MAN'S WORLD

TO BE honest I haven't had much on this week. I've been able to concentrate on my millennium project, Posture 2000, a combination of Alexander Technique and a new office chair. Otherwise I've been doing a little light parenting, playing computer games and applying for a loan so we can eat for the rest of the month.

I realise that there is some causal link between me not having much work and me not having much money, but this is where my financial expertise ends. We seem to have decided that a mini spending boom was the best way to jump-start our economic situation. It hasn't worked. After months of bickering about nonsense, my wife and I have begun to fight about money again.

I may come to regret saying this, but I think our marriage is one of the few that is actually strengthened by financial difficulty. Neither of us is a real team player, but we do enjoy the them-against-us nature of our periodic money troubles, probably because they are entirely of our own making.

My wife has a particular way of saying "This is not about blame" which sounds remarkably like "I blame you", and our biannual debate, entitled Our House: Asset Or Albatross? usually turns into a debate about whether I am an asset or an albatross. My wife, for her part, feels under tremendous pressure to go back to work, especially when I scream, "Go back to work!"

In the midst of this, Colin will be arriving next week. He is the man who spent four years painting our house, and he has decided that he is ready to redecorate my office. A little redecorating will cheer the place up. Having Colin to talk to will make a nice change, a bit distracting perhaps, but it's not as if I've got anything else to do.