When Denzel met Lara

As we all know women are incredibly beautiful creatures however they are also incredibly diverse, challenging and complex individuals. Much like a hedge maze, just when you think you are getting somewhere and starting to understand them you realise you are back at the beginning and need to start all over again.

The other day I spent the day with a bit of an enigma. I thought I understood women and their outlook on shopping, but then along came Lara to throw a spanner in the works and mislead me back to the beginning of the maze. Lara as you may already know is my very good friend Denzels’ wife. I have known her for as long as I have Denzel and consider her one of my closest, dearest friends. She has always been a bit of an oddity, but in a charming way and no more so than most women. Should you ever meet her, no matter on the time of year you will undoubtedly find her wrapped in a blanket. This is a woman that would get cold in the tropics; I have never known anything quite like it. Should she venture into the great outdoors she will adorn more layers than an Eskimo and make it the very briefest of journeys. When she isn’t wrapped head to toe in blankets, fleece and perched on a radiator you will find her meticulously cleaning her house, which with Denzel and the two most beautiful, albeit untidy girls is a never ending job. The day I spent with her in question today was our fake Christmas day and the look on her face as her prided carpet began to vanish under reams of wrapping paper was a picture, but that’s another story for another time.


Lara brings new meanings to the word fussy, (quite how she ended up with Denzel I’ll never know but that is the mystery of love) if you were to cross Monica from the American situation comedy “Friends” and Sally from the film “When Harry met Sally” you may just start to get close to Lara. There is not enough room on the internet to go into her peculiarities when it comes to food let alone everything else but to give you an example should a chicken ever be purchased for consumption in the Denzel, Lara household the kitchen will have been scrubbed from top to bottom and resemble something from a hospital theatre, I always know when we are having chicken for dinner when I go round there because before entering the house you will find one of those red hand washing dispensers found in hospitals by the front door with a big sign saying “Please scrub your hands”, gloves will be adorned and worn at all times whilst said chicken is in the house, even if you are not handling the chicken, children will be bathed in iodine and kept in a different county until the chicken has been cooked and should you happen to walk past the chicken in its raw state Lara will immediately grab you and throw you into a sheep dip. Once the chicken has finally been cooked, (not by her I might add, she still doesn’t know where her oven is) it will be dissected like something out of a high school science class and anything that doesn’t look quite right will be incinerated, (much like the rest of the chicken).

But, like I said at the beginning women are diverse and complex so none of this really contributes to her enigma status adorned earlier. What threw me today and led me back to the beginning of the maze was this. As we all know there isn’t much, with the exception of chocolate that makes a woman happier than when she is shopping, this is exaggerated further more when she is shopping for shoes. Now from what I can understand Lara had purchased a pair of shoes which had since split on her and she was now looking for a replacement on the internet. But rather than bring joy and happiness this only troubled and frustrated her, maybe it was because it was the internet and not actually walking the streets going into shops that didn’t marry well, but this being Lara I assumed the idea of shopping from within the comfort of her own home whilst being wrapped in an extra thick blanket would be the best of both worlds. Instead we were treated to a rather perturbed Lara who constantly flicked from one internet page to another in search of the illusive “just right” pair of boots. The lap top was at one point nearly launched across the room and imbedded in the Christmas pudding when she accidently clicked on the wrong button and lost one of the aforementioned pages. She finally managed to whittle it down to two or three pairs of shoes and was now trying to decide on which would be better suited and at what cost. Now from previous experience women seem to go price blind when it comes to shopping for shoes and can end up paying hundreds of pounds for a couple of straps and a tiny buckle but the price seems to have been what troubled Lara most, that and how she would inevitably return them which seems to be a prerequisite when women buy anything. Men don’t return stuff, it just sits in the bottom of the wardrobe, women on the other hand are masters at returning items they don’t want, or heaven forbid have worn for the single occasion they brought it for and then returned it for “not being quite what they wanted”. Lara actually sat down and read the terms of agreement and contract to the pair of shoes she had finally decided upon just so she could be certain that she would be able to return them.

Maybe this was all a charade put on for Denzels benefit, maybe had we not been there shoes would have been brought in there hundreds with no regard to price and suitability. But for now Lara will remain a mystery as I think all women are. Something man is never meant to understand fully but should enjoy trying to solve.


Never take a woman for granted, they will surprise and intrigue you more and more every day. Just when you think there is nothing left to learn you will find yourself back at the entrance to the maze, which is why we love them so.

Every time a bell rings...

Could it happen? Could we possibly get a white Christmas? According to the Met office the last official White Christmas was in 2004. However to be classed as a white Christmas all it takes is for a single snowflake to fall somewhere within the United Kingdom within the 24 hours of Christmas Day.
Now I don’t know about you but that doesn’t quite cut it for me. I can’t recall my last White Christmas but I think it must have been in my youth. I want the movie version of White Christmas. I want to wake up Christmas morning having gone to bed looking onto a vista of plain boring landscape only to draw back my curtains and be presented with a deep blanket of unspoilt snow. I want to throw on my coat and wellies and set about making the biggest, world breaking snowman, to take part in a global scale snowball fight. I want to walk through the park and go skating on the lake. I want to come home to a roaring open fire, to roasting chestnuts and popping corn, to mulled wine and hot toddies. I want carol singers standing on the street corner under a lantern, children playing on wooden homemade sledges and Ebenezer Scrooge leaning out of his window shouting “Merry Christmas everybody”, I want to see the Cratchit family enjoying the biggest turkey you have ever seen. I want to see George Bailey running through the streets shouting greetings to everyone and everything. I want the wizard of Oz and the cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, I want the hills are alive with the sound of music and the greatest escape. I want wardrobes that lead to mystical lands, the White Witch and the promise of Aslans’ return

But most of all I just want to love and be loved and to hold that special woman in my arms on the most special of days.

I don’t just want a single flake of snow in a town I have never heard of.
I want the dream.

Maybe I’m asking too much?

But if you don’t ask...



Merry Christmas to one and all, God bless us every one.

Quicker, faster... Better?

Man and woman are worlds apart, for all it matters we could be completely different species. I have glanced on our differences before but have noticed a few more in recent weeks. The first being at the supermarket, there are the obvious differences that always occur between us when any kind of shopping is involved, woman will go around comparing different items, checking prices and quality, value for money and brand whilst man will just throw the first thing he comes to that looks vaguely like what he came in for into his basket.

But the latest addition to the everyday supermarket which I am sure you will have come across is the self service checkout. Now before this arrived I would always walk up and down the rows of tills with my shopping trying to find the till with the shortest queue in order to save time and get out as quickly as possible. Now however I disregard all the other tills, queue or no queue and always head straight for the self service till even if it means standing in line and waiting for five minutes. And for the most part I will be waiting with other men. I will have walked past bored cashiers twiddling their thumbs, slouched over their tills looking at me, pleading with me to use their till but no, I want to do it myself. I want to scan my own items and put them in my bag, not because I get maybe 5% of my shopping bill or any other kind of monetary incentive but because it’s a challenge. I want to see how quickly I can get my shopping scanned through and bagged. Can I beat my last visit? Can I beat the man on the self service checkout opposite me? Competition is a very strong driving force amongst men. I can be stood their scanning my items with a wry smile on face as I know I’m beating the man next to me and as I hear a computerised voice from his till saying “Unexpected item in the bagging area” I punch the air triumphantly knowing he now has to wait for assistance from a spotty faced teenager before progressing. I will pay and have my bag in hand walking towards the door, casually glancing over my shoulder to see my competition chastising himself on buying the family sized box of cornflakes that slowed him down and inevitably lost him the race. I am now left looking for the winner’s podium to stand aloft, hand on clubcard as the national anthem is played over the tanoy.

Women on the other hand don’t do this; Women will park their trolley at the first available checkout and start chatting to whoever may be nearby. Woman will be on first name terms with the cashier, will know all about their holiday to Spain, what their eldest has been getting up to and all the latest gossip. She will bag her groceries methodically into her numerous bags for life, with all the frozen bits in one bag, all the tins equally dispersed amongst the others so as not to get one particularly heavy bag and you’ll never find the eggs scrambled at the bottom of one of her bags or the French loaf broken in half. She will then open the biggest purse known to woman or man and produce a vast array of collected coupons from various magazines and newspapers, all the while still merrily chatting with Margaret on Checkout seventeen. The unloading, scanning, bagging and paying of items for woman will take almost as long as the actual shopping took. In the meantime man is outside, in his car and turning into the petrol station and it is here we find the second observational difference between man and woman.

Man will pull into the petrol station, choose to pay at the pump and then begin to fill the tank. Man will now strive to fill the tank and end on an even pound, not a penny under or a penny above but a round pound. The pump will automatically disengage as the tank fills and man will glance up at the cost, now on very rare occasions it will have filled and rounded off to precisely on the pound, but please understand this is extraordinarily rare and should it ever happen man must do a little jig in the petrol station before going to buy a lottery ticket. On every other occasion man will now stand at the pump, reposition the nozzle slightly and continue to squeeze a few more drops of petrol into the tank to reach that golden .00. Inching closer and closer, mustn’t go over must get it exact.

Now when woman pulls into the petrol station she will drive up to the pump, get out, walk round to the nozzles, walk back to the car, get back in, reverse out and pull back into a pump on the same side as the filling cap, get back out, walk back round to the nozzles, check she has picked up unleaded, try to remember if her car takes unleaded, ring her partner to ask him what fuel it takes, get shouted at by the cashier for using her mobile phone on a forecourt, begin to fill the car, get frustrated with the pump because it keeps shutting off every few seconds, swear as the tank over fills and she gets petrol on her new shoes, walk to the cashier with whom she is not on first name terms with and is scowling at her, pay for the petrol before returning to the car acknowledging the cars queuing up behind her, get in, reapply some make up, adjust her seating position, put her seatbelt on, take her seat belt off, reach onto the back seat for a sneaky bit of chocolate from the shopping, glance up at the angry waiting drivers behind her inching ever closer, put her seat belt back on, take it back off again, get out of the car walk around to the fuel flap, close it and retrieve her keys, get back in the car, put her seatbelt back on before finally driving off.


So whilst men are charging through life, competing with everything and anything they can, never stopping to breathe in a moment or contemplate the hush of a whisper and thinking the quicker they can do something the better, woman will be gliding through life, unrestricted by the chains of competition and time, pausing to cherish the moment and listening to every word all the time thinking there are some things man needs to take longer over.

Twinkle twinkle little star

December is upon us once more. The month of glad tidings of comfort and joy, of giving and receiving, of nervous turkeys and brussel sprouts, of families and friends, of sparkles and decorations, of trees being brought in from the cold, of red noses and rosy cheeks. But behind all the magic and wonder, behind the red suit and the Ho Ho Ho is a suburban conflict that has raged for many years. With no end in sight, the ugly head of war will once more look above the trenches and send out a volley of power and might upon its neighbour.

I am, of course talking about the near exclusive male conflict with his neighbour.

The Battle of the Bulbs

The War of the Inflatable Snowmen

The Conflict of Comical Red Nosed Reindeers

This time of the year all across this mighty nation men are preparing to fight once more, to get one over on their neighbour, to do something bigger and better than last year, to win the latest battle. Plans have been drawn up. New improved lights have been purchased. Inflatable Santas are at the ready. Man takes the preparation and planning for illuminating the family home at Christmas as seriously as woman takes planning and preparing for the January sales and nothing will get in his way.
In every suburb, in your very neighbourhood the fuse is lit and the fallout will be tremendous. This is a war with so many casualties; nobody can escape its grasp. For some of the more fortunate ones heavy curtains will be the main defensive weapon, but for others, for those married to a front line officer escape is nigh on impossible. Children will be called up to duty, to hold ladders steady, to check bulbs and detangle lighting nets.

Every available wall socket will have extension leads running from it and further extension leads plugged into them, the pressure put on your household electrical wiring will be overbearing. You will experience power surges and dips, blown fuses and electrical fires, for those on the front line of the battle entire streets could lose power as the twinkly fairy lights purchased for the tree in the front garden purge every available watt in the neighbourhood.

A&E wards across the land will be filled with injuries from falling off roof tops to electrocution. Planes will have flight paths altered to avoid confusion and landing in the back garden of old Mrs Crewit at number 23.

And when all is said and done, when every last twinkly fairy light is in place man will stand triumphant on the battlefield and admire his victory, a tear of jubilant victory will roll down his reddened cheek. Family and friends will be forced to behold his proud achievements. Marvel at the new Santa’s Grotto with nodding Reindeer, laugh at the humorous landing lights across the roof and stand in awe of the realism brought to the whole panorama by the fake snow.

Man will stand shoulder to shoulder with the enemy and congratulate one another on a battle well fought, all the time thinking what he can do next year to beat him.
Man will not cease until his house can be observed from space, until it is listed as a wonder of the world or at the very least it makes the local news station.


To those of you undergoing the hell of war I doff my cap to you. War, in this case, is pretty.