Tag: couples

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why It’s Good To Shop With Your Other Half!

She sees it as the ultimate cardio work out. He sees it as the ultimate test of endurance. It could mean only one thing… couples shopping!

Take a look around any town centre in the UK and you’ll see a familiar sight – women, the hunters of fabulous clothes; men, the carriers of bags and the heroes that help their ladies shoulder barge through the hoards of bargain hunters.

But while women are the Queens of the high street, it’s men who reign supreme on the internet. In this Infographic ‘Men Vs Woman – Battle of Spending Habits’, from financial solutions company Baines & Ernst, men actually come out on top as the biggest spenders, with alcohol, vehicles and gambling appearing in their top 5 purchases.

Men spend on average a total of £3,495 online every year and 15% more than women on their credit cards, making them the surprise cash flashers.

Although guys prefer the comfort of shopping from their armchair, there are certain benefits to being a co-pilot on a shopping trip…

Here are 7 reasons why it’s good to go shopping with your other half…

1. You earn excellent boyfriend brownie points! This is the only reason you really need to go shopping. Want a night out with your mates? Don’t want to be relegated to the other room to watch Match of the Day? Want an all night Xbox marathon with the boys? Well, you earned it buddy!

2. It’ll make your lady happy. A shopping wing-man is always good. And if you’re there to hang out with, tell her she looks good and treat her to lunch, your lady will be happy. And by doing all of this you’ll get… excellent boyfriend brownie points! *see point above for boyfriend rewards.

3. Pretty good way to while away the hours. If you’ve got nothing planned, then a trip to the shops can be a good excuse to check out the things you want to see and treat yourself to a few well deserved treats. Many big shopping centres also double up as entertainment complexes now, so if you get bored of wandering around the shops, you could go and have a really nice meal in one of the restaurants or catch a film.

4. Coming up to a special occasion? Use the time to plant seeds! Whether you’ve got an anniversary, birthday or Christmas coming up, you can use this time to look for what you want and plant some seeds. And it’ll give you the chance to check out what she’d like too.

5. You get regular sitting intervals. They’re in the changing room – you get to sit. Shops seem to have all designed dressing rooms with the gent in mind – creating little social areas for abandoned boyfriends so that you don’t get funny looks for loitering around outside changing rooms.

6. You get the gift of time. When you’ve been relegated to the boyfriend bench in the changing rooms, you can use this time to catch up on your phone admin. So you can message your mates, answer emails, check out Facebook, read the news and anything else you like without being asked “Who are you messaging?”

7. Its mutual ground. Okay, it might not be your most favourite activity, but it’s a good mutual ground for you to spend some time together and have a bit of fun. Grab a coffee, people watch and do some browsing. It could be worse!

View full image

January 28, 2013
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Spent Last Valentine’s Day Alone

It’s nearly that time of year when happy couple swarm the streets and single people start to cry. Well, it’s not that bad but why not turn you’re luck around this year by realising why you spent last Valentine’s Day alone. Here are seven reasons why:

1. You Spent The Day In Tears. Okay, so you find the whole thing hard to take. It’s a day to celebrate love and you were alone. But looking glum about it isn’t going to make you attractive to others. There are plenty of single people out there and they all feel the same way as you. So smile and share the love!

2. You Hid Away At Home. Sitting indoors watching telly is not the way to meet someone. You might think restaurants and bars will be packed out with couples but you would be wrong! Do you know how many gangs of singles head out to celebrate St. Valentine’s? Put your glad rags on and head out in to the night.

3. Desperado. On the other hand, acting desperate is not the best way to go. You’re single now, but it probably won’t be forever. So don’t panic and start hitting on every person in the bar. Take your time and wait to meet someone really special. As soon as you do it will only be a short time to wait for St. Valentine’s Day bliss!

4. You’re Too Picky. It’s good to have standards, but some people are just too picky. Yes, you have a type, but ignoring potential singles that don’t fit an exact mould can be detrimental to dating happiness. Take a chance and get to know someone before you write him or her off.

5. You’re A Hermit. Do you spend all your time playing computer games or alone in a field taking photographs or birds? Having a hobby is part of what makes you you, but why not share it with others? Join a club and start meeting other people that share your interests. If you are dating Brisbane is a big city with lots to do. Who knows? You might just meet your soul mate.

6. You’re Never Without Your Mates. Having good friends is important and that should never change, but what if your bosom buddiness leaves no room for anyone else? Approaching someone you fancy in the middle of a group of his or her mates can be fairly daunting. Perhaps you are just so busy with your friends that you miss out on love. So make sure that you do things on your own sometimes. Take the dog for a walk, go swimming and notice other people around you. Being open to meeting people outside of your circle of friends could be the key to dating success.

7. You Have Your Eyes Shut. To meet someone new you have to have your eyes peeled. That doesn’t mean staring at everyone but just opening your eyes and looking around you is a good way to start. Single people just like you have to go shopping, commute to work, exercise and do all the daily things that you do. So take a look around you next time you’re down the laundrette and notice all the other single people waiting for you to meet them!

February 22, 2012
7 Reasons That This is the Worst Survey of All Time

Readers of 7 Reasons, I’m breathless with excitement. I’ve discovered something amazing. While reading this fine article to research something else, I found, in four short paragraphs in the middle, an account of an astonishingly inept survey.

The survey was conducted in the 1930s by the Mass Observation organisation and set out to quantify how many people were having sex on Blackpool beach during the month of August. They conducted their research – in a rather hapless manner – by hanging about on the beach at night looking for people having sex. During the research they managed to spectacularly and hilariously cock up their own figures. Here are seven reasons that it’s the worst survey of all time.

1. The Premise. You can call me suspicious (I won’t answer to it though) but isn’t the premise a bit fishy? I smell a rat; which is a rodent that smells of fish. It’s like someone at the Mass Observation unit suddenly said – possibly during a meeting at a pub – “I’ve got a great idea chaps, let’s all go to Blackpool and observe people having sex on the beach.” And everyone drunkenly agreed to it as a terrific idea and an utterly laudable use of their time and resources. What no one seems to have said is “But wait. Isn’t that dogging?” Because that’s what watching people having sex in a public place is. This makes their observation lack credibility. This makes it look less like a serious study and more like an excursion for perverts.

2. The Results. The results are also a little suspicious. During their study into how many people were having sex on the beach during August in Blackpool, they recorded a mere four couples having sex on the beach. Now, perhaps times have changed and things are a little more liberal in Blackpool these days but there are bus stops in Blackpool where more people are having sex than that in the middle of the afternoon. And on the beach at any given time, there are usually at least nine people attempting to have sex with a donkey. The results seem not to accurately reflect the environment that was being surveyed.

3. The Personnel. The credibility of this survey was further undermined because – and this makes it officially one of my favourite surveys ever – one of the people that the Mass Observation researchers observed having sex on the beach was another Mass Observation researcher. This brilliant incident of the hunter becoming the hunted; the ogler becoming the ogled and the peeper becoming the peepee has catapulted what was already the second least credible survey of all time (after my important research into how much tiramisu you can fit into a 6’2” man with an M in his name in a Yorkshire kitchen in December*) into first place in a race of its own.

4. The Results Are Skewed. The discovery of the researcher having sex means that, according to the Mass Observation survey, 12.5% of all people having sex on Blackpool beach during the month of August are Mass Observation researchers. Now I don’t wish to appear cynical, but if I was say…let me see…in charge of a rather unglamorous unit that generated statistics on everyday life and I was having a recruitment drive to swell the ranks of nerds that I needed to count things, what better way to glamourise it? Move over rock stars (whatever they are); move over Errol Flynn and Clark Gable; Mass Observation researchers are unabashed rampant sex beasts and brazen cocksmen and not the stammering bespectacled tweed-wearers that you previously supposed them to be. If you want to have relations with ladies in hats, join the Mass Observation unit and become a statistician. I’d imagine that brilliantined brown shoe wearers would be queuing round the block to join. On bicycles, probably.

5. The Results Are Confusing. But Wait! What if he was having sex alone? After all, if he’s the voyeuristic chap that suggested going to Blackpool in the first place, that’s entirely probable. That would make him 14% of all people having sex on Blackpool beach during the month of August! That would really be something to boast about. But that raises further questions. If you’re having sex alone while watching someone else are you having sex alone? Do you have to count the other person or people? What if he has some sort of weird fetish and is having sex alone while watching a tram or looking at a picture of Stanley Baldwin? Would that mean that former Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was 12.5% of all people having sex on Blackpool beach in August? Should you count all of the passengers on the tram? The computations are mind-boggling.

6. It Might Be Illegal. By and large, Mass Observation researchers were amateur volunteers (and deviants apparently), but the Mass Observation organisation accepted donations and funds from book advances, so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the researchers were being paid to do this and it’s highly likely that they were receiving money for expenses. This raises another question. What do you call someone that gets paid when having sex? That’s right, a prostitute. So, not only has this researcher royally messed up the statistics (and given me a headache) he’s committed an act of prostitution while he was working at the beach.

7. It Gets Worse. The Mass Observation organisation have – in the act of giving money to a prostitute – become a kerb crawler. That’s the sort of label that makes the organisation that have produced the least credible survey of all time look – incredibly – less credible than they already seemed (which was not at all). This survey looks like an excuse for voyeurism, depicts Blackpool in unbelievable terms, skews its own findings by engaging in a sexual act on a beach, raises statistical questions that caused me to consider sex with a tram and the organisation that made it might have sullied their reputation by giving money to a hooker. If there has been a less credible survey ever made I’d love to see it.

*The survey’s finding: Bloody loads.

September 2, 2011
7 Reasons it Must Have Been Terrible to Celebrate Your Wedding Anniversary in the 1930s

In the 1930s it was decided (presumably by purveyors of gifts) that there weren’t enough things associated with anniversaries and a more comprehensive anniversary gift list was created. Fortunately for contemporary celebrants of anniversaries, since then the list has been modernised. This is no bad thing as I’ve seen a copy of the original list. Here are seven reasons that it must have been terrible to celebrate your anniversary in the 1930s.

1. Wood. On the original list, the fifth anniversary is wood. This is rather fitting for the era because, after five long years of marriage, the celebration of their fifth wedding anniversary may well have been one of the last occasions that a married couple got wood. Rather mean to remind them of that though.

2. Willow/Copper. The ninth anniversary is a terrifying prospect. According to the BBC (they who must be believed), after nine years you get the willow/copper anniversary. The only feasible combination of willow and copper that comes to my mind is a policeman with a cane. Imagine your surprise and delight when you sit down with your wife and she says, “Happy anniversary darling, here’s a rozzer to beat you with a stick.” That doesn’t sound like too much fun to me. Perhaps it was more fun back then.

3. Aluminium/Tin. Times were clearly hard in the ‘30s and though your tenth anniversary present would be an improvement on the previous year’s beating, it wouldn’t be much of one as you’re likely to be presented with something in a tin or in an aluminium can. This can mean only one thing: food. But in the 1930s people didn’t have normal food, they had weird food: tins of tongue; tins of luncheon meat; tins of potatoes. Is being presented with a tin of tongue even any better than being beaten by a policeman? Well, should you have had your anniversary in the 1930s, you’d be in a great position to judge.

4. Ivory. After fourteen years of wedded bliss – assuming you’d recuperated from your beating by the forces of law and order five years previously and eating your tongue the following year – it was time for the real presents to begin. For your fourteenth anniversary, you could have expected to receive something without which no home is complete; a bit of an elephant. Obviously your gift wouldn’t be in the form of a bit of an elephant, it would be a bit of one of those useless lumbering creatures from the other side of the world turned into something far more practical, like a letter-opener or a cruet set.

5. China. For your twentieth anniversary you would have received the best gift of all, after which all other anniversary presents would come as an anticlimax. For your twentieth anniversary you could expect to receive the nation of China. Now China back then was war-ravaged and in the economic doldrums, rather than being the titan that it is now, but still, a whole country is an impressive gift. All anniversaries after the twentieth would be a huge disappointment.

6. Pearl/Ivory. After thirty years, while modern couples are receiving their first diamonds, couples using the traditional anniversary list are in for a rare treat. They can expect to relive that fondly remembered fourteenth anniversary on which they received a bit of an elephant only now, as if the bit of an elephant weren’t enough of a treat, they can expect it to be augmented by a bit of calcium carbonate that had been stolen from a fish. Yay!

7. Blue Sapphire. After sixty-five years of marriage, the compilers of the list clearly believe that senility will have kicked in because you’re going to get a sapphire again, but this time it’s going to be a blue one (which will be so much better than the beige one you got for your 45th). “Look darling”, your husband will bellow into your ear trumpet, “I bought you a blue sapphire…it’s blue!”. “Well, fancy” you’ll respond, “a blue sapphire. Well I never! Are these my feet?”

And now, I have a confession to make: tomorrow is my wedding anniversary (and my wife’s). I’m not going to tell you which one, but you might be able to guess, as this is what I’ve got her. Feel free to wish me luck!

July 6, 2011