daddy cool...

Apparently we’re in the middle of a vinyl revival. In 2015, it was the fastest growing musical format and accounted for 2% of all musical sales. Alright, so the numbers aren’t all that large, relatively speaking (Ed Sheeran has sold more copies of X on CD this year than the entire vinyl category put together), but they are growing and it was over a million units sold this year. Big enough for people other than specialist retailers to take notice, anyway. Tescos are about to start selling vinyl, for goodness sake.

There’s an official vinyl chart now too.

So who’s buying this stuff? Well, I think the chart for this week tells its own story:

Alright, so Adele tops the chart…. But ELO? New Order? Nirvana? The Pulp Fiction OST? The Clash? Led Zeppelin? the Stone Roses? The Smiths? NWA!

I’ll tell you who’s buying vinyl…people like me.

It doesn’t get much more contemporary as you go further down the top 40 either, Alongside albums by Taylor Swift, Sam Smith and the 1975, we have Dark Side of the Moon, Rush of Blood to the Head, Let it Bleed, Houses of the Holy, Nevermind, Rumours, Sgt Pepper, The Number of the Beast, AM and Whatever People Say I am That’s What I’m Not by Arctic Monkeys, Definitely Maybe, Bad, Abbey Road, Legend by Bob Marley, The Wall….

Let’s face it, this is a hipster chart, isn’t it? You can practically see the beards and smell the excellent artisanal, cold-filtered coffee.

As you do....

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Of course, I bought my record player, started buying vinyl and grew a beard way before it became a thing.

Way before.

sharp dressed man....

It's the BBC's "Wear your old band t-shirt to work day" today.  Which, let's be honest, is surely something we'd all rather get behind than Black Friday, right?  Sadly, as I work for a retailer, I spent most of my day in a shirt and tie helping customers in one of our shops.  That doesn't mean that old band t-shirts haven't been on my mind today.

I love t-shirts and have many, but my days of buying a t-shirt at a gig are mostly (but not completely) behind me.  I used to have load of old, faded band t-shirts, many that I'd picked up on my way out of a sweaty rock gig.  Most of them came from my heavy metal years, so they were of course EPIC.  I've had t-shirts by the likes of Iron Maiden, Little Angels, Thunder, Aerosmith,  I honestly think that one of my favourite t-shirts of all time was a Wolsbane fan club t-shirt with a wolf on the front and "Howling Mad Shithead" (the name of the fanclub) proudly displayed on the back.

If I could find one today, I reckon I'd buy it again.  I really would.

Funnily enough, I think the last t-shirt that I actually bought at a gig was an Iron Maiden t-shirt that I bought after their "Maiden England" set at Download a couple of years ago.  Well, unless you count to the "Glastallica" t-shirt that I bought after Metallica's set at Glastonbury in 2014.  Yeah, there a lot of really good heavy metal t-shirts.  In fact, of the band t-shirts that I do still have, many of them are from bands like Led Zeppelin, Metallica and Maiden.  I guess I'm pretty old school.

So, because it's "wear your old band t-shirt to work" day and because I haven't been able to wear a t-shirt to work, here's a salute to the band t-shirts that I have loved and sometimes lost along the way: the "William it was Really Nothing" t-shirt, "Love in an Elevator", that Led Zeppelin 1977 tour t-shirt, Billy Bragg's "Milkman of Human Kindness", a classic red Ramones t-shirt (and the Daily Mash spoof of it in blue), the "Alive" stick man by Pearl Jam, the cover image from Scott Walker's  Scott 1 that I loved so much that I made into a t-shirt myself, "The Number of the Beast", "Master of Puppets".... honestly too many to mention, and I've loved them all.  

They're a badge of honour that shows the world what you're about and you wear because you love the music and you want the world to know... well, that's how you should be wearing a band t-shirt, anyway.

I wish I'd hung onto them all because they tell a story of my life.

What's your favourite?

glow...

My new cycling jacket arrived today.

I'm firmly of the opinion that you can't be seen often enough when you're out riding your bike.  However indestructible you might think you are, if you get hit by something bigger than you when you're on your bike, you're basically toast.  At this time of year, with the clocks just changed, you still see a frankly terrifying number of people on their bikes in dark clothes and with either inadequate lights or no lights at all.  It's as if they were somehow taken by surprise by night drawing in so early.  "Well, it was light enough when I set off this morning..."

It's a form of natural selection.

I normally don't cycle anywhere without more than my fair share of luminous clothing, but to quote that famous scoundrel and cyclist, Lando Calrissian, I've just made a deal that will keep the Empire out of here forever.

What do you think, eh?  That was taken using the flash in a dark room.  Essentially, when I'm hit by headlights or something, I'll light up like a lightsabre.  It's one of these babies.  Not cheap, but honestly, what price do you put on your safety? Plus, you know... you get to glow like a lightsabre and/or look like a member of the Shamen c. 1991.  Sorted.

And because all bloggers are by nature narcissists, here's a picture with the lights on (with Blue Steel thrown in for free...)

Funnily enough, I actually fell off my bike on the way into work this morning, and I've got no one to blame but myself. I came across a dropped kerb at an angle and my wet wheel just slipped away from under the bike on the greasy kerb, and down I came.  

Given that the last time I came off my bike (which we DO NOT talk about), I gashed open my leg and cracked a couple of ribs, I was quite pleased to this come away with nothing more than a grazed knee and bruised hip and elbow.  And a sense of mild embarrassment, of course.

I guess visibility isn't everything.

rule number two...

Fairly early on into my training course for my PADI Open Water diving qualification, I was introduced to the two golden rules that all scuba divers must live by:

1) Never, ever hold your breath

2) Always look cool.

The first rule is easy to explain: air expands and contracts in your lungs as you change depth underwater. If you hold your breath whilst diving, the air can expand within your chest as you ascend and explode your lungs. Okay. Alright. Important safety tip. The second rule says an awful lot more about divers as a whole: you need to look cool at all times. A heavy wetsuit, flippers, a BCD and a whacking great cylinder of air make perfect sense when you’re underwater, but it’s a damn sight harder to work it as a look when you’re not actually diving. In those circumstances, an excellent pair of sunglasses and an air of studied nonchalance can go a long way.

I’m starting to realise that cyclists have a similar set of rules. It’s probably not so critical that you don’t hold your breath on a bicycle, but there’s a definite sense that you must maintain your poise even when wearing the most absurd clothing. I’m not sure that there is a man alive who can really pull off an outfit involving that much lycra, a padded backside, a bike helmet and those daft shoes that clip into pedals. I solve the problem by not even trying: never wear lycra as a top-layer and stay away from cleats. Other cyclists take the opposite approach: the success of British cyclists at the Olympics and in the Tour de France has led to a proliferation of cycle clubs, and the little drag of cafes where I live absolutely swarms with middle-aged pelotons sat at the outside tables with their legs apart and a pint of Peroni on the table in front of them. Some of them seem to spend a good deal more time wearing their lycra at café tables than they do on actually on their bikes. Sadly, many are also classic examples of middle aged men in lycra (MAMILs), but you have to admire the chutzpah that sees them attempt to style out their bulging lycra in the face of all taste or good judgement.

There are plenty of these guys in the changing rooms at work too, clopping their way in from the bike shed on their cleats wearing their Team Sky lycra. It’s a fifteen minute cycle into work, not a time trial up Mont Ventoux, for goodness sake. (some of them apparently don’t even break sweat on their rides to work in their full gear. At least, that’s why I assume they don’t have a shower before peeling off their pro-cycling gear and putting on their work clothes for a full day in the office, anyway….)

I saw one guy in there the other day, getting changed out of his work gear before he cycled home in the evening. Somehow, he had managed to put his sunglasses on first, before any of his other cycling gear, so he was standing at his locker with his wraparound, mirrored visor on, changing out of his trousers and into his cycling shorts. Now that is an admirable commitment to rule 2…. well, apart from looking entirely ridiculous standing indoors at your locker wearing only your pants and your sunglasses….

Honestly.  People, eh?

here comes the summer...

I take no pleasure in saying this, but the average British person has simply got no idea how to dress. Look around you, and wherever you are, I’m sure you’ll know it to be the truth: we just don’t seem to know what’s appropriate and neither do we seem to know what makes us look good. How else would you explain Frankenshoes, those appalling platformed high heels? I don’t think there’s a person on the Earth – supermodels included - who is able to wear them and to look graceful rather than like a bunch-backed clumping elephant.

Summer is a particularly bleak time. The first sign of the sun and the average British person breaks out their summer gear, pretty much whatever the actual temperature outside. I was in town the other week, and although it was sunny, it was pretty chilly and I was glad of my coat. Everyone else was apparently happy to slop about in short, t-shirt and flip-flops (the men brazenly displaying their horrible feet to the world). We also seem determined to dress to emphasise our negative points. I wonder if some of these people actually looked in a mirror before deciding to buy something, never mind before wearing it out in public. Don’t these people have friends in their lives? Friends don’t let friends wear jeggings stretched to the point of transparency out in public. Not even in Primark.

The office environment can be confusing too. My company instituted a “business casual” policy about ten years ago, with the only stipulation that you shouldn’t wear football shirts or crop tops (although the unspoken rules were many).  They haven’t subsequently revised the policy, but we have slowly drifted back towards suits through a process of gradual peer pressure. I tend to wear smart trousers and an open-collared shirt, and to be honest it’s a lot easier than worrying about which colour of chinos would be deemed the most smart casual. Not everyone thinks the same way, and you see some remarkable outfits in the workplace… many in conjunction with expansive tattooing. Now, I have tattoos. I don’t have a problem with tattoos…. But why would you get a fist-sized golden snitch tattooed on your breastbone and then wear a scooped t-shirt to work?

My current bug bear is the metrosexual male, many now sadly also blended with hipster, resulting in an eye-watering blend of beard, sharpened eyebrows, v-necked t-shirts, tattoo sleeves and tan brogues. There’s a guy who sits round the corner from me - a perfectly normal looking bloke: not skinny, not especially fat (if a bit fleshy)… but he likes to wear trousers that are styled slightly too short (deliberately, I think) with brown, Native American-style moccasins and no socks. I think he works in HR, so maybe that explains it.

Mind you, there’s another guy who stamps about near where I live with a beard, fedora and manbag, stamping about wearing a huge pair of builder boots when he doesn’t look like he could lift a bag of feathers, never mind a bag of sand.

Oh wait. That’s me.

they do it over there but we don't do it here....

Last Friday, I went to watch some cricket at Trent Bridge. The timings of the 20:20 games this year mean that they are almost all on Friday evenings and start at 18:30, giving people a reasonable chance of getting in from work and spending the first three hours or so of their weekend having a few beers and watching a crash-bang game of hit-and-giggle cricket. Sitting immediately behind us was a group of lads in their mid-to-late twenties. There were about six of them, and they were enjoying the game and enjoying a bit of bantz over a few pints. They were mostly drinking Rekorderlig, but dubious taste in overly-sweet, coloured ciders aside, they were just like any other bunch of mates watching a game of cricket and shooting the breeze at the start of the weekend.

Except….except…. what has happened to men? Somewhere along the way, we seem to have hopelessly lost our way. I think it might be David Beckham’s fault. These guys were at a game of cricket with their mates; not, you would imagine, an occasion to get tarted up. These guys were wearing moccasins with no socks, close-fitting harem pants with the bottoms turned up over their ankles; they were wearing open collared shirts with blazers…and worst of all, they were all primped and preened to within an inch of their lives. They had neatly trimmed beards (as best as they could manage, anyway) and perfectly gelled hair. But oh my goodness, the eyebrows. The eyebrows! I understand that a thick mono-brow may not be ideal, but why on earth do men get them sharpened and plucked to the point where they look like Ken dolls from the planet Vulcan. It’s bizarre. Do guys look at other guys who have had this done and decide that this is the look they wanted? Do they think this is what women find desirable in a man? Is this what women find desirable in a man?

Perhaps I’m so old now that I’ll never understand… but what’s Andy Burnham’s excuse?

He’s 45 years old and his eyebrows are so hopelessly over-manicured that you can clearly see the natural brow line where they should be sitting; hell, you can practically see the 5 o’clock shadow. They look so fake that they might as well have been painted on. Never mind that he's an MP, he’s also from Liverpool, for goodness sake!

Is this something I should be looking into? Did I miss the man-memo? I’m not against a bit of manscaping per-se, but things are getting out of hand and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.

smaller and smaller and smaller....

 
Over the years, I've lost quite a bit of weight.  I won't bore you with the story again because I've told it here many times.  Suffice it to say that, over the last fifteen years and without ever really trying, I've lost something in the region of 8 stone / 50kg / 112lbs.

Needless to say, over the years, this has necessitated some wardrobe changes.  Contrary to what you might imagine, this isn't just because I'm now a lot thinner than I used to be (although the last pair of jeans I bought have a 9" smaller waist than the ones I used to buy, which seems remarkable to me).  I also seem to have changed body shape too.  When I was a teenager, I played quite a lot of rugby and I played in the second row: it was the obvious place for someone of my height and general build.  If I was to start playing again now, I'm not sure where they'd put me, but I'm fairly certain I no longer have the heft required for the engine room of the pack.

Whenever I weigh myself, I often joke that I haven't been this light since I was coming up the other way, aged about 17.  I've just discovered that this isn't true either.

I bought a denim jacket when I was about fourteen years old.  It was a black Levi 501 jacket and I loved it to bits.  For years and years and years it had a little Iron Maiden "Powerslave" button badge on the breast pocket, and -- when I wasn't wearing my cheap leather biker jacket -- I wore it pretty much all the way through school and through University.  I was never quite able to bring myself to chuck it out, either... so, even though I haven't worn it in years, it's been kicking around the house in deep storage somewhere.

I dug it out the other day because it's a cool jacket and I thought I might start wearing it again.  Only it doesn't fit.  It's way, way too big and, when buttoned up, absolutely swamps me.

So, to recap: a jacket I bought when I was fourteen years old doesn't fit me because it's far too large for the forty-one year old me.

Is it meant to be this way around?

iron man...

I generally wear a smart shirt to work. In theory, our dress code is “smart casual”, but in practice most people dress up fairly smart. It’s just easier, isn’t it? I like wearing jeans and t-shirts, but I don’t like wearing them more than I like blending in when I’m at the office. In this instance, it’s just easier to conform, and throwing* a shirt into my cycling bag every morning takes very little thought at all. That being said, I don’t wear a tie. There are limits, and ties are both pointless and uncomfortable.

* Well, carefully folding**
** -ish

The only thing about shirts is that they need ironing. I know how to iron a shirt, of course, but there’s almost nothing more depressing than standing at the ironing board on a Sunday night contemplating a pile of unironed shirts. Sunday evenings are bad enough on their own.

So I took action.

Yes. I’m afraid to say that I outsource my ironing. I don’t mind doing the washing at home, but once a week or so, I take a pile of shirts to the laundrette round the corner, and for the princely sum of something like 50p each, I get someone else to iron them for me. It might only take half an hour to do them myself, but I reckon that’s £2.50 well spent.

It does, however, occasionally lead to the odd problem:

I have quite a lot of work shirts. Each one lasts a few years before it needs chucking out, and I have a rotating cast of shirts of varying types and qualities, from excellent Thomas Pink shirts, via decent TM Lewin shirts, all the way through to your bog-standard M&S easy-iron shirts. I tend to wear them as the fancy takes me: sometimes wanting a skinny shirt with double-cuffs, sometimes a fairly work-a-day button down cuff… I like to live on the edge.  I mix up my cufflinks too.  Yes, I do.

I bought a really nice shirt a couple of months ago, made out of properly soft cotton. At some point this week, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen it in a couple of weeks. I checked all our various laundry piles and bags of bits and bobs, but it was nowhere to be seen. Then, as I was looking through my other shirts trying to find it, it occurred to me that I might be missing some other shirts as well, including my posh dress shirt with the wing collars that I wear about once a year.

Hmmm.

I went to the laundrette, but they had nothing under our name. The nice lady in the laundrette then had an idea: they’ve taken on some new staff recently, and on a hunch, she checked the “unnamed” section. Sure enough, there were my shirts.

If it’s not a middle class problem when the laundrette that does your ironing has taken on new staff who don’t know your name and so incorrectly label your work shirts so they can't be found, then I don’t know what is.  It's not great that it took me the best part of a month to notice they'd disappeared either, is it?

fall into me, the sky's crimson tears...

I like t-shirts.  I have a lot of t-shirts.  Too many, my wife would tell you.  As habits go, I reckon that you could do a lot worse than collecting t-shirts.  I wouldn't say that it is a compulsion, but there is something appealing about being able to display your taste quite so obviously to everyone else.  I read some really cool books and have astonishingly good music taste, but you'd probably have to know me a little bit to be aware of that.  Your t-shirts, however, are a very public form of display.  Just as life is too short and too precious to waste eating crappy food, I feel much the same way about the t-shirts that I wear.

Every single one tells a story, whether it's of a great gig that I attended, a band or film that I love or just something that makes me laugh.  A quick peak into the sports section of my collection and I have souvenir t-shirts from two Olympics (2004, 2012),  celebrating rugby, skiing, running, cricket, ice hockey, scuba diving, sky diving...; I have a burgeoning geek section (Ghostbusters, Anchorman, Alien, the Incredible Hulk, Superman, Rocky, Star Wars....); bands (Metallica, Iron Maiden, Madness, Billy Bragg, Scott Walker, Led Zeppelin, Young Knives....)

Yeah.  I've got a lot of t-shirts alright.

But I don't have a t-shirt of a vampire cat wearing a cape and bow tie, standing in front of a blood moon.

UNTIL  NOW!

Behold Catula!

I first saw this t-shirt in a shop window in New York in January and I was so taken with it that I nearly bought it on the spot.   Foolishly, I walked away and regretted it almost immediately.  Seven months later, something made me think of it again, so I actually started looking for it in earnest on the internet.  Google is amazing, isn't it?  But honestly, using search terms like "vampire cat red bow tie moon" brings you back a surprising amount of results to wade through.

... but I got there!  You can buy it here (along with some other cool looking shirts).  I ordered it last week, and it arrived today.

BEST.  T-SHIRT. EVER.

Thursday I don't care about you....

As I was getting ready after cycling to work this morning, I noticed that another guy in the changing room was pulling on a pair of days of the week socks.  He was a grown man, well into his thirties, but he was pulling on a pair of days of the week socks.

Not just any day, mind.... he was pulling on a pair of Thursdays.

If it was me, I'd be wearing Mondays on a Thursday just to BLOW YOUR MIND.  This guy?  Well, I guess that, in his world, irony is for other people and that some things are just too sacred to be messed with.

Actually, now I think about it, all of my work socks are a uniform black.  Until I got married, I just washed them and used them interchangeably.  Early into our relationship, I found C. cursing how hard it was to pair my socks, and I had to point out to her that it was literally impossible because I had never at any point made any effort to keep them as unique pairs because, from my point of view, they were interchangeable.

To even be organised enough to have a specific pair of socks to wear on a specific day BLOWS MY MIND.  I'm marvelling at the logistics of this: if this guy keeps his socks in a ball like everybody else, how does he even know which day to wear?  Does he have a separate drawer in his wardrobe for each day's clothes?  That would be weird, right?  I didn't look closely enough to see if he was also wearing days of the week pants....

I might be overthinking this.

fairest of them all....

Since I’ve been cycling to work, I’ve naturally been spending a lot more time in the locker room at work. I’ve had a locker there for a while now because of my occasional lunchtime runs, but now I’m clearly in there a couple of times every day and not just once a week when I've popped out for a run. It’s nothing too fancy, as changing rooms go, but it’s pretty handy to have access to a proper, hot shower and somewhere to store your sweaty kecks whilst you’re working.

As you’d imagine, the clientele here are nothing like the people who frequent the changing rooms of my gym…. Or so you would think.

At the gym, I’m constantly amazed at how some guys seem completely unconcerned by their surroundings and think it’s okay to stand, butt naked, in front of the floor-length mirrors, gently massaging body lotion into their chests or carefully teasing their hair up to make sure that they look their best before hitting the gym floor. There’s also a lot of walking around topless, wearing only a skimpy towel or - much worse - a tiny pair of budgie smugglers, displaying your guns to anyone who looks like they might be even passingly interested. Apparently this is a thing in our gym, my wife informs me.  To be honest, they're so aggressively on display that I’m a little scared to make eye contact with some of them. For some reason, the guy who runs C’s ballet class seems to have taken a shine to me, and when we’re in the sauna together I find myself looking fixedly at the floor as he tries to catch my eye. I’m sure he’s lovely, but it’s really hard to concentrate when someone is wearing trunks like that....

Anyway. At the office changing rooms, people are mostly focused on just getting ready for work, and haven’t really got much time for preening and selling tickets to the gun show. Sure, there’s a bit of ridiculously over-macho talk about the training you’re doing for your next race, but that’s probably only to be expected. I’m sure at least some of these people read Men’s Health too and are keen to find out the latest way of getting a six pack within six weeks. There may even be a few metrosexual males, but as they’re putting on a shirt and tie and rushing off to their first meeting, they haven’t really got much time to display it.

Or so I thought....then, as I was changing the other day, I noticed a guy slowly getting dressed by his locker, making fierce eye-contact with himself in the big mirror. He didn't look away from his reflection once and was clearly mesmerised by himself: he admired the way he carefully buttoned up his shirt, turning slowly to admire his side-profile as he tucked it into his trousers. Yes, he clearly thought, I look pretty damn good today. He paused to tease his hair, before giving himself a final, lingering look up-and-down, imperceptibly nodding his satisfaction with himself before reaching into his locker for his shoes.  If he had another pair of lips, he'd kiss himself.

Mind you, whilst this little ritual was going on, I couldn’t help but notice, as he was admiring himself and congratulating himself on how amazing he was looking today, that he had a massive hole in his socks and his big toe was poking out.

His admiring eye clearly wasn’t especially discerning.

Quite the catch ladies. Catch him while you can.

solitary brother....

I went to go and watch "Blackfish" the other night.  It's a very powerful documentary by Gabriella Cowperthwaite about orca being held in captivity (it's notable in the film that all the people from the theme parks call them "Killer Whale", and all of the scientists call them "Orca").

Here's the blurb.

"Blackfish tells the story of Tilikum, a performing killer whale that killed several people while in captivity. Along the way, director-producer Gabriela Cowperthwaite compiles shocking footage and emotional interviews to explore the creature’s extraordinary nature, the species’ cruel treatment in captivity, the lives and losses of the trainers and the pressures brought to bear by the multi-billion dollar sea-park industry.  This emotionally wrenching, tautly structured story challenges us to consider our relationship to nature and reveals how little we humans have learned from these highly intelligent and enormously sentient fellow mammals".

The film is perhaps a little one-sided (there's no contribution from Sea World, for example), and I can't help but think that a few of the interviewees are being a little disingenuous about how powerless they were to make a difference, but there's no denying that this is a very powerful film.

We saw some orca in the wild off the coast of Vancouver Island in July 2010, and they are magnificent animals.  They live in matriarchal pods and they travel up to one hundred miles a day and may range across thousands of kilometers of ocean.  They are clearly intelligent, social animals and it just seems wilfully cruel to shut them up in tiny tanks and to make them perform tricks just for our gratification.  Is it really any wonder that these animals occasionally snap and lunge out at their trainers?  There have been absolutely zero reported attacks by orca on humans in the wild, but these sorts of attacks are relatively common in captivity and people have died.

This is a photo of one of the orca we saw in Canada.  That dorsal fin is about 2m tall.  It's a very impressive animal, and watching this film having seen these creatures in the wild really drove the message home for me.  We're better than this.  More importantly, the orca deserve better from us.  It's not an easy film to watch, but I'd highly recommend it.

I've been toying with the idea of getting another tattoo, and watching this film has reminded me of one of the designs I've been thinking about since our visit to Canada in 2010 (when I got my bear paw tattoo).  Sarah won't thank me for this, as she's been toying with the idea of getting one done in this sort of design for some time, but I'm really drawn to a haida representation of an orca.  Something like this:

For the haida, the orca is an animal of tremendous spiritual significance. Within the Haida society, the killer whales were viewed as members of a race of people who operate in the underwater realm much as human society does on land. The killer whales could capture a canoe and take it underwater to transform the occupants into whales. Thus, whales seen swimming near the shore were really transformed humans trying to get in touch with their families. Haida also used the killer whale as a popular symbol of family, for the whales stay with their families and travel in large pods.  Tlingit stories tell of how the killer whale was created: a man named Natcitlaneh was abandoned on an island by his jealous brothers-in-law. He was rescued by sea otters and taken to their village in a cave where he healed their chief. In return, the sea otters granted him magical powers. Natcitlaneh carved killer whales out of different types of trees. Finally, when he carved the whale out of yellow cedar, it came to life when placed in the sea. Natcitlaneh held onto the dorsal fin of the whale and went out to sea with it. There, he saw his brothers-in-law in their canoes. Natcitlaneh’s whale avenged him by smashing the canoes and killing his wicked brothers-in-law. Natcitlaneh told the whale that it must never again hurt humans. That is why killer whales, to this day, do not eat people.

Anyway.  It's a lovely design, and I was toying with the idea of getting it across the top of my left arm, with the tail dipping down towards the t-shirt line and the head facing towards my chest.

Another idea I've been toying with - perhaps for my right shoulder - is some sort of star map of Ursa Major.  I'd like something like this, perhaps with a bit less text, although I haven't really worked out how to make it work.

One to keep thinking about anyway.  There's certainly no rush.  I might explore the orca idea a bit further though.  The bear paw on my back represents an animal that is strong but gentle, lord and protector of the forests.  An orca represents something similar for the oceans, and I really like that.  I also really like the design (which, as it happens, is similar in colour to the bear paw on my left shoulder, which is a Navajo indian design).   I'm not especially looking to coordinate, but I suppose that's a happy bonus.

I've been chewing on both ideas since my last tattoo in 2010, but there's no rush.  No need to be hasty inking something permanently into your skin, eh?

what chance have you got against a tie and a crest?

I left the office today for a couple of hours to present an award on behalf of my company.  I mentioned this the other day to the colleague who sits just next to me.  I've known this lady for several years now, and on hearing this news, she looked at me for a moment or two, chewed it over and said, "Look, I'm not being funny or anything, but who the hell are you?"

She has a point.  Who the hell am I?

The event was a prize-giving that immediately followed the graduation of some students from Nottingham Trent university.  These guys have just finished one of those degrees where they juggle their coursework with a full-time job in placement with a company.  Over the years, we've had many of these guys working in our department, and for the last few years, I've been their mentor.  My company sponsors one of the awards - best performance in the final year - and they were good enough to ask me if I would hand out the prize - a cheque for £250 - on behalf of the company to the lucky winner.

I was delighted.

Neither of my two guys were the winners, but they've worked so hard over the last couple of years and it has been a real pleasure watching them develop and now to watch them graduate.  It was also a slightly bittersweet moment as my company isn't taking in any more of these students as they have decided to focus on apprenticeships and Year in Industry placements instead.  I'm involved with those too, but it was this scheme that first got me involved with what HR like to call our "Talent Pipelines" and that showed me how much more rewarding this sort of stuff is than my day job.

I had to get dressed up, of course.  It was a pretty hot day to be in a suit and tie, but I managed.  I had a slight dilemma this morning when I realised that my chosen shirt was rather limiting my tie choices.  I don't like to wear ties and most days I don't bother, so not surprisingly my choices are a little limited.  In the end, I plumped for my old school tie..... never something I do lightly as I don't remember my school days all that fondly and would not want anyone to see my choice of tie as signalling my approval for my school or for anything it represents.  Nor do I want to be seen as the kind of person who wears an old school tie.  I take a lot of pride that most people don't see me as privately educated and are surprised when they find out that I was.  Advertising my education through my choice of tie seems to go against the grain.....although you will notice that, for all my high principles, I still have my old school tie in my wardrobe.


Anyway.  I wore it.

As I feared, it was commented upon almost immediately after my arrival in the office.

"Oh, that's a nice tie.  Next, isn't it?"
My old school was founded in 1567.  The first Next shops opened in 1982.  I'm pretty sure this isn't what the school were going for when they chose these colours.  I was horrified to find that, although I was amused by the remark, I was also slightly insulted.  Maybe I am a snob?
That wasn't the last comment either:
"Oh, have you been at Wimbledon?  Were you a match referee or something?"
Someone else wondered if it was a Nottinghamshire CCC tie that I'd picked up at Trent Bridge last week.  Well, I am a member, after all.
etc.etc.

Not a single person picked it out as my old school tie.  Nobody offered me a job in the City or anything, not even at one of the smaller investment banks.  Perhaps I'll wear it tomorrow and see if I get asked to become a special advisor at Downing Street or to the Treasury or something.  I feel more powerful wearing it, so surely it's only a matter of time before someone recognises it for what it represents and accords me the appropriate respect immediately.

Not wearing this tie has clearly set my career back immeasurably.  I see that now.

in the pink....

I've been interviewing for the last couple of days.  For both days, I've been wearing a tie.... not because I have to, but because I want to.  I'm interviewing for sandwich students to spend a year with us between the second and third years of their degrees, and it would be perfectly acceptable for me to just rock up wearing what I always wear to work: a smart pair of dark trousers and smart shirt without a tie.  I don't like wearing a tie very much.  I don't hate them or anything, and I don't mind wearing them from time to time... it's just that I find them uncomfortable, impractical and completely unnecessary for my job.  So I don't wear them.

Still, I decided to wear one for these interviews.  Why?  Because I take this shit very seriously. Some of the most rewarding stuff I have done at work over the last couple of years has revolved almost entirely around the time I've spent with our apprentices, our sandwich students and our graduates and other guys like that, just starting out in their careers.  Their development is important because if we ever want to go anywhere as a business, these people are our future.  I know it sounds corny, but it's true.  Time spent making sure we get this stuff right is never time wasted and not enough people take this seriously enough.  So I wear a tie.  It's a sign to myself, if to nobody else that this stuff is important.

Of course, because I don't wear a tie to work very often, people feel the need to remark upon it.  Am I interviewing for a new job?  Did somebody die?  Very drôle and also deeply depressing in its inevitability and lack of imagination.  Yesterday was a simple grey shirt with a purple tie.  Nothing flashy and still it attracted comment. Today, I made the cardinal mistake of wearing a pink shirt and a blue tie.  The tie alone would have gathered attention, but the pink shirt is just asking for it.

Why is it that some guys just cannot restrain themselves from making a comment about another man wearing a pink shirt?  Ah, innuendo that perhaps because I'm wearing a pink shirt I might be homosexual?  How amusing.

I have three pink shirts, and I probably wear one of them every single week.  Pretty much every single week, I get a comment.  Today, I chose to wear the pinkest of my shirts, it's true, but together with the tie, that apparently made it open season on those comments.

Was I interviewing a lot of girls today?  Apparently wearing pink will soften them towards me as they will think that I'm a gentle man.  It's either that or I must be gay.  Well, I mean to say, pink shirt.  What other explanation is there?

I'm okay with wearing a pink shirt.  Why wouldn't I be?  It goes without saying that a comment like that says so much more about the person saying it than it does about the guy in the pink shirt, right?

Why can't we all just get along?  I respect their right to not wear pink shirts, so why can't they just respect my choices?  Live and let live, I say.  I'm proud to wear pink.  Loud and proud.

Hmm.  Maybe I should rephrase that.  I fear I'm only making the whispering louder.

one....

It's my birthday today.

In 2001, I spent my birthday in Agadir in Morocco between a week spent trekking in the Sahara and a week hiking in the Anti-Atlas mountains.  We were with our guide, Brahim, and his family.  They baked me a cake.

In 2007, I spent my birthday somewhere up above 3,500m in the high Paramo in Ecuador.  We were camping, but our guide - Ivan - had smuggled up a bottle of red wine and the cook managed to rustle up some excellent French fries on a camping stove to help me celebrate.

In 2009, I celebrated my birthday by renting a cinema and watching a screening of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with my closest friends whilst drinking excellent champagne.

In 2010, I spent my birthday in a rainy Gympie on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland with Deb and Jaimie at Margaritaville.  We didn't have a cake, but we had a lovely meal the day before to celebrate Deb's birthday (happy birthday, Deb!) and then had a breakfast straight off the BBQ on the veranda for mine.

2013?  Well, I've spent the day learning about the application of business analysis techniques.  I have an exam tomorrow, so I've got to spend my evening revising and going over my homework.  In addition, as I've got a stinking cold, I'm not drinking (which might just be for the first time on my birthday in decades....)

....but on the plus side, my wife has given me a onesie for my birthday, so I still reckon I'm ahead.

Best.  Present.  Ever.

the shaving razor's cold and it stings....

Did I mention that the beard has gone?

As soon as we got home from spending Christmas with my parents and my brothers and their families, it got the chop.  Boxing Day.  I started growing it just before Christmas last year, and it seems that about a year is my beard tolerance level.

Apart from anything else, I really just wanted to get my hair cut really short.  Having a beard kind of cramps your style from that point of view: I don't know what you think, but I reckon that when someone's beard is longer than their hair, unless they have a completely shaven head, it just looks weird.  So I chopped the beard off, and the very next morning popped out to get my head clippered too.

I think my wife was a bit alarmed.  She's joked about how my beard worked because it made my cheeks look less sunken, but I think that over the course of the last twelve months, she actually got used to the beard to the extent that, when I was threatening to shave it off, she said that it was a bit of a shame as she kind of liked it.

Too bad.  I'd had enough.  Beards, brogues and tweed caps might well be all the rage, but I will now officially only be rocking two of the three on-trends.  I will be accessorising with a Paul Smith modal scarf in signature stripe with frayed ends, mind.

When I got back from the barber, she took one look at me and told me that I looked like I had cancer.  "Leukemia chic", I think she called it.

Charming.

Hmm.   Maybe she had a point.

Well, anyway.  I'm enjoying being out from underneath it.  You have facial hair like that for too long and you sort of get trapped behind it as people forget what your face looked like without the fuzz.  Well.... mine looks kind of the same as it's always done: sallow, sunken-cheeked, thin-lipped and with a big, red, wonky hooter.

.....on reflection, perhaps I should grow it back.  Bigger and bushier and more all-concealing.  Gandalf-stylee, perhaps?  I am going to Canada in March.  That's long enough to grow a three foot beard that I can tuck into my belt, right?

What do you think, Internet?

he's making a list and checking it twice....

I received my father's Christmas list via email the other day.  He usually makes a point of saying every year how he's not a big fan of lists like this, but he didn't bother this year.  Maybe he's tired of receiving socks.

I think I actually started the trend in our family for writing Christmas lists.  I pride myself a bit on putting a bit of thought into the presents I get for people, but I'd simply had enough of receiving poorly thought out tat in return.  Clearly, what you get isn't as important as the thought, and I know that I'm a difficult person to buy for, but the year that one of my brothers gave me a giant plastic budweiser money bottle was the final straw.  After that, I just made lists.  You know: a few CDs, a few DVDs, a few books.  That kind of thing.  Nothing too fancy or expensive, but things that I actually want and would otherwise buy for myself.

Of course, once I'd started doing it, everyone else felt that they needed to follow suit.  It makes shopping a lot easier, for sure, and you can guarantee that you are at least getting people something that they want, but it does take some of the fun out it.

Anyway.  My dad's list turned up.  High up on the list (second only after "shirts") was this: "Long scarf, nice bright colours I can loop double around my neck in modern way. My current scarves are not long enough to do this."

Um.  What?  Loop double around your neck in the modern way?  What on earth is that?  I presume he means that thing where you fold the scarf in half and pull one end through the other in a sort of slip knot.  Is that an especially modern way to wear a scarf?  Have people not been doing that since there have been scarfs?  What a peculiar way of describing it.  Strange man.

Well.  We popped to Paul Smith anyway.  A nice scarf in the classic Paul Smith stripe should fit the bill.  Obviously, he'll only wear it with his hideous, huge high viz jacket with the velcro fastenings that will pull it to pieces, but that's up to him....

Anyway, other options on his list included things like "The People's Bible Commentary – Isaiah - A devotional commentary for study and preaching" (or, alternatively, the editions covering Job and Jeremiah).... and obviously I'm not going there.

oh bop, fashion....

On the way into work this morning, I dropped C. off at the train station so she could catch the early train to London so that she could pick up her new laptop.  Yeah, that pretty much is as ridiculous as it sounds.

Anyway.

A few hours later, I got back to my desk to discover an email from my wife - presumably sent from her new piece of kit and thus all shiny and with go-faster stripes.  The email was entitled "Trendy London types" and read as follows:

"The guy on the train opposite me this morning had a beard, was wearing tan brogues and flat fronted brown trousers, and had big white sunglasses (rayban, not oakley).
You are starting to become a cliche!"

Now, this is becoming ridiculous.  Listen, trendy London types, if you lot don't get your own look sorted out pretty soon, I'm going to have to start looking into getting myself an image rights lawyer.  You have been warned.

It's either that or I might have to -- reluctantly -- go and buy a razor.

Out of the kindness of my heart, I'll toss one more fashion tip out there for you all before I call in the lawyers.  This one's for free: Kreigsmarine deck jackets are next.

You heard it here first.

so hip it hurts....

I was wearing my Ho Chi Minh t-shirt last weekend.

I searched long and hard for this when we were in Vietnam during the August of 2010.  Clearly t-shirts of Uncle Ho are as common as muck and as cheap as chips over there, but I was looking for something a little out of the ordinary... well, and something that might last me a little longer than the first wash.

In the end, I stumbled across exactly what I was looking for in a small shop called "Papaya' down by the river in Hoi An.  It wasn't the cheapest by any means, but the t-shirts seemed to be a very high quality and - best of all - they were fair trade.

Here's a snippet from their website:

"Purchasing a papaya t-shirt you can be sure to help and also be involve in the building process of an equitable system where both, the worker earns a living wage so he can provide for his family’s daily needs, and you, the consumer can be sure of having purchased a quality product that will bring satisfaction and that he has done a good deed.
Our Policy: No children labour freedom of association safe and good working conditions reasonable salaries and benefits sharing reasonable working hours equal opportunities employment security respectful treatment of employees".

The label "Made in Vietnam" is used here as a badge of quality.

I wear my Uncle Ho t-shirt with pride: he's an iconic figure and it was a fantastic trip to a beautiful country (plus it's WORTHY, too... what's not to like?).  The great man only appears on the t-shirt in silhouette, but the guy in our local picture framing shop recognised it immediately on Saturday and commented approvingly.  Well, I suppose he would: he's both exactly the right sort of age to identify such an iconic figure AND he framed the Vietnamese publicity posters that we brought back with us (including one of Uncle Ho).  Hmm.   Now I think of it, he's also just framed a North Korean propaganda poster advertising an art exhibition in Vienna that we went to).  Yeah, so I guess he had some context.  But still....

A little later on, I was enjoying a beer in the bar at the Broadway cinema when someone else approached me about the t-shirt.  Now, the Broadway is the art-house cinema in town, and it has a pretty good bar: if you can find hipsters anywhere in Nottingham, you can find them here.

"Excuse me"
"Yes?"
"Do you mind if I ask you who that is on your t-shirt?"
I summoned my most nonchalant look and replied, "It's Ho Chi Minh"
"Ah."
Pause.
"...that was a great episode of Top Gear, wasn't it?"
He then went into what I assume was a Jeremy Clarkson impersonation, making some remark about how they'd now made it further north than the Americans, but by now I'd looked away disdainfully.  To be honest, I was a little embarrassed on his behalf.

Seriously.  I bet he wasn't there to watch a subtitled film either*

(* we were there to see Dark Shadows, btw... but he doesn't need to know that)

eagerly pursuing all the latest fads and trends....

You know this already, but I'm right at the bleeding edge of fashion.  Yes.  C'est vrai.

C. returned from London late last night having spent all day down there working.  In a slightly surprised tone, she remarked that almost every guy that she saw in the trendier coffee shops there - coffee shops, I can't help but notice, that she clearly frequents - was attempting to rock my look: tan brogues, leather jackets and a beard.

This is, you will remember, apparently called the "urban lumberjack" look.... a look that I adopted some time before I read about it in the Sunday Times Style magazine.  For reasons that I can't quite fathom, C. seems to find it remarkable that, although I am not at all interested in fashion, I seem to have a knack for being ahead of the curve.

As I pay no attention to these things, I'm flattered that she thinks so.  I don't really believe her, but I'm flattered nonetheless.

London likes to think that it's at the centre of every fashion.  No, scratch that.... at the centre of everything.  I used to have a friend from London who would visit us here in Nottingham and make ridiculous remarks that betrayed quite how in love many Londoners are with themselves and how little they think of the provinces:

"You have Pret a Manger here now?"
"You're allowed to wear trainers into most clubs in London"
"Starbucks? Since when?"

...that kind of thing.

I remember him being astonished that we had a vegetarian fast food restaurant.  He'd never seen one of them in London (although, please don't tell me..... I'm sure they had them long before anyone else).

a hipster in London, yesterday. 

In actual fact, when it comes to the urban lumberjack look, it seems that Nottingham is about fifty years ahead of London: at the book launch the other week, I was approached by an elderly gentleman.

"I like your shoes"
"Thank you very much"
"Do you mind if I ask where you got them?"
"From Loakes"
He nodded approvingly.  "Ah yes.  Loakes."
He then wandered slowly off, as I basked in the warmth of a shared appreciation of classic English footwear.

You just know that he was rocking this look in 1953, don't you?  They all wore baggy tweed caps oop'ere back then too, you know.  'Ave they got them in that London yet?

(for reference, Londoners, you might want to think about accessorising your beard and brogues with a waxed cotton bag.  I'm just saying.  Mark my words.  I did that months ago, but you'll get there eventually, I'm sure).