Boys toys?
Why can the female mind not get to grips with gizmos, let alone the instruction manuals?
WE HAVE all heard the joke about women and moving parts. Gadgets have never been women’s strongest suit (give me a pair shoes any day). Another one of those ‘oh-so-fascinating’ UK surveys, claims that the average woman now spends £200 a year on techno accessories – only £30 less than the average man. Okay, so the iPod can be blamed for some of that, but the rest? I’m willing to bet that what the figures actually reveal is that women have simply found a new way of exercising their well-honed shopping skills: once purchased, the new gizmos will lie abandoned in a bottom drawer, on top of an instruction booklet that took some serious physical abuse after a frustrating attempt to decipher it.
Here is a list of the gadgets in my home that I do not know how to work properly (and no I am NOT blonde): one Canon digital camera (can someone please explain why it won’t take the the bloody memory card?); one integrated dishwater (it seems to depend on a totally random sequence of button-pushing to make it work); one Psion organiser (after a solid week of transferring data from phone, computer, address book and diary, it crashed and wiped the lot). I also have a power drill that I am too scared to use (I have given the manual to one of my kids); an iPod Shuffle that, for some reason, plays for only 30 minutes; a DVD player that is supposedly recordable, although God knows how; and an all-in-one remote control that I lost six months ago and still can’t find. In fact, the only gadgets I do know how to work are my GHD hair straighteners, (on/off button, and that’s it) and only God knows why I bought it, my hair is naturally straight! Oh, and my Nova thingy is pretty simple (except when it breaks down, in which case you phone the helpline, and the operators are tremendously helpful. Apparently, you have to turn it on and off again).
What’s weird is that, gadgets aside, women are very good at operating things. After all, they can pull together a roast dinner (that’s at least seven different parts all brought together in a miraculous climax). Put them in a department store they have never entered before, and they instinctively know the most direct route to the Clinique nude lip liner and the 15-denier stockings. As for turning things on, most girls could convince even irate policeman that their dangerous driving was simply a temporary and quite unique aberration of an otherwise perfectly charming woman (it does also help if you pretend that you are a British tourist with the local police). But gadgets? Uh-uh.
Not that this has had any effect on the world of fast-moving consumer goods. They continue to bombard us with electrical appliances, safe in the knowledge that, when we see them on the shelves, we’ll realise that we cannot do without them. The latest thing to catch my eye comes from Philips: it is a ‘bikini’ hair-trimmer. In pink. Presumably hoping to cash in on the obsession for Brazilian waxes, the Dutch electronics firm seems to think we will want to part with 20 quid in order to take a pair of painful-looking clippers to our nether regions to fashion ‘a heart, a star or the name of your loved one’. Hmm. I wonder how thick the instruction book is and if all the letters fit?
Happy hours…
My diary this month, is, believe you me, busier than the president’s (isn’t everyone’s?). September is always a great excuse to change your wardrobe round (new bag, new boots) but is also a nightmare when you have to get kids ready for school again, registering them for a thousand and one extra curricula activities (art, tennis and the guitar, is my households new ‘thing’ at the moment).
One thing I do love about September though (and most of the other months) is that all my friends are back in routine (no more beach, unless you live near one) and that we can enjoy a good drink after work again. Nicosia, unlike other towns, is very much a ‘no-drinking-in-the-afternoon’ society, none of the caf?s on the high street have a ‘happy hour’ policy late afternoon, because obviously nobody drinks during those hours and nobody likes to get happy after work. There are a couple of ‘pseudo’ Irish pubs around but ‘happy’ is not always on the menu either.
I am not trying to change society’s habits, but I would like to share with you a very old watering hole that my friends and I have been going to for years. It has no ‘posers’, no ‘designer’ chairs, the barmen (who have all been there as long as the building has been there) are charming, polite and entertaining, it’s dark and dingy (like a real bar should be) and every weekday the plonk is half price between 5:30pm and 7:00.pm. ‘Where on earth?’ you ask…The Paddock bar at The Hilton! It is, I admit, very rare that you will see women drinking there (other than us) so to the uninitiated of you that would like to throw caution to the cooler evenings and join us, talking about your mother-in-law and what she’s cooking for dinner is totally off limits … See you soon!
