Saturday, 26 November 2011


It is Olivia’s birthday party today. She will be thirteen, which, according to Mrs LG is “a very important age”, which means that everyone in the LG family except for yours truly and Tom is out getting their hair and nails done.

Her actual birthday is on Monday and because I will be away for this, and because I was in Hong Kong last week where everything is cheap, Mrs LG suggested that I buy something to put in what I like to call the “going-home now thank God” party bags.

So I decided to check out one of Hong Kong’s most famous street markets.

 “I want to go to a market” I said to the taxi driver

“WHA?” shouted the taxi driver. Taxi drivers tend to shout at me a lot.

“A market” I said “where I buy cheapy cheapy”

“YOU WAN RADYS MARKET” the driver nodded sagely

“Ladies Market?”

“RADYS MARKET CHEAP CHEAP”

“Yes, but I don’t want to buy any ladies?”

But it had been decided and I was slammed against the back seat and we were off with my head swimming with thoughts of being tossed into some back road nightclub. But twenty minutes later we were amidst large crowds and market holders adept at untying even the tightest of purse strings. And of course I realised immediately why it was called “Ladies Market” because it was full of pretty, shiny things that nobody needs.

So I jostled my way happy among the stalls, smiling “no” politely, until I stumbled upon a group of children slapping brightly coloured plastic watches onto their wrists.

The watches were rigid, but as they hit a hard surface (aka a wrist) the straps sprang to life and coiled tightly around the object. Utterly brilliant, I thought. Shiny. Tick. Novel. Tick.

But were they cheap?

“How much are these watches?” I asked

“ONE HUNRED THIRY DOLLA”

No tick there then. There are just over ten Hong Kong dollars to the pound, making these watches just shy of thirteen quid each. So if Olivia was inviting ten friends to the party I’d need over a hundred quid.

“How much for more than one?”

“HOW MA YOU WANT?”

It was a good question and I held up an index finger to indicate a hiatus in our negotiations and called Mrs LG, who was lunching somewhere in the UK. I explained the story so far and repeated the stall holder’s question.

There was a pause.

Pause are not good signs in the LG household, for they indicate Mr LG has unwittingly stumbled across information that has previously been hidden from Mr LG on a Need To Know basis.

“Thirty” said Mrs LG.

“THIRTY?” I spat into the phone.

The stall holder perked up.

“Where is she having the party?”

“At our house” said Mrs LG, calmly. “It’s going to be a disco. And actually it’s more like thirty five”

“FOR THIRY I GIVE YOU SEVENY DOLLA EA”

“ARE YOU CRAZY?” 

“No I’m not crazy” said Mrs LG

“OK. OK. NOT CRAZY. SIXTY DOLLA” said the stall holder

“Who are you talking to?” asked Mrs LG

“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING”

“OK. OK. NOT KIDDING” shouted the stall holder. “FIFTY DOLLA LAST PRICE”

“Are you talking to me or him?” asked Mrs LG

“YOU”

“Well, i think you should be talking to him. That sounds like a jolly good price to me” said Mrs LG. “Get forty five to be safe. Probably a few will drop out”

“FORTY FIVE?”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA” the stall holder belly laughed before leaning in towards me and the phone “OK, OK, FORTY FI DOLLAR. NO MORE.”

“DONE” said Mrs LG.

And I had been.


Saturday, 19 November 2011

We've bought a dog


We’ve bought a dog.

“What make is it?” I asked.

“It looks like a Shih Tzu” said Lolly

“What’s a Shih Tzu?” asked Thomas

“One with no animals” said Tilda, her eyes on the television.

“She’s a Miniature Schnauzer” said Mrs LG. “And she’s called Lola”

I didn’t want a pet – I wanted more children

Don’t get me wrong, the first time I found out my wife was pregnant I wasn't exactly thrilled, but they grow on you, these children. And over the last few years Mrs LG and I have been out to a few dinner parties where the subject of children has come up and we have 3 children now, and when the women at the dinner parties ask me if I want any more children (and it’s always the women who ask) I answer ‘yes’ and Mrs LG, never far away from me in social circles with predatory females, answers ‘no’ and ushers me quickly away. Nothing to see here.

Because if Mrs LG doesn’t want to have any more kids, then we won’t be having any more kids. Having more kids joins the long list of things that I want to do that Mrs LG is not going to do, and the first thing on the list is to talk about the list.

But I know she thinks about it, because when I walk aimlessly down an aisle in Sainsbury, wondering how I’m going to acquire Rooney in my fantasy football team without losing Van Persie, she pulls me back by the small of the neck quickly rendering me as incapacitated as a suspended kitten, and she looks at me with smiling eyes and says “don’t think I don’t know why you are walking down the baby aisle.”  
And of course I smile back. With no mention of footie. I want her to think I'm cleverer than I am, and in my expereince the best way to do that is by keeping my mouth firmly shut.

And while the kids issue seemed to be getting to her, there was always hope.

But that has all backfired spectacularly as now Mrs LG, in her concern for the fact that I’m getting broody, has bought a dog. A Miniature Schnauzer, called Lola.
Lola and I don't get on particularly well. She knows her place in the family pecking order. And it's way above me. She tends to show me her tail a lot when I try and call her. Or at least I think it's her tail she's showing me.

And for the last two weeks while I have been away, noone in my family has called me. They’re all going gooey over the dog. Time is flying by.

And I can see that Mrs LG, Tom, Olivia, and Tilda have been posting photos on Facebook, of the upgraded family, minus Dad but more than complete with Miniature Schnauzer frolicking in the autumn leaves, perched across Tila’s shoulders outside school, shitting on the spare (my) bedroom floor, that sort of thing.

 And when I call, they only want to talk about the dog.

So now I have slid ever further down the slippery slope known to a man as the family pecking order; which now stands at: Mrs LG, Olivia, Tilda, Tom, Lola the Miniature Schnauzer, the one-eyed goldfish and then a long, long gap, that stretches out to the horizon.

 And then, if you squint really hard, you can see me.

But despite all this, Lola is growing on me. And I missed her, just a little bit, when I was away. And I’m happy being way down at the bottom of the pile, just as long as we can throw some more bodies in-between.

And if they all have to be Miniature Schnauzers, then so be it.

Saturday, 12 November 2011

Diets and the battle of the sexes


Diets and the battle of the sexes.

 For the last three weeks I have been on a diet, although it has been a long time coming as it all started about the time of the riots. I was working remotely from France and bemoaning the fact that David Cameron was returning home to sort out the country, thus putting us remote workers back several years in the process, and Mrs LG, who is far more comfortable delivering rather than receiving personal information, and has no problem with wandering off on tangents, remarked that I should go on a diet.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you are fat”.

I rushed to the nearest mirror and discovered that it was true. I was not a dead ringer for the lithe energetic hoodies leaping from Currys with forty inch plasmas. I was the outraged Daily Mail reader; in pink shorts; bald, chubby and with a slight whiff of a middle-aged homosexual gone to seed.

This, in itself, did not force me into any change of habit (unless you count avoiding mirrors) but since then there has been an ever increasing stream of hints about my (over) weight, and then three weeks ago I returned home to find that my wife had bought me a book.

Mrs LG doesn’t buy books, because there’s already plenty of unread books scattered around our house, more that you could ever read, because I make a point of buying books, particularly books from small independent bookshops. And as I make a point of passing small independent bookshops, this is quite often. It’s a weakness of mine to buy books from people who love books, just as it is a weakness of mine to buy my meat from nice people dressed in large cotton aprons covered in large splatters of blood. Because just tastes nicer that way.

The book that she had bought me was The Atkins Diet

Now normally when a woman (and it’s always a woman) starts talking about diets (and Mrs LG has many friends who pop over and indulge each other upon this subject) my brain automatically shuts down all vital response mechanisms other than the occasional nod so that I can appear to still be listening while free to roam on autopilot, but, being a clever old sausage and knowing that I am a bear of very little brain she was quick to give me a brief synopsis before I slipped into my comatose state and that synopsis of 366 pages was two word, which were, No Carbs.

OK. I get that. And, well I’ve never quite understood pasta, noodles and rice anyway, so it sounded like a rule that even I could follow. And so I have been, and, in three weeks, I’ve lost a tone and a half; or perhaps a stone and a half.

So you’d think Mrs LG would be happy, but far from it. It appears that diets are supposed to be traumatic challenges that are agonised over and debated at length. They’re not supposed to work.

Mrs LG - along with all the other yummy mummies who shove their kids into class and then rush off (five past nine is gym time) - invests a lot of time, energy and money on a rigorous training programme. This seems to involve a variety of jaw-droppingly terrifying exercise programmes run by someone called Claus and then sitting around my kitchen complaining that they’ve only lost two pounds while shoving in another handful of quavers. So my weight loss has been greeted with distinctly muted enthusiasm by the ladies who lunch. As has my answer when asked how I did it, which is – by following the instructions.

Men, unlike women, don’t need to give themselves the odd “day off”. We either crash diet or fall of the wagon completely and keep rolling, lacking the long term commitment to something as boring as a diet. And the good thing about Atkins is that the effects are pretty quick. Possibly because eating becomes so dull that the laws of mathematics kick in and the less food you put in your mouth, the more weight you lose.

And it also helps if you’re pretty fat to start with.

But when she looks at me distastefully as I scoop a selected Sainsbury’s £2.99 seafood medley directly from the box into my mouth at breakfast time, I know it’s not the smell. It’s the fact that it’s working.

Because it only smells when I burp.


Advertiing to children


My six year old daughter, Matilda, runs the house, which I believe has something to do with her ability to make people accede to her bizarre, irrational demands.

I try to spend as much time with her as possible; i’d like to find out her technique. But it’s hard weekdays as I tend to leave for work before she wakes up and when I’m back she’s in bed again, clearly exhausted from all the bizarre, irrational demands she has been making throughout the day.

But this weekend we got some time on the sofa. We’re both early birds and we both like some quiet time in front of the telly, and in a family of five mornings is the best time, and the earlier the better, believe me.

So I get downstairs first and put the news on, and when she wakes up she comes down and then we watch what she calls “something we both want to watch”, which means something that she wants to watch.

And we have about two hours before anyone else emerges from the nest.

So I’m pretty clued up on iCarly and the hundreds of other shows that are beamed directly from some Hollywood studio to my kitchen sofa and I try to get my daughter’s attention with some sparkling conversation and this is not an easy task for me, as my conversation is not that sparkling even if it wasn’t competing with Hollywood Hills, and it usually goes something like this;

Me: Have you noticed how the brake lights of cars look like eyes staring back at you?

Tilda: Who’s eyes?

Me:  People’s eyes. Anyone’s eyes.

Tilda: I think you are confusing your eyes with everyone else’s eyes daddy.

Or these

Me: Look out at those bright stars! Oh wait, they are airplane lights. They’re very bright, aren’t they?

Tilda: (looking at television): They’re brighter than you.

But during the ad breaks conversation becomes easier. Not because Tilda finds advertising boring. Quite the contrary. And the one subject Tilda is happy to talk about during the ad breaks is how much she is missing what the various advertisers are selling and what my plans are to rectify this vacuum.

I do buy my daughter a lot of random presents, mainly second hands from charity shops. If you close your eyes hard enough Princess Alice Hospice can look like Hamleys. And like most children, Tilda doesn’t really know what she wants. So she wants everything.

Now I know that what she really wants is cheap stuff and stuff that she can get bored with 9 times out of ten but because it only cost 50p an item I don’t really care.

And one time out of ten she finds something she loves and makes it worthwhile.

Advertising is a powerful tool in front of children. Some of the ads i remember the most were for toys when i was about the same age – weebles that wobbled didn’t fall down, indestructible Tonka Toys, that sort of thing.

But it’s a powerful tool in front of anyone. We’ve just bought out a range of flat screen LCD TV greetings cards so advertisers can now beam their wares directly to those they think are more likely to buy them. And that could be kids, I guess.

There’s no escape.

But does advertising to kids really work, or is it just advertising to amenable parents? Children move on very quickly from disappointment to disappointment and their tears are easily drowned out by the cries of parents; “Course my precious can have the new sparkly dress with the flashing lights! Nothing’s too expensive for my Princess!”

Of course my daughter wants everything that’s offered her, especially if it’s done in a memorable and entertaining way on the screen. But when her cousin who is about the same age comes over she’ll trade whatever she’s got for whatever he’s holding.