Tag: wife

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why a Luxury Watch is the Perfect Wooing Tool

Been striking out with the ladies? Take a look down at your wrist – Casio, right? That’s where you’re going wrong, my friend. A £10 watch just doesn’t cut the mustard with the ladies anymore – you need something with a bit more gravitas. Let’s take a look at why luxury watches are the perfect tool for wooing the ladies. Fortunately, given the name of this site, there are exactly seven reasons why luxury mens watches are the perfect lady temptress. And we being with number one.

1. The Illusion of Wealth. Even if you live in a cardboard box and exist on a strict diet of pot noodles, you will be able to convince the fairer sex that you are a well-to-do country gent if you are spotted sporting a luxury timepiece on your wrist – Panerai, IWC and Baume & Mercier watches are the ideal choice here, such as the tasty little number below. (Where you acquire the £3,000 from to make the purchase is your own concern.)

2. Look Like A WWI Pilot. No, not in the sense that you’re a distinguished looking 105 year with multiple medals draped proudly across your chest – more in the sense that there are some fantastic mens watches on the market today that look like they’re straight out of WWI – such as the Vintage WWI collection from Bell and Ross (see below). These spiffing timepieces wouldn’t look out of place on the wrist of a brave Sopwith Camel pilot – and what woman wouldn’t swoon in the mere presence of a Sopwith Camel pilot (even if you’re not actually a pilot and work in, say, search engine optimisation)?

3. Women Like Shiny Things. I may be confusing women with magpies here, but I’m fairly certain that most ladyfolk like shiny objects – enter luxury watches from the likes of Jaeger LeCoultre, Ellicott and ChronoSwiss.

4. Good Conversation Starter. We’ve all been on dates which are awkward and the conversation doesn’t exactly flow forth, but this won’t be an issue if you’re sporting a striking luxury watch – I imagine that the conversation would go thusly if you’ve got a Panerai or Zenith watch on your wrist:

Lady: So…..what do you do?
You: That doesn’t matter – check out my Zenith watch.
Lady: Errm – OK.
You: (Revealing timepiece slowly and impressively) Cost £10,000 that.
Lady: Errrrrrm….
You: KAPOW!!

I’ll leave the rest to your imagination…

5. Luxury Watches Elevate Any Outfit. Even if you’re not a stylish fellow, you will find that a well-chosen luxury watch will superbly compliment any outfit and drag you (kicking and screaming in some cases) into the upper echelons of high fashion – where ladies are much more receptive to your charms.

6. Luxury Watches Open Doors. Figuratively. Unless you’re rocking some sort of James Bond-esque number. You’re likely to find that if you wearing the latest Baume & Mercier, Quinting or U-Boat watch, nightclub bouncers will let you into the VIP area, restaurant maître d’s are less dismissive of you and you can queue jump at Alton Towers – all of which are likely to impress the fairer sex.

7. You Will Seem Cultured. Women love culture. Men love to appear cultured and luxury men’s watches are a great means of achieving this objective. Any lady’s knees will turn to jelly when you announce that you bought your Jaeger LeCoultre watch on a business trip to Geneva – when you and I both know that a) you’re scared of flying and b) you bought it online from The Watch Gallery.

January 30, 2012
7 Reasons Weddings Aren’t Just For Girls

It is a common belief that weddings are for girls. From a young age they are brainwashed into believing it’s the one day when they are a Princess and waiting for them at the altar is their very own Prince Charming. I know, it makes your skin crawl. The thing is though, in the nine months that I have been engaged, I have come to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, weddings are for boys too. (This post is written with apologies to men everywhere.)

Cricket Wedding Cake Topper by Louise Hunter

1. Food. You can have pretty much anything you like – within your budget of course. And because we all have more than one favourite meal, the real bonus is that you can offer two or three options on the menu. When you then bring in to the equation that there are going to be about one hundred other people eating the food that you love the opportunity of being able to get your hands on seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths and sixths isn’t so much a possibility as a certainty.

2. Speeches. Three of them. All by men. It’s the only time in life when women have no choice but to be quiet for an hour. There is a newfangled phase coming in that is seeing brides saying a few words too, but if you are lucky you’ll be at a more traditional wedding where the women stop rabbiting for a while.

3. Free Dating Service. Assuming you’re not the groom, weddings are fantastic for men. I mean, obviously they are good for the groom because you get a wife, but for other men, single men, they are also really good. Not only do you get free, limitless amounts of food and alcohol, the bride and groom will have probably made it their unofficial mission of the day to fix you up with someone. That’s why you’ll almost certainly find yourself sitting next to a single lady. Never fear if you don’t like her though, the bridesmaids are always up for it. It’s tradition. Usually under the cake table.

4. Planning. My future wife and I don’t argue, but we do have differing opinions. She’s of the opinion that there is a lot to get done for the wedding while I am of the opinion that it (whatever it is) will get done and I will get around to doing it just as soon as the cricket and rugby seasons have finished. It’s a test of resolve really. Which is pretty much what life is like really. So saying weddings are just for girls, is like saying life is just for girls. It’s not. It’s for boys too. Until they get married anyway.

5. Secrecy. With most weddings occurring on Saturdays, men are going to miss sport.* This means they have to check the scores on their mobile phones. It’s quite a thrill I assure you. Trying to do such a thing without your girlfriend, mother, new wife noticing. My cousin got married during the Beijing Olympics and while I was thankful for the eight-hour time difference, the ceremony still clashed with the 200m final. I was thankful for the whispering commentary behind me. Though the mother of the bride looked less than impressed with the news that Usain Bolt had done the business. Which is shame really. He ran jolly fast.

6. Hats. It’s odd, women spend months agonising over what to wear and which hat to don, then, come the wedding they hardly keep it on. The hat that is. Most of them usually manage to keep their clothes on. The hats form a source of hilarity though. Especially for the men. If you didn’t laugh at the woman who looked like she was wearing a satellite dish and got it lodged in the church door, you will do by the time you get to wear it. Hats are always passed around by men. They are always tried on. Photos are always taken. It’s strange, go to House of Fraser and try on a lot of hats and people think you’re weird. Try a load on at a wedding though and people think you’re cool and funny. They’re a fickle bunch.

7. Wife. You get one! A real-life, flesh and bones wife! Wives are cool so I’m told. They cook nice food, they iron your shirts, they let you watch sport. And they do it for the rest of your lives together. Which, assuming she doesn’t catch you watching Baywatch, could be for a very long time indeed. Funky.

*Except at mine which has been deliberately organised for a date before the start of the Olympics, before the start of Wimbledon, after the England rugby team have been on their summer tour and in-between Test Matches. It does though clash with Euro 2012. But you can’t have everything.**

**I will keep you updated throughout my speech though. Don’t worry.

NB: This post is dedicated to my future wife (and not just because she helped me think of some of the reasons). It’s because, you know, I love her and stuff.

October 19, 2011
7 Reasons That I’ve Been Baffled By Something That Isn’t A Doormat

“What do you think?” My wife enquired, prompting the man-klaxon to sound in my head. Alarmed by the…er…alarm, I took heed. The warning message of the man-klaxon was clear. It was telling me that under no circumstance should I say anything. Nor should I make any noise at all. It would also be prudent not to make any facial expression or move my hands, in case that could be interpreted as a gesture. Then she handed me this:

What is it?

1. What Is It? “What the buggery-bollocks is this?!” I didn’t say, thanks to the man-klaxon. What is this thing? I’ve seen many things before, but nothing that resembles this. It’s large and square at one end and tapers to a point at the other, could it be a mouse?

2. Technology Was Baffled Too. Breaking one of the rules of the man-klaxon, I feigned interest by means of a slight facial expression and pulled out my phone to photograph it, hoping that this would demonstrate some enthusiasm for the wonky mouse. What I was actually doing was using Google Goggles, a handy app that, if you photograph anything in the world, will tell you what it is. It didn’t know. Google Goggles was boggled. Bugger.

3. What Does It Do? Having been failed by the internet, it dawned on me that I was on my own. Why do babies never wake up screaming when you want them to? I was going to have to work it out by myself. Having failed to ascertain what the thing was by trying to interpret its form, I attempted to identify its function. The most functional looking part of it was a button on the front. But the button wouldn’t unbutton. It was just sewn on with nothing to attach it to. Perhaps it was an eye. Was this some sort of weird fish? A sea monster? Why would my wife make a sea monster? I couldn’t recall her bemoaning our lack of a sea monster at any point recently, so it seemed unlikely that she’d just make one on the spur of the moment.

4. What Does It Mean? There was a strange symbol in the middle, so I decided to concentrate on that. It clearly wasn’t a swastika, which was good (though if it had been second world war-related I would have fared far better at identifying it), but what was it? It looked like a snowflake, but the other thing that you may notice about it is that it is green. There’s a wise old saying that warns people never to eat yellow snow. It goes something like this: “Never eat yellow snow”. Well surely green snow must be even more fearsome than yellow snow! How the hell do you get green snow? What’s in that?!

5. Wait! A snowflake! A green snowflake and the majority of the thing’s red. Red and Green! Red and green should never be seen! It’s a Christmas thing! The only time of year that anyone with eyes would conceivably use red and green at the same time. It’s a Christmas…er…um…pencil?

6. A New Approach. Trying to work out what this thing was wasn’t going well. After all, I’d been regarding the seasonal pointy thing for ten minutes and my lack of any sort of response to her question might – if left for many more minutes – have raised suspicion. I decided to try another approach to working out what it was. An approach that I usually reserve for dire emergencies. I decided to try talking. “What the buggery-bollocks is this?!” I asked.

7. It’s A What?! The response was surprising. After my wife had struck me several times with the (surprisingly hard) Christmas thing, she blurted out, “It’s a house!” She then turned the object ninety degrees to the right. And that’s what it is. It’s obvious, really. It’s one of those traditional tree decorations, a Christmas house. Because no Christmas is ever complete without a Christmas house on the tree. It’s clearly the house of a person that lives in a Cath Kidston designed traffic cone, but it’s a house nonetheless. A Christmas house. For the tree.

Aaarrrrggghhhh!!!!

There’s only eleven weeks to go, so don’t forget to get your Christmas houses ready. I know I’ll be enjoying mine. In the shed, probably.*

*Note to self: Must build shed.

October 10, 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