the calculations. Better start thinking."

The shutters of denial went down behind Rob's eyes. "I thought we were supposed to be discussing the wedding. Your go."

I shook my head for any number of reasons. "You've as good as won," I said. "Set things up for a re-match while I go to the toilet. We can talk kilts when I get back. But just because you can fob me off, don't think you can do the same with Squirtle. He, she or it isn't going to go back in for a few days while you get round to auctioning off your Magic: The Gathering cards and Bobba Fett lunchbox."

Rob grinned. "You're just jealous I have them."

"Well, yeah," I said, heading out the door, "but that's not the point."

I left him to it. As I was washing my hands, I caught the distant but unmistakeable sound of an electronic rendition of The Ride of the Valkyries turned up loud enough to hear above traffic and three wittering children.

"Did my phone go?" I asked when I returned to the room.

"Yeah," said Rob, putting the last of the plastic figures into place. "It was for Kevin. I told the woman I was his parole officer and that I was wondering where he'd got to, too. I don't think she'll be bothering you again."

"Cheers." I sat down and reached for my beer and a pile of dice. "Now it's time to snack on fiery death, big-teethed alien scum." I went for a warm-up roll. I got five ones and a splattering of salsa.

"Or maybe not..." I added.

* * *

Hope you're keeping well, Dave. Everyone I meet at the moment seems to be suffering from something. Lewis is croaky from a sore throat, Fraser has an infection (don't ask where), Marie's been exposed to chickenpox and Sarah has come into contact with scarlet fever.

I'm just feeling nervous.

If we all get through this week without seeing a doctor, I'll be amazed...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: blokesnight, marriage, sickness, stuff

  10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  On its last wheels

Dear Dave,

The buggy is dying.

This isn't good - I need it to last at least another six months. Marie could conceivably walk everywhere already but it's slow going at times. I don't want to be dawdling about in the rain and sleet and cold. After the winter, she'll better able to maintain a reasonable speed and it won't matter as much anyway. The buggy can be put out to pasture then.

I'm kind of looking forward to it. It will be nice to have more space in the hall again and to be able to get on buses easily but there will be a sense of loss as well. Where am I going to put my shopping? I'll have to go get groceries twice as often or start taking a rucksack with me to Tesco.

Actually, I should buy the kids rucksacks and take them with me to Tesco.

I guess that problem's solved but I'll still miss the buggy. It's seen many, many miles of active service as a toddler-carrier and also doubled as a containment unit for unruly children, a bed on wheels and a handy shield to park between myself and people I'm intimidated by. It's a great place for stowing wipes, clean clothes, rainwear and snacks. When I venture forth without it, I feel exposed and under-equipped.

We've had a number of wheeled transport devices over the years: a pram, three single buggies, a double buggy and a buggy board. (That's not taking into account bikes, trikes, scooters, office chairs and storage tubs, but these are more for fun than serious means of getting from A to B. That said, Fraser is convinced that spinning round really fast on an office chair is a good way to travel backwards in time. I'm sceptical. In practice, he seems only able to get as far back as a time before he felt entirely well.)

Each device has had its uses but it's the single buggies which have taken the real punishment. The first got slightly mangled by a car boot and the frame broke when I tried to bend it back. The second got twisted out of shape by over-use of the buggy board when transporting heavy boys. There was no longer any way to get all four wheels to touch the ground at the same time and it had to be retired. Our third buggy, though, has survived the buggy board, leaking nappies, cobbled streets, rutted fields, steps, snow, constant use and being regularly loaded with a child and a fridgeful of shopping.

True, most of these things immediately invalidated the warranty but, then again, the instructions claimed that so did going up and down kerbs. The warranty was effectively out the window the moment we crossed the entrance to a little carpark that's just along the road. Bearing that in mind, we've felt free to pile the underseat storage with six pint containers of milk, loop a shopping bag over each handle and then try to use speed bumps as launch ramps with a buggy board and toddler on the back.

It's still going. I suppose it hasn't had to put up with some of the things I've seen other people do. I've seen adults sitting in buggies, older children hitching a ride by hanging off the back and at least one buggy being used to transport a TV. Our buggy hasn't been abused quite that badly but it is seeming a little past it - its wheels are pitted and worn, it struggles to turn, its raincover is in tatters. One of the back wheels is even in danger of coming off. One day, I'm going to take a sharp turn in the electronics department of John Lewis, the wheel's going to get left behind and Marie and I are going to spin off into a display of giant tellies. As we crawl to safety, the buggy will explode, showering us in breadstick crumbs and remote controls. It will be a sad end to a faithful servant (and some expensive TVs). I should really dispose of it before then.

I just can't do it quite yet.

It's like a dog - an old, tired dog that only has three legs and smells bad, admittedly, but it seems callous not to give it a proper send off. I wanted to catapult it, flaming, off the top of Edinburgh Castle and watch it blow up at the culmination of the Hogmanay fireworks but the council weren't up for that. So now I'm considering something akin to a viking longboat ceremony. I'm going to pile it high with old baby clothes, set it alight, float it gently out to sea and watch it drift serenely off into the night. If I can get a couple of hundred other people to join in, that could be quite beautiful.

Sniff.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There's life in the old dog yet. I'm going to give it a wash, spray its wheels with WD40, tighten any loose screws, tickle it behind the ears and then let it gambol around out the back door for a little while.

Then I'm going to load it up with six bags of books to take to the charity shop, perch Marie on top, jump on the mudguards and try to beat my downhill time to the bottom of the street.

If I use enough oil, I might even be able to leave a trail of fire behind me...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: housedad, stuff

  10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  I'm sure my underwear is around here somewhere

Dear Dave,

Glad to hear you've finally started getting stuff out the loft. Hey, no rush - it's not like the baby's due today or anything...

Have you remembered everything? I was trying to think of what you'll need but the whole experience of dealing with a newborn is beginning to blur. Let's see: pram, carseat, biohazard suit, cottonwool, baby bath, crib (good luck putting that back together again, by the way), more cottonwool, baby clothes, steriliser, industrial-sized tin of coffee, yet more cottonwool, playpen, little blankets, even more cottonwool than that, mittens, buckets, large vat of disinfectant... The list goes on. There's probably a stack of stuff I've forgotten. (Did I mention cottonwool?) I have the full list here, somewhere, but I think I'm too scared of flashbacks to take a proper look.

I saw a small baby at parent and toddler the other day being wrapped up for going outside and it took me back. It was sunny but the kid was being kitted out with a padded coat, mittens and the cutest little pink hat ever. I'd forgotten about the little hats. It was so sweet.

Then again, I was a good ten feet from the little slug and reasonably safe from any stray bodily fluids. At that range, there wasn't even an odour. Just the thought of going back to nappies and middle-of-the-night feeds and regularly wearing banana porridge makes me feel... tired. In some ways, another child or two would be nice, but I just don't have the mental or physical energy for it. I'm looking forward to the point where I can sit reading a book while the kids run around outside entertaining themselves. (Well, I can dream. At the very least, it will be nice to interact with Fraser without having to constantly deal with/fight off a toddler). Relatively soon, Marie will start nursery and I'll have a couple of hours a day to myself. Some semblance of freedom approaches. I'll be able to...

Oh, hang on... Maybe you're not really the one I should be telling this too.

Yes, erm, stuff. I was talking about stuff. Our house is still a tip at the moment because of the repair work that's going on. We've had to empty out a couple of rooms and stash the contents in other parts of the house. Actually, 'stash' is a little optimistic. All the cupboards were already full beforehand. The beds are jacked up so we can fit more stuff underneath. Even the loft is full. We would have piled all the refugee stuff in the middle of the lounge carpet but what would we have done with the the big pile of stuff which normally lives in the middle of the lounge carpet?

We're having to pick our way through teetering stacks of printers and books and towels just to find clean clothes. I've given the kids each a hat with a flag on the top so I don't lose them amidst the clutter. It's kind of like living in the version of the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts where everybody hides junk. You just never know what you'll find if you go poking around. What will it be? The other shoe you're looking for? Fresh underwear? One end of a cable which could be attached to almost anything? Lord Lucan? Or Scabbers the rat?

It's always worth keeping something blunt and heavy handy just in case.

This chaos is a bit of a shame because I had been hoping we'd reached the high-tide mark of stuff a few months ago. Marie is at the stage where we don't need much of the specialised baby equipment any more and she has even out-grown plenty of toys. We've finally been able to off-load boxes and boxes of baby gear. Before, whenever one child was done with something, we had to put it in storage for the next one. More often than not, we just left the thing out - the minimal time before we needed it again meant it wasn't worth searching for a space in the loft. Meanwhile, as Fraser got older, we had to buy more stuff. Pokemon got mixed in with shape-sorters; a beanbag got plopped beside the bouncy chair. Cupboards overflowed, the carpet disappeared and I had to build a bigger shed. We began to sink beneath a sea of toddler artwork and strange constructions made from cereal cartons and yogurt pots.

I remember, when Fraser was on the way, being offered all kinds of useful second-hand items by various total strangers. At first, I tended to find their generosity heart-warming. Then I'd become disturbed by their manic insistence that I take some bulky item of well-worn and smelly baby paraphernalia. By the time they'd dragged me into their home and started piling my arms with junk, I was usually pretty scared. Fortunately, it was always fairly easy to sneak away as they ran round the house opening drawers and tipping the contents into black bin-liners for me.

Now I'm one of those people.

We packaged up lots of baby stuff recently, hired a van and drove it to relatives. With hindsight, maybe we should have asked if they wanted it before popping round while they were on holiday and dumping it all in their front room. But, hey, at least we watered their plants - they can't complain too much. We were just desperate to clear some space in our house.

The initial results were disappointing. There was still no room in our cupboards - it was merely possible to open them without being deluged in bibs and mitts and babygros. We had to do a second trip. Sarah's cousin was apparently very surprised when he got back from Tenerife, opened his garage door and nearly drowned in babywear.

We had slightly more space after that, though. We even revealed patches of floor that I'd forgotten we had.

When Fraser was small, I used to pack away his toys neatly at night, sorting them into the correct boxes and tubs. When Lewis was young, I got the boys to help me tidy the stuff into a corner and I checked that favourite toys still had all their pieces. When Marie was tiny, I bought a spade and just shoveled the stuff into the corner. Once she was a little older and never went to sleep, I even gave up on that. I simply cleared narrow paths between the door, the sofa and the telly and left the rest to geology. Over time, erosion and sedimentation from a steady flow of children caused interesting toy formations to take shape. The Teletubbies fossilised.

It was nice to finally clear some of the stuff out and have a little room to breathe again. Maybe soon, things will be that way again. The decorators are supposed to be coming this week and, once they're finished, we can set the house to rights. We could even take the opportunity to sift some of our belongings and fill a few bags for the charity shop. More likely, we'll just bung everything back where it came from as quickly as possible and leave the sifting until next decade but it's worth a thought. You never know, we might have the time, energy and inclination all at once...

That's still something to look forward to, however - we can't do much until the house is fixed. In the meantime, I'm reduced to smuggling small piles of toddler artwork out of the house in my trousers while whistling the theme tune to The Great Escape. If I can dispose of enough without the kids catching me and throwing a tantrum, I should have tunnelled my way to the biscuit tin in another couple of days.

It better not be empty.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Good luck. Hope it all goes relatively smoothly. Don't forget to pack your sandwiches.

Labels: children, flood, stuff

  10:11 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post