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Movember: an excellent excuse to fashion preposterous facial hair. Capture your progress in a series of hilarious photographs, sketches and quotations; purchase a miniature comb and make it glisten with waxes and other such concoctions to make your Movember ‘tache time truly memorable.

Tachetastic

Men everywhere are getting into in an increasingly popular men’s health awareness month. Each November chaps worldwide get involved with a sponsorship scheme to “change the face of men’s health”. The charity focuses on cancers: a shockingly high percentage of men do not even consider checking their nether regions for irregularities, which every year results in unnecessarily late diagnoses of testicular and prostate cancers.  By raising awareness and money, Movember can address its three core areas: Awareness & Education, Survivorship, and Research. In doing this men can be prepared and educated on what to look for, how to cope with diagnoses and feel supported during and ensuing treatment. The research involved is also crucial: more effective means of diagnosing, and developing treatments are essential for survivorship.

“Each Mo Bro must conduct himself like a true gentleman” and there are strict rules as to what constitutes acceptable Movember sprouting: neither goatees nor beards are permitted and no man must begin the month with a bristle showing. If you’re not involved this year, why not draw up some sketches for next year’s beauty? For now, why not sponsor one of the 1000s of men growing something splendid right now?

Fabutache

Remember remember...

...that, in England, once a year, every year, we will all head to the nearest boggy field donning our full collection of gloves, hats, scarves, walking socks and thermals and stand, neck craned, in the bitter cold, admiring coloured gunpowder for 20 minutes. All in the name of that rather daring chap who once tried to explode our monarch.

How patriotic :)

When Did I Get Old?

Everyone reaches a stage in their life when they realise "I am no longer youthful and hip"--for me, that moment arrived when I became conscious of the fact that I still said “hip”.  

For others this unwelcome revelation may come when they realise that words and phrases they were under the impression were still in common parlance are, in fact, no more. I have reached a stage in my life that when individuals employ an entry from the list of taboo terms, I recoil in empathetic humiliation. I say mutual, more often than not the speaker in question is (blissfully? Really? Is anyone truly blissfully mocked?) unaware they are the cause of furrowed brows and sniggers all about them.

The following may warrant adverse reactions:

• "To bone up on something". Familiar with parents and teachers everywhere: funnily enough, this one has nothing to do with inadvertent turgidity of the male member. Indeed it means to study in order to increase knowledge of a particular subject or topic.
• "Bog standard" is not,  in fact, toilet humour. Instead it refers to something that is plain and simple; without frills.
• Such sayings as "knee high to a grasshopper" and "as sure as eggs are eggs". Their explanations are straightforward and the turns-of-phrase quaintly effective: why do we continue to dismiss them from fashionable conversation?

Certainly, the person who enters the danger zone opening sentences with the age-old favourite, “well, when I was young…”, is asking for gentle parody but spare a thought for those keeping the above and similar alive. If one considers today’s watery equivalents, such gems as: “I’m not being funny but…”, “it was well good/funny/awesome”, “yer know what I’m, like, sayin’?” then it comes as no surprised when everyone over the age of 25 groans and rolls their eyes at an utterance.

burlesque galore

Targets

In life we need aims, goals, objectives, whatever you want to call them. We need something to work towards whether it be finishing that novel started on graduation back in 1973 or re-tiling the bathroom before Christmas so that your mother-in-law can't complain about the moulding grout again.

The key is knowing how to set a series of small, achievable targets. Manageable is the operative word here: if we set unrealistic or daunting targets we will either a) never get around to starting them purely because they are so daunting, or, b) become demoralised by our own lack of motivation.

When I am writing, I need to set very small targets, such as 'write 150 words by 11am', and then, when I over-achieve, I feel positive and am more likely to work productively beyond 11am. What I must be careful not to do is set targets such as, 'complete editing of chapters 2-7 by the end of the day' as then, by 11am, when I have barely made a dent in such an overly-ambitious task, I am ready for a G&T, let alone a coffee break.

This blog provides an excellent case-study: when I started it, I aimed to write a post a day. Instead, I haven't been able to write a word for well over two weeks. I now realise I am too busy to work to such a schedule and shall work towards writing a post a week.

All successful businesses set goals, all unsuccessful businesses set unrealistic ones. Productivity is key to success and further productivity, so take a shot at a bit of target practice.

Train Pain

Travel UK

I am sorry to say that I am a regular train traveller. Certainly, it is better for the environment than travelling by car, but, in all honesty, I am only travelling by train because I possess neither a full driving licence nor a car.

British trains are in every way horrific: they are dirty, they are slow, they are invariably late when you are in a rush, they break down, they are overstuffed, the ticket conductor is, eight times out of ten, begrudging of you being on their train, and to add insult to every aforementioned injury, they are more than three times as expensive as any other train in Europe.

Alas, as a true Englishman I know that there is little point bewailing the atrocious state of the British rail system: striking doesn’t work, making the country run out of money doesn’t work and complaining--although infinitely more preferable than the former two--most certainly gets us nowhere.  So I shall end here.

An oh-too-familiar scenario

Fifty Shades of Nonsense?

I, along with many others, would have to be (ironically, I do believe) tied to a chair and teased into submission before I would read a single page of E.L. James' "novel"* Fifty Shades of Grey/Darker/Freed (and yes, I am proud to say that I had to perform a Google search for the other titles).

The Fifty Shades debate has drawn many a literary snob out from the woodwork but also posed some interesting questions. Is it positive, for example, that this "book for people who don't read" encourages those who previously believed Waterstones to be either a beverage or a fountain accessory retailer, to willingly enter such an establishment?1 Perhaps they will return after purchasing the trilogy. In fact, perhaps Waterstones should offer a 3 for 4 offer or buy-one-get-one-free, forcing panicked punters to pick up a novel not written by the ubiquitous James.

It has been compared to Lady Chatterley's Lover, which is something of an affront to Lawrence, but I can see where they're going. But Fifty Shades is different: it wasn't written in an attempt to break free from the denied existence of human sex- and sensuality, but as an overtly simplistic light-hearted erotica response to the teenage vampire-on-non-vampire-forbidden-and-deadly-desire that somehow James dragged off on a tangent, wherein she displaced the dystopian vampireland, and landed the plot smack-bang in the centre of suburbia where Mr Grey could be conveniently coveted by housewives.2 And, unlike Lady Chatterley it most certainly isn't about to be banned, with shops at the height of its release being forced to put up notices stating, 'Fifty Shades series out of stock: awaiting delivery'. What, like Lady Chatterley, it has taught us, is that we're no longer ashamed of being sexually curious creatures and that we're most intrigued when it comes to someone else trying it out first. That, or, that the men of British suburbia are far too comfortable with vanilla intercourse.

The New York Times featured a story on libraries 'debating whether to stock Fifty Shades of Grey' with North Carolina collections manager, Tim Cole, giving the go ahead finally declaring the series to be of 'mixed literary merit'. Fifty Shades has certainly been created quite a sensation (very subtle pun wholly intended) but it still seems that the only 'merit' it possesses is the ability to make airport bookshops and amazon.com a little wealthier.

However you feel, Grey isn't going away any time soon. Perhaps though those newly attuned bookshop-goers could try out the Earl of Rochester next?

*"Novel" because the OED states that a 'novel' 'typically represents character and action with some degree of realism' and, I for one, refuse to admit that Fifty Shades makes one miserable attempt at writing anything close to even an impressionist take on realism.
1. As quoted on Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, Tuesday 3rd July 2012.
2. E.L. James' book was originally written as a fan-fiction response to Stephanie Myers' young adult Twilight novels. Somewhere along the line she decided to drop the blood-suckers for a hunk with a whip.

Manners Maketh Man...*

...or so I was repeatedly taught throughout my childhood. In today's cruel  world it would seem people have to fight the urge to be unnecessarily rude towards their fellow man. There was a time when neither a pram-wielding individual would have to struggle down a flight of stairs unaided nor an elderly member of society onto a train with luggage. Today you're lucky if a shop door isn't dropped on your face by the person entering directly in front of you.

We shouldn't offer help because it inflates our sense of self-worth by acting out a "good deed for the day" but because it is the right thing to do. If we all helped one another out a little at a time, a little more often, the world would become a much nicer place.

So remember, when you're next ambling along a narrow pavement, step aside and let the person heading towards you pass comfortably, or, if you see someone struggling with shopping, offer to lend them a hand. Even saying "please" and "thank you" these days is treated as though overrated, which it is most certainly not.

But sure, I'm a realist, being polite isn't going to bring about world peace any time soon but it might just add a little lift to someone's day.

* BlogFact: Quotation is motto of Winchester College, Oxford, founded by William of Wykeham.