Click here if you want to wander into the madman's shop

I know I ranted on about internet shopping the other day, but now it’s Ebay’s turn. Actually I love Ebay. It’s fantastic for buying those out-of-print books and end-of-line toys. But when you’re a little more vague about your gift requirements it can all go horribly wrong.
By the time you reach the fifth page of your 57,000 results, your clicking finger has become numb and you’ve forgotten what you came in for. Then you make the mistake of visiting one of the Ebay shops (cue doom-laden music).
This is like visiting a weird old junk shop filled with highly obscure items and run by some cobweb-festooned madman. As you meander further and further into this virtual “store” you will gradually lose the will to live. It’s almost as bad as Ikea shopping.
Now, I loathe Ikea with a passion. You go in for a light bulb and your senses are immediately assaulted by millions of lamps, desks and duvet covers that totally distract you and steer you off course. Even worse, there’s no easy exit.
Ebay stores are like that. Once you hit the madman’s shop you have to feverishly start clicking the “back” key to manoeuvre your way to some sort of reference point – if only you can’t remember what it referred to. Of course, with Ebay you can always think: “Sod this for a game of soldiers” and close down your computer. In Ikea you still have to meander your way towards that exit. Until we invent teleporting, that is.

Why give birthday presents when you can give someone a nasty injury instead?

Since it is a friend’s birthday today I thought I would look into various birthday rituals and traditions around the world. Some of them are elaborate; others are just odd. But it turns out that many of us have a pretty cruel streak when it comes to celebrating each other’s birthdays.

In New Zealand it is traditional to sing “happy birthday” loudly and out of tune (is there any other way?). The birthday girl or boy then receives a clap for each year they have been alive and one for luck.

There’s mental cruelty in store for Norwegian children when they celebrate their birthdays at school. Norwegian kids have to dance in front of their schoolmates while the rest of the class sings them a birthday song.

Dutch people have a thing about chairs, it seems. The birthday child's chair at home will be decorated with paper streamers and balloons, while the Dutch adult will be made to stand on a chair at work while his colleagues sing birthday songs at him.

Brazilian kids have their ear lobes pulled once for every year they were born. Getting crueller, you see.

Canadian children are ambushed by “friends” who then grease their nose with butter or margarine for “good luck”.

Scottish kids get a pound note and a smack on the bottom for each year they’ve been alive. Presumably there's a cut-off point when the burly teenager turns on his parent.

The English tradition of giving birthday bumps has now morphed into “birthday beats”. No doubt it's a matter of time before it becomes a “good birthday kicking”.

OK, so men do sometimes get our gifts right...

Isn't a blogger allowed to take a couple of days off anymore without getting hassled by her reader to add a new post? Anyway (fanfare) here it is.

I decided I was a bit unfair to men the other day about their present-buying prowess. It's good of them to keep trying when we're so hard to please, after all, and it's not their fault they keep getting it wrong. And with only four weeks to go till Christmas I don't want to end up with nothing from my disgruntled husband. So here are some examples of presents from men who got it right.

A day trip to France. Big deal, you might say - but incredibly exciting for this young mother who found a trip to the shops without her toddler a huge treat.

An iPod. Pretty obvious, maybe, but not for this mother of four on her 40th birthday. It made her feel fun, funky and reassuringly young.

Expensive face creams. She knew he was horrified at the inflated price - but the fact that he bought them anyway made her feel great.

A table football machine. He bought it because it was one of the few games she beat him at, so it was wonderfully unselfish. Of course once it was installed in the house he improved dramatically, and was beating her in no time.

A website. Yep, that's right - domain name, contract, live pages about the woman's business - the lot. This gift had everything: it took loads of time and trouble and it was all about her. And it was also fairly cheap.

Here’s some things NOT to buy a woman this Christmas

Every year we hear the same story: “She’s never happy with the presents I buy her.” And from her: “He’s useless at gift-shopping”. It's uncanny how men always seem to get it wrong. The trouble is that men are simpler, much more literal creatures than women. He’ll think: “She spends most of her life in the kitchen – I’ll get her a new saucepan.” Or: “She’s always complaining she’s fat – I’ll buy her a book about dieting.” As we women know, it’s not the present (or even the thought) that counts – it’s the image of ourselves the present projects. So the woman who spends her life in the kitchen would like a weekend break, a spa day or ANYTHING to get her out of the kitchen and make her feel she’s attractive enough to warrant a romantic gift or body treatment. And the “fat” woman would appreciate a romantic break or perhaps a flattering top in a slightly-too-small size to make her feel you think she’s slimmer than she really is. My husband once bought me a dressing gown in size 14-16 (whereas I'm a 12) because he thought it would be more comfortable and roomy. That went down like a lead balloon, as you can image.

I once wrote an article for a women’s glossy on the Christmas howlers men had made. Here are some of them.

A mechanical spade. He wanted her to take over the gardening and thought this was the spur she needed.

A Paul Daniels conjuring book. She was a harassed mother and he thought she'd appreciate being able to do magic tricks for the kids.

A highly colourful jumper. This particularly woman received one every year from her husband – who always purloined the rejects and wore them himself.

A drill. Yes, it was what he wanted for Christmas.

A tool kit. She'd just bought an old car that kept breaking down. What she really wanted was for him to fix the car and take her somewhere romantic in it.

A remote control telephone. Right again: he wanted one himself.

A wastepaper basket. Highly practical…..but on the downside, highly practical.

A fire extinguisher for her car. See above.

How can buying a bag be this difficult?

Sometimes the internet can be a magical place of discovery and wonder. Other times it can be a bewildering labyrinth of cul-de-sacs and side alleys that lead you further and further away from the path where you would actually like to be.
I’m doing my Christmas shopping at the moment. This, rather depressingly, no longer requires going out. Instead I just type in the desired gift in Google and all the options in the world are open to me. That’s the theory, anyway. In the pretty firm belief that my teenage son never reads my blog I’ll let you into a secret - I’ve been trying to buy him a messenger bag. A cool one that a 17-year-old might like. So first of all I typed in “messenger bag” and this elicited a huge range of dull bags at inflated prices. So I tried “cool messenger bag”. Now I am given a selection of cool bags for summer picnics. Hmmm. “Rock messenger bags” fares slightly better. Here I find a range of band-themed bags (though none that would appeal to my son). Then eureka! I remember that he is studying French and decide to try “French messenger bags”. This leads me to an even more confusing selection of options including a You Tube video (in French) on how to make a messenger bag out of duct tape. So I try “theme messenger bags” and weirder still: I come up with “how to make a messenger bag out of floppy disks”. Everything now points to me making my own messenger bag out of bits of old rubbish lying around the house. Either that, or going out.
In case you are also looking for a messenger bag, here are some that a teenager might actually like:
http://www.inretro.net/dj-messenger-bag-beatles-i1724.html
http://www.munkeygames.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1227
http://www.inretro.net/rock-messenger-bag-the-who-i2040.html
Though of course, input from any teenagers who might be reading this would be very welcome!

Forgotten your password? Don't worry - a hacker will find it for you

Life doesn’t half get complicated, doesn’t it? The average adult head is now constantly buzzing with the mixture of upper and lower case characters (plus numbers and symbols) required for our numerous internet passwords. Add to these our PIN numbers and it’s easy to see why 30 per cent of people regularly forget their passwords and around a quarter of us forget our log-in names after a week. So why do firms make them increasingly difficult for us to remember? Is it really necessary to confound us by asking for a mixture of letters, numbers, symbols etc?
Actually it is. A hacker using an average computer can crack a four-number PIN virtually instantaneously and a six-letter password in just 8.5 hours. So what about an eight-character password using a mixture of numbers, symbols and upper and lower-case letters? OK so these are harder to remember, but the good news is that there are a staggering 2.9 quadrillion permutations and will take the average computer around 9,488 years to crack. The bad news is that a supercomputer will still guess your password in just 346 days. So change it every year and you should be OK.
Unfortunately we humans are simple creatures and we all come up with the same passwords. Here are the most popular:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password
9. blink182
10.(your first name)

So. Computers pretty clever, humans really, really stupid. Time for another video to illustrate this I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64&feature=related

It's tea time and raining: you must be in England

A friend of mine sent me an article where people had been asked to sum up the British using only five words. Suggestions included:

“Turned out nice again”
“Sorry, is this the queue?”
“At least we’re not French”

Hmm. A nation of weather-obsessed, French-hating queuers. That’s us. So then I thought: how do our idioms sum us up as a nation? And can other nationalities also be summed up by their idioms? I took a look and though I’m stereotyping outrageously, here goes.

English:
That’s not my cup of tea
Make hay while the sun shines
There’s plenty more fish in the sea
He’s taken French leave (he’s gone AWOL)

Yes, that’s right – we are a tea-loving people, relentlessly chipper about our terrible weather and secure in our position as an island nation. Oh – and we still hate the French.

French
That will put butter on the spinach (That will put food on the table).
Look after your onions (Mind your own business)
He’s taken English leave (he’s gone AWOL)
These show the French as a nation of food-obsessed onion-lovers…… who hate the English.

German
That is not your beer. That’s none of your business
He’s looking silly amid the laundry. He’s been caught with his trousers down
It’s about the sausage! It's do or die!
Yes, it’s always about the sausage for the Germans. These people don’t like to look a fool and are partial to a beer.

Italian
If one Pope dies, we can always get another. There’s plenty more fish in the sea.
He’s taken English leave (gone AWOL)
You can't have a full bottle and a drunken wife. “you can't have your cake and eat it”,
As we suspected, the Italians are a nation of wine-guzzling, women-loving, pragmatic Catholics - who also hate the English.

Dutch
It's easy to cut big chunks from someone else's cheese. " It’s easy to spend someone else’s money
He's such a liar, you can feel it with your wooden shoes. ???
You’re sticking feathers up my a**e You’re flattering me
It seems the Dutch are a clog-wearing, cheese-making nation who are not averse to performing the occasional dubious practice in Amsterdam after dark.

A combination of song, worldly goods and urine ensure the guy gets the girl

OK, so yesterday’s mating rituals seemed to go down well. Here’s some more.

The grasshopper
When grasshoppers want to mate it’s like karaoke night. Eerily like when humans want to mate, in fact. The male grasshopper will start to sing and if that impresses any passing female, she will join him in a duet until he finds her. The grasshopper has some 400 mating songs to choose from - unlike the human, who only has “My Way”.

The porcupine
The female porcupine only wants to mate once a year, so how does the male harness this rare opportunity? He waddles over, stands on his hind legs and pees all over her. That seems to do the trick. If she’s unimpressed, she will scream and shake off the urine. Then it’s back to the watering hole for the male so that he can drum up sufficient pee to try again.

The bowerbird
The male bowerbird is like a very fussy interior designer. He’ll spend hours getting his love nest ready, decorating it with flowers, feathers, stones, and bits of old rubbish. He will then sit back and wait for the materialistic female bower bird to wander over and marvel at his skill. He'll only leave his post to nip across to the bower next door and steal things and kick stuff around to improve his own chances of success.

The manakin
The male manakin performs a kind of moonwalk to attract the female. But his version of the dance is so revved up it needs to be captured on camera at around 1,000 frames per second, then viewed in slow motion to be fully appreciated. Eat your heart out Michael Jackson.

The Argentine lake duck
I don’t actually know how the male Argentine lake duck attracts his mate. He probably preens his feathers and struts around a bit. What I do know is that it’s all academic because the Argentine lake duck has the world’s longest penis. It’s a corkscrew-shaped monstrosity that measures about 17 inches long. And if that doesn’t impress her, he’s not above using it as a lasso to haul her back to the nest.

Dancing, chatting, twirling his tail: how men win over the ladies

If there's one thing we all have in common - animals, politicians everyone - it's the mating ritual. Every species develops its own way to win over the opposite sex. And we all do it differently - though hopefully with the same result.

The hippopotamus

Hippos attract their mate by urinating and defecating simultaneously, then twirling their tails like a propellor to spread the proceeds far and wide. Irresistible.

The flatworm

An obscure Australian species of hermaphrodite flatworm engages in a sort of Gladiators' match with their penises before mating. The first to stab the other with its penis wins the privilege of injecting the sperm, while the loser lays the eggs.

The human

The male of this species uses a mixture of alcohol-induced bravado, dance moves and chat-up lines to attract the female.

In fact, is this still true? Do people simply add each other as a Top Friend or "poke" each other on Facebook to show they're interested these days? It's a long time since I've been chatted up but I have to say that the death of the chat-up line as we knew it wouldn't be a great loss to humanity. Here are some particularly underwhelming ones:

• "You have lovely eyes. They sort of match your knees."


• "Would you like to come back to my place to sleep with me? 'Course if I really fancied you, I'd ask you to dinner first."


• "I can't help noticing that you have lovely teeth."


• "I thought I'd come and have a chat with you since you've been eyeing me up all night."

Yes, they were all used on me and no, I won't tell you which ones worked.

Talking of underwhelming chat-up lines, here's a video you might like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3OnUz1QZXs

Come back People On Phones, all is forgiven

There was a time when a consumer who had a problem with a product or service would pick up the phone and ring the company. The call-handler would then sympathetically deal with your complaint and leave you feeling marginally better than when you started.
Then Customer Services branched out into two different directions. On one hand was the recorded voice giving you a list of increasingly bewildering options that ended with the words: “To hear these options again, press One”. It was like one of those convoluted Eleven Plus questions: “John has a problem with his internet connection but not his email service. Mabel is a new customer with an issue with her email service and who doesn’t have Broadband. Sam is an existing customer who can’t connect at all. Which customer is the most disgruntled?”
The other innovation was the Indian Call Centre. This involved someone completely remote from you and your business attempting to solve your problems from a script. Cultural differences made this unsatisfactory; people in Indian call centres are often too polite for us British and don’t always understand our quips.
The other day I was introduced to a new refinement of customer services torture: the Indian Instant Messaging Complaint Service. A little dialogue box popped up and said: “Hello. I’m Jasmin. How can I help you today?” My problem was that Jasmin’s company had sold me a Broadband acceleration package, the latest version of which had immobilised all my browsers. So I wanted to find out how to dump the new version and reinstate the old. It took 90 excruciating minutes. She was obviously using cut and paste to fix the problem and whenever I asked a question that was “off script” she simply ignored it. After asking fruitlessly: “Can I have the old version back?” and “How can I reinstate the original version?” I became more than a little annoyed and ranted: “WHY WON’T YOU TELL ME HOW TO REINSTALL THE OLD VERSION??” I was interested to note that after another 10 minutes she sloughed off her innate courtesy and ranted back, also in capitals. But when the problem was eventually fixed and all inhibitions now gone I typed: “It worked! YIPPEEE!” She regained her formality and replied: "Is there anything else I can help you with today, madam?” I nearly replied LOL but it seemed inappropriate.

Next time you go whale-shooting, be careful what you wear

Back to those strange laws again…it seems that every nation has its personal preferences about what people should wear in public. As you now know (see Sunday's blog) men in Florida are barred by law from wearing any kind of strapless gown in their home state. But in glamorous California, women are prohibited from getting into a car while looking drab (see below) while the dress restrictions on MPs in England are truly outrageous.

It is illegal for a Member of Parliament to enter the House of Commons in England wearing a full suit of armour.
In California, women aren’t allowed to drive while wearing a house coat.
In Australia it is illegal to roam the streets wearing black clothes, felt shoes and black shoe polish on your face. Apparently this clearly marks you out as a cat burglar.
In Scotland, it is illegal to refuse a passing caller the use of your toilet.
In York you can't shoot a Scotsman with a bow and arrow on a Sunday.
In Texas it is illegal to milk another person's cow.
Having sexual relations with a porcupine is against the law in Florida.
In California you're not allowed to shoot at any game – other than a whale - from a moving vehicle.
Shooting a buffalo from the second storey of a hotel is illegal in Texas.

Don't forget to celebrate Catesby Night tonight

Have you ever thought how strange it is that 21st century Britain still embraces the Guy Fawkes night tradition with such bloodthirsty enthusiasm?
Why do we do this? Surely we don’t still loathe and despise the so-called traitor who tried to blow up the government leaders of his era. Many of us secretly admire him, in fact. Yet we still light bofires every year to celebrate the safety of King James I – or at least that was the rationale behind the very first Bonfire Night on November 5, 1605.
Some say our deep-rooted subversive streak makes us proud of the mavericks who dared to challenge the leaders of their day. Others say we're just a bunch of pyromaniacs who like fireworks. But whichever is true, here are some things you may not have known about the festival.

The gunpowder plot was actually masterminded by Robert Catesby, but poor old co-conspirator Guy Fawkes just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was caught in charge of 36 barrels of gunpowder inside the Houses of Parliament. "What, these? Nothing to do with me, guv." So but for a quirk of fate, we would today be celebrating Catesby Night and burning "Roberts".
The tradition of making stuffed “guys” and burning them on bonfires leads some people to assume that Guy Fawkes was burnt at the stake. But as every schoolchild knows, he was hanged, drawn and quartered. Except he wasn't. Wily old Guy leapt from the scaffold and died before any drawing and quartering could take place.
Although uniquely British in its history, Guy Fawkes Night is also enthusiastically celebrated in New Zealand. Though Prime Minister Helen Clark is this year threatening to ban all those nasty dangerous fireworks.
Guy Fawkes night is so bang up to date that it even has its own website: http://www.bonefire.org/. Besides informing us about this annual event, the site also has a merchandising section where visitors can buy Guy Wear (for guys, naturally) and would-be female plotters can kit themselves out with Fawkesy Lady T-shirts.

Looks like the Queen's guard has forgotten their socks again...

Did you think you were a perfectly respectable, law-abiding person? Well be careful – breaking the law is easier than you think.
For instance, imagine you have just finished the grocery shopping at your local (English) supermarket and are on your way home on the bus. That big bar of Fruit and Nut in your shopping bag is calling out to you and you finally succumb, breaking off a hefty chunk. Immediately you have fallen foul of the law: in England, it is illegal for a woman to eat chocolate on a public conveyance.
Or maybe you are a dairy farmer in Scotland and after a night out at the local hostelry you come across one of your herd ambling down the road, having wandered away from the rest. You lurch over to Esmerelda and drunkenly try to coerce her back into the field. Don’t be surprised when a police car screeches to a halt beside you: in Scotland it is is illegal to be a drunk in charge of a cow.

Here are some other random laws:

In Florida it is illegal for a man to be seen in public wearing any kind of strapless gown.
Liverpool law says no woman shall be topless in public, unless she is as an assistant in a tropical fish store.
In France it is illegal to name your pig “Napoleon”.
English law dictates that no-one should stand within a hundred yards of the reigning monarch without socks on.
In New York it is against the law to throw a ball at someone's head for fun.
In Alabama it is illegal to wear a fake moustache that causes laughter in church.

Someone, somewhere, give poor old Doctor David a hug

Apparently research carried out at Manchester Metropolitan University has revealed that nowadays people are just too busy to hug.
It appears that everyone needs at least one cuddle a day, and most of us are not getting our quota either because hugging takes up too much of our precious time, or because we fear our touchy-feeliness may be misinterpreted in today’s politically correct society.
Actually, I’m not convinced. Over the past 50-or-so years the British people have changed from a reserved, restrained stiff-upper-lipped nation to a rather sentimental bunch. We cry in unison at the funerals of people we didn’t even know, and we leave flowers at the site of any tragedy we come across. And yes, we are more inclined to hug. Teenagers seem to hug each other at the drop of a hat these days. Boys even hug other boys – something that would have horrified my dear old Dad.
Apparently the research was spearheaded by just one man - psychologist Dr David Holmes. I wonder why. Does he spend his time holed up at Manchester Metropolitan University yearning for a cuddle? And did that prompt him to begin this research just to prove that it was everyone else – and not just him – not getting their fair share of hugs?

Someone give him a hug, quick, just so he'll get off the backs of the rest of us.