The doorman takes your car keys for he will hand them to a lackey who will park your BMW in the secure underground carpark next to the Mercedes-Benzes, Jaguars and a Rolls-Royce, the German-made one that costs a million of whatever currency you are talking about and which belongs to the man you are going to see.

But now your feet encounter the plush red carpet and you are virtually wafted into the foyer through the whispering automatic doors. When you enter the marble-floored entrance, soft classical music assails your ears and there seems to be perfume in the air, something cool yet reassuring, something so distinctly expensive it could even be Chanel.

You approach the solid marble and mahogany-topped reception desk and give your name to the pretty young women in the elegant designer outfits who smile reassuringly. Then you take two steps and you are in a silent, deeply-carpeted lift where more music plays, this time even more ‘classical’ if you like and still there is that wonderful perfume in the air. You smile at your wife who grimaces back.

Meanwhile, just down the road a way, another couple approach a drab brick building. They’ve gone through the car park barrier and collected their parking ticket which will cost them by the hour and now they are looking for a parking space. There are none, not even one small enough for their cheap Ford to fit into, and they drive around for fully half an hour, the husband fretting as his wife starts to get regular contractions.

Eventually they spot a space that someone’s just leaving and they aim for it, only to realise that it is reserved for a doctor. Cursing as the hand of fate continues to slap him about the face, the husband nevertheless parks the rusty Ford in the doctor’s spot and helps his wife out of the car. It starts to rain and by the time they get to the anonymous maternity building they are both soaked through. Fortunately neither of them will see their Ford being clamped. That's a surprise for later.

The soaked couple go into the maternity wing and are assailed by a strange smell which has nothing to do with a French perfumier. There is also a distinct lack of music, restful or otherwise. They are pointed to a lift which never comes and eventually they take to the stairs, the wife now groaning in what the husband believes is an embarassingly loud manner (wait until he gets into the delivery suite. Oh boy, is he in for a shock. But that’s for later; at this stage you will be blissfully unaware of the range of sounds your partner can make).

As they are climbing the stairs, our BMW couple over at what could comfortably pass for a five star hotel, but which is in fact a private hospital, are being shown their individual room which is adorned in the colours they requested when they completed their Birth Plan and ticked the box on the menu marked, ‘personal decor scheme’. They have a plush bed (I say ‘they’  because the husband will be allowed to stay with the wife if he so desires. Frankly, if he has any sense, he will use the three days or so that she launguishes here after the birth of the child to get as much sleep as he can in his own bed, but that’s just my advice...). They have an en suite which is all marble and gold taps and which is about the size of a similarly outiftted room at the Sheraton.

Over at public maternity the Ford couple are still waiting to be seen and this gives hubby the time to wonder why the paint is peeling off the walls and where on earth they managed to get such a colour, the like of which he has never seen in the Dulux catalogue.

When BMW-couple move from the comfort of their room to the birthing suite they can travel by electric cart if they so desire (assuming they have itemised this on their Birth Plan and have paid the premium which enables them to do so) and when they arrive they will discover that the birthing room too has its own shower and a whole range of equipment which would do justice to the average city gym. The piped music can be adjusted and there is a choice of many channels and many CDs and there is even a full colour tv so that if anyone involved in this birth has time they can catch up on a bit of entertainment, though take it from me, there will be entertainment aplenty once the show really gets right on the road.

But for now they relax as much as possible and in walks their very own obstetrician to whom they will pay around one thousand of the folding stuff, even if he just sits in the corner and reads his newspaper which is what he proceeds to do once the greetings have been exchanged.  

In public maternity the Ford driver and his wife are seen by a midwife from a team of midwives. She hooks the mother-to-be up to a monitor and then disappears. The husband ventures into the toilet and discovers the previous inhabitant of this room was none too careful with their bowel movements. In fact, he initially thinks someone has broken in here and spread it around like they sometimes do when they break into your house (I’ve never understood this about home break-ins; the robbers usually have little trouble digging out the hidden jewellery and your passports so surely your toilet can’t be too hard to find, it’s almost always near the bathroom, if not actually in it). Anyway, in public maternity Mr Ford slowly closes the despoiled toilet’s door and decides he can wait.

When the time comes, Mr Ford and wife walk down the long peeling paint corridor to the labour ward. In fairness their birthing room is not altogether different than that in which Herr BMW und Frau find themselves, though there is little gym equipment, no piped music, a phone for which you have to pay, no tv and no ensuite. They do not have their own obstetrician but the midwife begins to make frequent visits as the contractions increase.

After the birth, BMW man and wife go to their luxury room (travelling once again by silently smooth electric cart) while Mr Ford and his wife are taken to a ward - he walks, she gets wheeled in a wheelchair.

On the public maternity ward it’s pot-luck whether the new mum gets a room to herself (it’s not that likely, unless the mother has given birth to twins). More likely she gets to share with another woman and her baby, just a hospital curtain screen between them. They share a toilet and the shower is shared by four. In some public hospitals the wards are even larger.

The big question is this, which is best, public or private?

Well, you might think the answer is clear, especially if you happen to own a BMW. But it isn’t. If you must have the lilac and mint green finished room, the five-star hotel type treatment for the three days that you might stay in hospital after the birth then you have to go private. But hang on a minute - just why are you in there in the first place? Yes, that’s right, to give birth - so perhaps you should be thinking about the type and level of care you’re likely to get?

There are some notable differences between the two offerings, and it’s not just about money and surroundings. But let’s look at the money aspect first. Let’s get the easy one out of the way - if you go public you don’t pay a penny or a cent, it is all free. Okay, you will have been paying taxes which go part of the way to providing the sort of public health service that we have come to take for granted in the western world, but then so have the people who choose to go private.

Opt to go private and firstly there are the monthly health fund payments, payments which go up every year as premiums increase, payments which you will typically have to make for at least a year (sometimes longer) before your partner gets pregnant. Then, absurdly, there is almost always what the funds call ‘the gap’ which I think should be called, ‘and the rest, skipper’.

Amazingly, you have been paying each and every month into one of these funds so they can have some plush city offices (where did you think they got the money for that from?) and pay their people big, fat corporate wages (where did you think they got the money...well, you know what I mean) and it’s still not enough.

So, aside from the restful surroundings what else does your private money buy you? Come on, there must be something! Amazingly, there isn’t. People who go private always point out that they get the services of an obstetrician on call (remember him, he’s the Rolls-Royce owner with the newspaper, sitting there quietly in the corner).

Okay, but the majority of babies are delivered by midwifes, whose job it is, and the obstetrician only gets his hands dirty if something starts to go wrong. Now, the midwives are experienced enough to know when something is going wrong and if it’s something that they cannot handle they immediately get the doctor or an obstetrician in to check it out. This happens in a public hospital as a matter of course. You also have to remember that all public hospitals are equipped with the very latest equipment and amazingly many private hospitals are not. Of course, you don’t know this unless something goes wrong...

Anyhow, today I'm doing the book, sub-editing it and finding a few gaps which I need to fill. While I've been doing this I'm constantly thinking about the next book which as I've mentioned before I've done a good first draft of and just need to go over and add some more baddies and a few more explosions. I'm really looking forward to reacquainting myself with that one because it's very different to this book, which is a comedy - well, I think it's funny, (let's just hope everybody else does too...).

I met a mother the other day who told me her five year old had suddenly become all sweetness and light when he turned the big-five, so I live in hope. We shall see. Talking of mothers...funny thing yesterday. I was chatting with this mother who bathes in Chanel Mademoiselle and has nails that should be licensed by some authority dealing in dangerous weapons, who said, "We should get together sometime soon and talk some more."
"Good idea," I said, "the kids can play together." She looked at me and said, "I was thinking when they're all in pre-school. My husband is away on business at the moment. In fact, he's always away on business." Oh dear. I don't think I'll be taking her up on the offer - any offer - because anyone who dresses like she does and looks at you that way is big trouble. You can see that from even further away than her gleaming gold Mercedes which is often seen cruising around the neighbourhood. If it was a van you'd think it was dodgy blokes looking for something to grab.

Now, you may think I've taken leave of my senses wasting my valuable time writing about some bollocksy old TV series but I just can't help it. My eyes opened in amazement when I saw the trailer last night, my mouth formed an I-can't-believe-it shape and then I just had to laugh out loud. I mean really, can't the TV people think of any better cliffhanger than to squeeze all of these actors (well, you have to call them something) into a Toyota Tarago with either dodgy brakes, a dodgy driver, a driver who is about to have a heart attack/fall asleep at the wheel/swerve to miss another cast member/have a tyre blow out/a loose can of petrol in the boot ignite or, God forbid, have a head-on with a petrol tanker driven by the cast member who has returned from the dead. It beggars belief.

Anyway, the two year old was sporting a mild rash and you know you always have to get those things checked out because, well, if you're a nipper you can die, and die very quickly as it happens.

Now, it has long been a belief of mine that your GP has much in common with your car mechanic. You go in, say "I've got a bit of a knocking noise down there. It feels a bit stiff" and they sit and frown and then get down and fiddle with a couple of spanners or a thermometer and give you the benefit of their knowledge (oh yes, and a bill too). You get home and later discover that actually it was the left ventricle which was playing up, not the wishbone.

"Well," said the doctor, "I've never seen anything like this before."
Hmm, that always fills me with confidence.
"Looks to me like it's a virus," he said.
I love that. Whenever a doctor doesn't know what something is he says it's a virus. Interestingly, I had never heard this before I came to these shores 10 years ago. Either Australia is the virus incubator of the western world or it's just a dodgy answer. Anyhow, the doctor's opinion cost me $55 and went like this: "I wouldn't do anything at all. I'm sure it will all get better within a couple of days."
My oh my, this is a good way to earn money.

Right. Fast-forward to yesterday. Two is now a pulsating mass of rash and cannot sleep or sit down or do anything much at all (though strangely it has not affected his appetite which still sees him polish off four Weetbix, two rounds of toast and a banana for breakfast). Back to the doctors but this being Saturday it's even worse because there're no appointments, you just have to queue with the other sick people. Let's face it, if you haven't got an illness when you get in the crowded waiting room you almost certainly will have by the time you come out.

Anyway, they always want to get more DVDs than books but I put my foot down. When I was a kid I lived at the library, borrowing books all the time, reading everything I could get my mits on, and you know, I don't think it's done me any harm. Mind you, when I was a nipper there were no Playstations or Nintendo, no computer games (no computers either, as it happens), no internet of course,  no DVDs or CDs and I can even remember video tape becoming available - what a bloody marvel that was and the box you played them in was small - no bigger than a bungalow as it happens. So, books were the deal (yes, yes, they had invented printing presses when I was a youngster).

Now, Four wanted three videos and I said, "Look, we've got two, that's fine."
"But I must have this one too."
"We'll get it next time."
"But if I don't have it tomorrow when I want to watch it I will panic."
"Panic?"
"Yes, I will panic like mad."
"Oh, I see," I said, "the word you want is not panic, it's tantrum," which got a laugh from the other patrons (a 95 year old woman with dark glasses and a motorised wheelchair with a flag on it which I'm not convinced should have been in the library - I think she was trying to reach the supermarket but became confused on the way. Either that or she really did want the third shelf on the left, "the one where the baked beans are normally kept").

Good luck, is all I can say.
Two days ago there was a story about a gang of fraudsters who have infiltrated up to 100 major Italian websites. What this means is if you go to one of the sites, as soon as you get it up on your computer a trojan horse (no, not the big wooden one, but same principle...) infects your computer. You don't know it's done so. Well, not until you next use any form of online payment system, - yes, like putting your credit card details in - and then you'll soon find out about it when you next go to use the card and find instead someone in Shanghai, Puerto Rico or Kazakhstan has the same name as you, and indeed has a card which looks like your card, and is merrily maxxing it up all over town. See, the trojan spots it when you make key strokes that give your card number and then immediately sends this info to the bad people who make a copy of your card.

Apparently the fraudsters used Italian sites because they are easy to hack into because, well, people don't normally hack into them. You can imagine - this was just a dry run, just a test. Soon it'll be all over the three Ws. The other thing is, the crooks are getting more and more skillful and it will be increasingly hard to stop them. In any case, before the scam is closed down the money will have disappeared, and disappeared well before a virus protector has been invented to stop it .

Anyway, the Fiat brought back memories...I once had a Fiat Strada on road test, back in my motoring journalist days. Its central locking was temperamental to say the least and one night on London’s busy Shaftesbury Avenue the horn started to toot of its own accord and at the same time one of the electric windows wound itself down and the central locking popped on and off like it was possessed.

The culmination of all this activity was a snapped clutch cable, immobilising the car at 10pm on a dark, cold night. Apparently the Italians designed the cable so that it ran through or around some electric junction box.
No, I don’t know why either.
 
The AA man who eventually arrived replaced the clutch cable and then I was on my way. Unfortunately the horn wouldn’t stop tooting and as I drove along Streatham High Street later that night I tooted all of the prostitutes as I went and was then pulled over by the police who said, “Now then sir, what’s all that about then?”

Basically I've been trying as many different beers as I can get my paws on in an effort to come up with a winner. It's a sort of worldwide challenge, a beer festival, an extravaganza of bottles, if you will.

Now, mostly I've been confining my work to Aussie amber nectars because, well, I've already tried most of the others.

I adore Old Speckled Hen, I'm very partial to Bishops Finger, I can down a bottle of Spitfire quicker than a Fokker, take a Black Sheep Ale and guzzle it like a Kiwi, I'm a sucker for Old Fizzer (okay, I made the last one up, but if there is a God then there should be an Old Fizzer out there and it should be spanking). All of these, of course, hail from my homeland.

But...the inescapable truth appears to be this (drum roll, please maestro) - there is no finer beer in the world than Coopers Pale Ale.

Now, I do think it would be a fine idea if the good folks at Coopers paid me for this ringing endorsement (in beer, if they like) but sadly I think that is not likely to happen anytime soon, so I will have to be content with buying the stuff and contributing to the Cooper family's coffers.

The funny thing is, I used to like Australian red wine a lot, some would say rather too much for someone who claims not to be an alcoholic, but I’ve grown tired of those big alcohol wines – you can barely get one under 15 per cent proof these days. And the inescapable fact is this; I often have to get up in the mornings and do some work, or even just get dressed myself, and you can’t do that if you’ve worked your way through the best part of a Barossa Valley Grenache the night before.

I took the kids to the park today and Four is becoming a real pain. Anything goes wrong and he screams his head off. You know, like a trainer wheel on his bike gets stuck in some mud (why they put mud in parks I just don't know) or another kid won't get out of his way. I shouted at him to shut up (yes, I know that's ironic) and some sun-wrinkled orange-faced woman with a pinched look said snippily, "I think you're saying what we're all thinking" and so I said, "what I'm thinking, is how bitchy women can be." Honestly, her kids must be automatons, able to be switched off at will and the volume turned down with the tweak of a hidden button.

Another woman with her friend kept referring to both of the nippers as girls, which is a common mistake people who are blind make. No, sorry, I mean it's a common mistake people make because the kids' hair is long. Anyway, I said to her friend, "they're both boys." "But they look like girls," said the woman. "I can tell you," I said, "they are boys." By the way, the women tried to ease me off the bench and table I'd got, but nothing new there and I stand my ground nowadays, ensuring I eat more and more food and drink more beer so my expanding waistline can steal ever more bench space, leaving little for the interlopers.

When her friend came along she said, "that's an nice little girl" and the first woman said, "I've been told they're boys." Really, what is it with women? I mean call me sexist if you like but blokes don't talk like this, they just get on and have a chat. I think some of it is down to some women feeling threatened because they think they're the only ones qualified to do the child upbringing thing.

Anyway, the woman who told me what they 'were all thinking' left before us and in the effort to do a three point turn in her gargantuan four wheel drive, hit two trees and a small Mazda belonging to an old codger at the Bowls Club. He'll be pleased, especially as I jotted down her number plate and put it on a piece of paper under his windscreen wiper.

So, we (that's me, the soon-to-be-two-year-old and four year old) went to play last week (that's the kids, not me, of course) with a friend from pre-school. The family are French and very quiet which I think was a shock for them when we arrived. Four immediately asked, "so where are the swords?" The French kids (well, they were all born here but they are unmistakeably French, by which I mean they speak French and also un-Aussie English) like to play treasure hunts and board games. I got a bit worried that I'm not bringing my kids up properly because they don't know all the plots of real estate on Monopoly (but sadly can name most of Sydney's expensive suburbs. Er, actually that's all of them.) or how to play Loto which is a French board game with strangely European animals on it (the marmut, for example, and the red squirrel).

Anyway, they were supposed to be coming round our place today to return the favour of a trashed house, so I tidied everything up in preparation but then I got a call from the father who told me the kids had all come down with head lice which means mine could have it too. I mentioned this to Four who immediately began scratching and told me, "I think the head things are neating my head (he can't say eating).

We'll see what happens...

In other news, my friend George - he of fruit and veg shop fame - is about to set off on a three month holiday to Italy, stopping with pregnant wife on the way for 10 days in a five star resort at Phuket. In Italy they will stay with Uncle Benni in Palermo where, I am told, "the family will look after us". Yes, I'm sure they will. George is whingeing about it all, telling me, "There'll be nothing to do, the village is so quiet, they eat pasta all day every day, and it'll be hot too." I told him it was tough going on holiday for that long a period but I don't think he smelt the sarcasm.

After a while, the Germans started boasting about how wonderful German technology was, how clever they were that they could all speak English and how they were taking over the world with their precision-built products.

"Ya", said one of the more bellicose ones, "you zee, vee Germans are masters of the universe while you English, you are nothing more than a third rate nation with your unions and your strikes and your bad weather. Ha-ha!"
Us Brits sat there, our collective heads bowed as we stared sullenly into our wine glasses.
"Ya, vee Germans are good at making zings, we make the best cars, the best suits, the very best appliances. Ho-ho, vee are the very best!"

By this stage Bunty – he was on every press trip - was fit to burst and he looked up and smiled thinly and said, "Yes,  mein herr, you may be right, but you're not awfully good at winning wars, are you?" At which the hacks burst into laughter and slapped Bunty on the back like he was a conquering hero.
"Yes," shouted out Bunty, rising to his feet, wine glass in hand, realising he had the crowd, "And I do believe if we get to play you again and we win we get to keep the cup!"
More laughter ensued, as the Germans sat there open-mouthed.

The next day, Bunty wrote-off one of the road test cars, running it at speed into the back of the German PR man's car and giving him a shunt he wouldn't forget in a hurry.
"Oh dear," said Bunty when he got out, wincing as he looked at the damage, "good job you chaps are so good at mending things, what!"

They say he is an adventurous cat (aren't they all...?) and he likes nothing better than to look under people's houses - well, more fool him, if you ask me. Well, the four year old saw this as a mission that we could accomplish so he had me drive him around and around looking for this damned cat who is probably having a fine old time eating at someone else's house.

The thing is, now I have to write a bedtime story called, yes, Tonka is Missing. The four year old told me this: "I would like it made like a proper book, with pictures, and it has to be a proper story, which has Tonka's owners in it. They would have beards." Of course they would.

So, I'm going to spend tomorrow putting it together. I have some ideas for the plot which basically revolves around a cat that goes missing (yes, I am very imaginative) but it can't have anything in it like getting run over by a car or drowning in the river as this would traumatise the four year old. I only have to start humming Peter and the Wolf and he puts a hand up and says, "No, daddy, no. Stop it. Stop it now." We shall see what I come up with but I'll have to have something a bit scary in it - it's just the way I am.

Now, you might think – well some of you might think, the blokes mostly – that this would be a dream job, staring at naked women all day, interviewing rising young pornolettes and then deciding just how explicit they should be on any given page. But it’s not. It’s just like working on any other magazine. Actually perhaps it’s a bit different to working on Budgie World or Extruded Cement Monthly  (incorporating Flyovers) but really after a while you get a bit bored with all the vacuous pouty girls with large breasts, their long legs and  short skirts, their revealing underwear and, yes, their naked flesh, and you just get on with the job.

I think the only people who don’t eventually get bored and always rise to the occasion are the photographers. As it happened, one of them (snappers, we call them) had worked with me on car magazines (he liked to say he’d swapped one kind of bodywork for another – tish-boom). His name was Bill.

Now, Bill was married to a very nice lady called Sophie and they lived in a very nice Victorian terraced house in Islington, so they were doing all right. The problem was, Bill found it very hard to keep his hands on his telephoto lens and it was a well known fact across the industry that he usually ended up having a fling with the models. I guess the temptation was great, if you think about it. Here you have a girl who wants to take her clothes off in front of you because you are handy with a probing camera (most of these girls thought it a good stepping stone to page 3 of The Sun, such were their stratospheric ambitions...) and not too surprisingly one thing often led to another. The other thing was that all the snappers on all the magazines knew each other so the girls knew they could get work on other magazines too by being, how shall I put this, friendly and personable with the snappers.

Anyway, one day I’m sitting at my desk and the phone rings and it’s Bill. He’s shooting the main pictorial for the relaunch issue and as always in magazines, we’re running late. It’s vitally important we get the film off him asap.
“Hey, mate, can you get over the studio now?”
Bill’s studio was in an old converted warehouse near Canary Wharf, which at that time was just going up.
“Well,” I said quietly, looking with a magnifying glass at some pictures of a girl called Sadie who was destined for the next issue, “I’ve got my hands a bit full at the moment.”
“Look,” said Bill, “I need some trousers.”
“Trousers?”
“Yeah, and a shirt. Socks would be good. And can you bring some dresses or skirts and panties?”
“Bill, you’re supposed to supply your own props, you know this.”
“No,” said Bill, “you don’t understand. Get round here.”
I shook my head.
“Please, mate.”
“God, you’re so annoying.”

When I got there he opened the door a crack and when he saw it was me he let me in. He was completely naked. So were the three blonde girls in the bed.
“Bill, is this a joke?”
“Mate, Sophie came round.”
“Yes?”
They just looked at me.
No, no, no,” I said, slowly sitting on the edge of the bed.

So, Sophie had had enough of Bill’s antics. She’d come around the studio, used a key she’d got copied, entered, and found Bill in bed with the three buxom blondes. She’d gone, in his words, “absolutely mental” and stormed around, eventually snatching his clothes and the girls' clothes off the floor. I asked him why none of them did anything and he looked at me as if I was absolutely mental myself and said, “we were all naked and in bed, mate”.
“There is one other thing,” said Bill.
“There would be, wouldn’t there?”
“Yeah, she took the camera and the film.”
“God almighty, Bill. You’ll have to reshoot straight away,” I said.
The girls looked terrified.
“No way,” said one of them, “that woman is –“
“Yeah, I know,” I said snappily, “absolutely mental. Jesus. So you have to go around there Bill and get that film.”
They all stared at me.

Half an hour later, by which time of course it has begun to rain, I am standing on the steps of a Victorian terrace house in Islington in my long raincoat, banging on the door. After a while I crouch down and open the letter box and shout, “Soph, come on. I need those pictures of the girls.”
“Go to hell“, she shouts back from down their echoing hallway. I can see her in there, camera in hand, eyes blazing.
“Come on, be fair,” I say.
“Yes, yes, be fair,” she shouts, “that’s what he’s being isn’t it, shagging all those slappers. That’s fair isn’t it?”
“I think he was just taking pictures of them. Come on, give me the film.”
“The film, the bloody film? You want the film of this animal of a husband shagging these slappers?”
“YES,” I shouted back, getting fed up now, “GIVE ME THE FILM OF THE BLOODY ANIMAL HUSBAND SHAGGING THE BLOODY SLAPPERS AND PLEASE GIVE IT TO ME NOW!”

And at that moment, thinking back, I remembered hearing the soft thunk of a car door and I turned around from my crouching position to see two coppers in their flourescent yellow jackets coming up the steps. And as I slowly straightened up, my hair dripping rain into my eyes which by now must have looked wild and bloodshot, the tallest copper said, while reaching slowly for his truncheon, “Now then sir, what’s all that about then?”

I called Bill from the police station to come and vouch for me but he said he couldn’t on account of the fact I’d not taken any clothes around and besides it was raining and it was better he stay in bed so he didn’t catch a cold. The girls sent their regards.

Eventually the publisher came along and looked at me in the cell and raised his eyebrows and said in his plummy voice, “So the relaunch is shaping up well, I take it?”

A year ago, as it happens, I got a call from the US and the bloke said, “So, I hear you have something of a track record launching magazines? We wondered if you’d like to launch one for us in Australia. We think Playboy will go down really well there.”
I did think about it. For about a second.

Anyway, the big news in nanny land is about a job that's going in central Sydney. Get this. This couple have twins and they want a nanny for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The salary is a whopping $100,000 a year and there's a car too, a Jag apparently with leather seats and satellite navigation.

It seems this job has been advertised for two months and they still haven't filled the vacancy. Well, you wouldn't, would you? I mean, 24 hours, that's more than most mothers would do. Oh yeah, mothers are busy but usually there's a father around and even if there isn't the kids sleep. What they mean by 24 hours is if the kids wake up during the night (and the news is, babies do that...) then the nanny gets up, not the mother. Same thing on the weekend too.

Now, this couple obviously have lots of of the folding stuff (and presumably are accumulating more all the time - presumably on a 24 hour basis) but what they don't seem to have is any humanity. I mean, why would you want to have kids if you never see them?  Actually to me this morning that seems like quite a good idea - but you know what I mean.

The thing is, if they sold their kids to the highest bidder - for example Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt seem to be on something of a buying spree at the moment, and there's always Madonna too - they could save the 100K, not need the Jag (which in any case probably takes up too much space next to the BMW and the  Maybach) and continue to make lots and lots of money. And, they'd always get a good night's sleep - guaranteed.

Anyhow, here goes. I reckon it's a very good book with a very good ending, which I won't give away.

Funny thing is, I read a review of the book in the Sydney Morning Herald and the reviewer was an Aussie, of course (you try getting to review books - or get a job - on that paper if you aint a card-carrying dyed-in-the-wool-my-grandad-was-at-Gallipoli-or-knew-someone-who-was,  kind of a bloke). Now, he reckoned it wasn't a believable book, his main criticism being that no-one behaves like that in real life. The book is the tale of a couple who are having a meal before their honeymoon night, and then it unfolds from there.

The SMH reviewer did what a lot of Aussies do (and the English do it too, but the other way around...) of assuming that because we speak the same language we are the same, certainly emotionally. I say this because to me the book is a perfect example of that English awkwardness in relationships which still exists to an extent now and certainly existed in the 1960s, the era the book covers.

According to E M Forster, Englishmen aren't really allowed to feel anything at all... "It is not that the Englishman can’t feel…he has been taught that feeling is bad form." Indeed, and getting that out of your genes takes a little while...

Of course, we are mostly alright now and can even talk to women occasionally (though we prefer to do it by post, given the choice, as it means you don't have to look anyone in the eye) but for my money On Chesil Beach has the Englishman and woman of the period off to a tee.

Anyway, I liked it and the ending really makes you sit back and look into space for a moment or two.

Now, today I bought Norman Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest which is a fictional tale about how Hitler came to be born and be such a monster, and Ian Banks’s The Steep Approach to Garbadale. I think I have partly done this because I’ve been wading through Dean Koontz’s From The Corner of His Eye which I can only assume he wrote after overdosing on saccharine. Normally I like him but either I’ve grown up in the last few years or he had an off novel there. Either way, I needed some books with a bit of depth, a bit of oomph to them.

Here’s some that I’ve read earlier, as they say:

The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
This is one of the best books I've ever read. It's a family saga (in fact, like all of Irving's books the main character is called John - funny that, eh?) Now, there's a bit of incest involved but, you know, it is tastefully done, well, in as much as it ever can be...You have to read the book to see, but honestly it's a superb story and if I ever get it back off that so-called friend who has had it for 10 years I'll read it again. The bit where the bear gets...no I shouldn't tell you - is really  moving (the bear has nothing to do with the incest moment, I hasten to add) and the plane trip and its ending will make you stop reading and put the book down and look at the ceiling and say, oh.

The Watershed by Erin Pizzy
I have to say this book really changed my life, or at least the way I viewed people, especially women (I think it helped me understand women, well as much as one ever can...). I read it when I was about 16 which is not really the age you should be reading this book but I dare say by now most people would happily read it at age 5, such have things changed. The thing is, this book is about relationships, especially the newly separated woman who finds herself a new life. I'd like to read it again and see if it still reads well, but I bet it would.

Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall by Spike Milligan
"I got off the train at Southend-on-Sea, which was not a good idea because the train didn't stop there."
Enough said.

The Gospel According To The Son by Norman Mailer
Jesus's story, in his own words. It's good because it seeks to tell the story fictitiously, which frankly sits well with what little we really know about the man, and it makes sense of some of the 'miracles' he performed. I reckon even God-types could read it without self-combusting, well except for the real loony ones of course.

By the way, I had some bloke called Justin knock on the door yesterday to, "talk to you about the scripture". A tip: always say you are in the middle of a phone call and, rather like Jesus, they say they will return. But they never do...

For example, he refuses to acknowledge that he's eating Marmite, preferring to call it Vegemite. That sad imitation of the real thing I will not allow within these hallowed portals. The Marmite sits next to the HP Sauce. And before any of you Aussies come back at me with “Vegemite was the first,” I can tell you that isn’t true, the Marmite got to the table several years ahead of your Aussie veggie spread. Sadly, since I have left the sceptred isle I see you Brits have changed Marmite to OurMate which is about as sensible a marketing move as changing Marathon to Snickers, if you ask me.

Anyway, the four year old says yo-gurt instead of yog-urt and pooter instead of computer (though in fairness that's just laziness) and once or twice now he has said par-sta instead of pasta. When he is old enough to understand such matters I think he will call a helicopter a chopper, an auction an ock-shun, trousers pants, flip-flops thongs, a debut a day-boo, and an Englishperson a whingeing Pom.

Someday soon the massacre of the English language will be complete, I feel, when he says mar-own instead of maroon, which actually is part English and part French massacre, calls the postman a postie, the firemen a firey, an ambulance person an ambo, a dustbin man a garbo and refers to the Returned Servicemens League Club (the RSL) as the Arr-Eee.

He’ll greet you with, “G’Day, mate” and when you tell him a tall story he’ll say, “you’re ‘avin’ a lend of me”...and if it’s true he’ll say, “fair dinkum, that’s bonza” and if you give him a printed version of that true story in his hand he’ll smile and say, “thanks, buddy” before chucking it on the back seat of his Holden and heading for the beach for some surf. The story book will remain there for several years untouched and will fade and curl in the sunlight that cooks the interior of his car day in and day out until it’s found by a girlfriend who will take it home and smooth it out and read it when it’s still warm and wonder if Tom really existed.

But first things first, we mustn’t rush him – he is only four.

Yesterday I said "Ta" when he handed me something and he said, "what does that mean?" and I said, "it's an English phrase, it means thanks," and he said, "but dad, this isn’t England."

Henrietta and her husband Marcus had a friend who was a trainee midwife so they reckoned they had the inside scoop on the pregancy and giving birth business, much to the growing alarm of the teacher who bit by bit, week by week lost control of the class so that eventually Hen and her unemployed husband were the main founts of knowledge.  

I say knowledge but it wasn’t that, it was more a week by week account of where exactly Hen’s baby was at any given time. Now, this woman was large and could easily have been having quads at least, if not quintuplets, and there could have been a couple of puppy dogs hiding within and beneath her voluminous skirts too but you’d have thought by the way she talked that the baby had the run of some large expanse of real estate, not simply her womb. One week it was here, the next it was there and sometimes it was sumersaulting. Apparently it even played games, rumoured to be lacrosse and a form of ‘pitch-and-putt’.

Mean