My love affair with Martin Lukes

There was a time in my life when I used to get the FT on my desk every morning. It wasn’t exactly essential to my job, but it made me feel important, and I used to flick through it in a somewhat desultory fashion.  The only things I consistently read were Lucy Kellaway and Martin Lukes.  Imagine my surprise on discovering that the Martin Lukes column is actually written by the fabulous Ms. Kellaway.  To give you a mild flavour of the wonderfulness of Ms. Kellaway see extract below on childrearing which the best dressed diplomat forwarded me from Ms. Kellaway’s article last Monday:

1. We cannot all have deeply marvellous husbands. if you do not happen to have one, do not worry: a marvellous nanny works just as well.

2. Make sure you have got a lot of money. Not coping when you have money is a lot easier than not coping when you
have not.

3. Take care over the genetic make-up of your children. Seven placid ones are a lot easier than one volatile tearaway.

4. Never wonder if your work-life balance is right, never read books about how others cope. This will only make you anxious and guilty.

5. Always try to renew your children’s passports the moment they expire. If you have to do it in a hurry, then try to get their names right.

6. Except in emergencies, avoid helping your children with their homework. The idea is that they learn the periodic table, not you.

7. Above all, remember that socks can be a huge source of stress. Six collections of socks can make the life of
the stay-at-work mum a veritable nightmare. I have found that if you abandon the bourgeois convention that people need their own socks, or that the two need to match, life is very, very much easier.

And good news, I see from my friend the internet that [Lucy’s Kellaway’s]�book.. Martin Lukes: Who Moved My BlackBerry(TM) is published in July 2005 by Penguin.  Hah, Harry Potter eat your heart out, I’m off to pre-order on Amazon.