Facial hair

November, or should I say Movember is fast approaching and I will be cultivating a new friend for 30 days. I had facial hair as a young man and my moustache was a big one. It wasn't until my kids were teenagers that they first saw me without one. Facial hair is a strange business altogether. Shaving in itself is a most unnatural procedure and not one that I am altogether fond of, though i do keep my growth down to a fairly acceptable level. Copious bushy growths may look interesting but they also pose certain health risks. Anything passing into or out of, and maybe even close to the mouth, run the risk of getting trapped and withouth careful grooming, a face can become a repository for all sorts of delicacies. Fortunately I am not allowed, according to the rules to grow a beard. That would be too easy - just not shaving is a bit of a luxury. A moustache has be be nurtured and encouraged, shaving around the area and trimming strays with sharp scissors.

My major concerns here are one - that I will end up with a pure white monstrosity under my nose, and that two - I will end up getting attached to it. The last one stayed with me for 20 years but I doubt that i have anywhere near that long to mature this one.

My thanks to anyone who has taken the trouble to donate to the charity, or even to acknowledge that it exists. I hope that Anne has little success with her attempts; testosterone may have other more unpleasant side effects! :-)

a plea

Hi,

I am growing a moustache this year for Movember. I have decided to put down my razor for one month (November) and help raise awareness and funds for men’s health – specifically prostate cancer.

What many people don’t appreciate is that one man dies every hour of prostate cancer in the UK, more than 35,000 men will be diagnosed this year and that prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. Facts like these have convinced me I should get involved and I am hoping that you will support me.

To donate to my Mo, you can either:

• Click this link http://uk.movember.com/mospace/117557/ and donate online using your credit card, debit card or PayPal account
• Write a cheque payable to ‘The Prostate Cancer Charity - Movember’, referencing my Registration Number 117557 and mailing it to: Movember - The Prostate Cancer Charity, First Floor, Cambridge House, Cambridge Grove, London, W6 0LE.

Movember is now in its third year here in the UK and, to date, has achieved some pretty amazing results by working alongside The Prostate Cancer Charity. Check out further details at:http://uk.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs.

If you are interested in following the progress of my Mo, click herehttp://uk.movember.com/mospace/117557/. Also, http://uk.movember.com has heaps of useful information.

Thank you
Paul

ps Those who can might think about joining in and growing a nice bushy one too!

Values

I enjoy quizzes. I like to participate in them and enjoy writing and delivering them. In a moment of pure folly I have offered to run the quiznight at a local pub, and that is a huge commitment in terms of work and time. However i do tend to see things through and have been working on the first one which is due in a couple of weeks.
As I was compiling a round or two this morning I got to thinking about the quality of the questions and whether or not they were accessible to the punters. i remember setting a quiz for students at school some years back; this was a bright group of kids and I was taken aback when one lad complained that I wasn't asking questions that he knew the answers to. This is an important issue, and one thing that I wouldn't want to do is make anyone feel stupid. It is important to strike a balance and find questions that people can answer, but on the other hand they should not be too easy. People like to feel that they have accomplished something, whether they win or not.
I like to think that the people that go to quiz nights are those that actually value knowledge and for its own sake too. As a society we seem not to value such things anymore. We value money above everything else and unless you are wealthy or have the capacity to make money you are seen as irrelevant. Young people are being indoctrinated into an awful system, where they are not taught to recognise what is truly of value. It seems that unless you are a rock star ( I hesitate to use the word musician there), a football player, or something big in the city, then you are just run of the mill. We have lost touch with what is really important, and it is time that we reminded ourselves that some things are of more value than money.
Kids are forced through an archaic system of education that has lost its way and lost a sense of real purpose. What is the point of everyone going to university and gaining a degree? A degree these days has no market value anymore so why delude youngsters into building huge debts in order to become unemployable? Children should be taught or given the opportunity to think and to realise what they are good at, not to be thrust into a system that does no-one any favours. We need all sorts of talents, and those talents should be valued equally. Yes we need everyone to be literate and numerate for their own sakes, but equally important is that kids should grow up with self belief and self respect with a choice as to which direction they choose to take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

A dull monday

For me, the worst part of this time of year is the darkness of days. This morning the sky is thick and grey and there is also a thin wind blowing that compounds the dismal nature of our weather at this time of year. I can appreciate that autumn has its plusses and that the colours of the dying leaves is wonderful when the sun shines but today is looking like one of those days when nothing seems to smile.
I just got back from a lovely weekend away, having visited my daughter and her husband in their new home. They have upsized quite considerably and although the house is very nice, there are also a plethora of jobs that need to be done and lots of niggling problems that need to be sorted. Some of those fell upon me of course and I was happy to help out with as many as I could. Unfortunately my continued problem with hives broke out again and took the edge off the weekend but that is something that I have to earn to live with.
Moving house is always stressful and i remember very well making a similar upsizing movement when I was about the same age as they are now. The difference being that buy that time we had young kids and the house we moved into was almost derelict, and so i was taking on a monumental task and at the time wondered if i was capable of completing it.
Having a large house and garden is wonderful when you are young an energetic, and fabulous for bringing up children, but as we get older and less energetic, the benefits seem fewer and the problems greater. Now I am happy to live in a relatively small place, in which my study is a few cubic metres of isolation. It is here that I spend most of my time, emerging to eat and to socialise. My needs are simple and as I get older they get simpler still. We do regress towards childhood in so many ways and i don't suppose it will be too long before the only needs that I have will be the very basic ones.

Strange happening

I often think of my life as being on a level, neither unhappy nor happy. I don't get excited or angry or even upset anymore, and I suppose that has been the result of the way that I was brought up and the things that have happened to me over the years. Mainly i find that it is a comfortable way to go about things and maybe it is prolonging my existence.

It came as a surprise then, when last night i found my eyes brimming with tears as i watched a TV programme. Normally a well paid up member of the cynics society, as well as a qualified pessimist, the TV is just there and much passes me by unnoticed. Last night however I watched the Anthony Minghella production of Madame Butterfly from the New York Met, and it was wonderful. Butterfly is always a tear jerker I know, though I have sat through many live performances amongst a sea of sniffs and hankies, without batting an eyelid, but last night was different. The music is evocative enough and the performances were stunning, but what set me off was Butterfly's son, played by a puppet and controlled by two men in black. I have never seen such emotion produced by something inanimate before. In most productions a small child is used and they stand bewildered on stage until they are ushered off. The puppet stole the scenes in which it was used and for me was the making of the show. I pretended otherwise, but by the end of the performance my eyes were filled with tears and I could barely speak. No production has ever had that effect on me before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bror-r0Wfw&NR=1

A rant - just for a change

I find that as time goes by, I am becoming more and more apathetic about the world in general and people in particular. I know that I can do nothing to change either and so therefore what is the point in getting worked up about it? I have become an observer and not a very interested one at that.
I do like to think that part of my brain still functions though, and that I do take time to think about things before rushing to conclusions. I leave that to the tabloid press and those who allow the newspapers to do their thinking for them.
I was sent a movie the other day- a campaign to petition President Obama in order to stop NASA from "Bombing" the moon. Now the author of the message clearly didn't understand the nature of the mission which was to collide a small projectile into the lunar surface in order to analyse the debris and to hopefully confirm the presence of usable quantities of water. The video gave the impression that the moon was about to be nuked, blown out of existence with all the obvious consequences. Protesters would like to see the new Hadron collider to be closed in case they create a black hole that swallows the world, and there are those who see genetic engineering of food crops as evil, despite the fact that farmers have been doing it since prehistory.
There are many people out there who see any attempt to drive forwards the quest for knowledge as a threat, and many more who love to jump onto ill conceived bandwagons carrying conspiracy after conspiracy. It seems that it is fashionable to be paranoid as well as stupid. To be a free thinker is becoming harder and harder with education systems driving all through the same machine, the media forever dumbing down to the lowest common denominator and an ever increasing dependence on electronic media for communication.
In March, all being well, I will become a grandfather, and though delighted, I do worry about the sort of world he/she will be coming into. I fear that they will be absorbed into a culture that lacks excellence, where to be average is good enough and to be stupid is even better, where the quest for knowledge is seen as antisocial and where scientists are burned at the stake. There is little that keeps me awake at night but having another generation in the world makes me fear for their future.

Talking of which

It is at least six months away and i am already both tired and fearful of the next general election. Already the knives are out and politicians of various parties are beginning to hack pieces from one another with accusations of this that and definitely the other. The hopeful are assembling the dungpiles that they call manifestos, each trying to produce the biggest and most attractive heap that will coerce the unthinking and those with very short memories into voting for them. No doubt the tory party will win. They thrive in such conditions and are already talking about reducing state benefits and state control, easing more of the country's wealth back into the pockets of the tory supporting ruling class.

As always the Liberal democrats, they who were once the centre ground of the labour party, claim that they have a hope of winning the election. They can say whatever they like in the next half year, they can promise us new schools and motorways on Mars, because in their hearts they know that in the current system they have no chance of forming a government. As for the rest, well the minority parties will remain that and i predict that Mr Brown's party will be ousted and that we are in for another miserable period of tory rule. We probably deserve it as we did when Thatcher was elected, and my oh my was the punishment severe. The scars of her years in power are deep and long lasting, the fragmentation and divisions of society have never healed, and it looks as if the same basic ideology will be in charge of the country once again.

Of course the boat is leaking and the steering seems damaged, but come the election it will be sold to the highest bidder, and that is likely to be someone from the Middle East, who is ore interested in scrap value than in restoration or repair. I can alredy hear the creaking lifeboats being lowered by those in first class; those in steerage prepare for a long cold swim.

Lies

When I was a child, I was taught to believe in fairies, ghosts, father christmas and God. I guess there was time when I did believe in all of those things and i understand the reasons why parents propagate those lies. I think i even participated myself with one exception. Lies are so often justified that all lies today seem justifiable and that makes me very uncomfortable. I like to think that I am a truthful person and rarely will I lie to anyone, but it seems that the normal way to behave in the 21st century is to lie as long as you can get away with it. I am not talking about telling someone that they look nice in order to make them feel good about themselves, though I am guilty of that quite frequently, I am talking about the big lies that many people today see as perfectly ok. Insurance companies tell us that we should never admit to guilt in the case of an accident, in turn so many people lie about insurance claims, and so it goes on. Politicians lie all the time, but then it is called bending the truth.

As an ex teacher, I am so familiar with kids who you see committing an offence, blatantly denying that they did it, or that they were even there, knowing that without any proof their word against mine negated any guilt. Sadly, a long exposure to lies makes for cynicism, and so these days i take most things with a large pinch of salt even though most people that i know are honest and truthful. There are still some who like to say things that you want to hear, and although done for the best reasons, they are lies.

I was also brought up to believe that telling the truth was a good thing, and I still believe that to be the case. Surely a measure of society lies in the ability of its people to recognise the value of the truth, and that it is nothing to do with religion.