I honestly believe that if it started raining right now, I would strip bollock naked and go and stand in it for ten minutes singing Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. I’m sweltering gentle reader. I’ve just asked Alexa what the temperature is and she replied “Piss off! I’m too hot to care!” Actually, she said it was 28 degrees centigrade which is ok for July but at the moment I write this it’s only 10:30 in the morning and its set to climb to at least 35 degrees by the afternoon.

And my trouble is that I’ve got two trains of thought going on:

1. We shouldn’t moan about the hot weather because we get enough cold weather and rain in this country.

And

2. Help me someone please! My skin is turning into crackling.

But what worries me the most is that scientists are saying that we should get used to this because it’s going to be the new normal due to global warming.

Now, I usually tend to trust scientists about as far as I could spit a live rat, but in this case they may have a point. I was shocked to watch the news last night and see great swathes of forest in France and Spain ablaze with such ferocity. We’re used to seeing news footage from Australia of such devastation but I feel we don’t really connect with that because it’s on the other side of the planet.

Seeing it so close, just across the channel, is another matter, however, and it does bring to mind the thought that how long before the New Forest or the Forest of Dean or any large area of precious woodland in the UK goes up in flames.

I’m very worried. Very! And very isn’t a word writers should use too often, but I can’t think of a better one to describe how worried I am. I live in Settle, near the North Yorkshire Moors and the Forest of Bowland and the thought of seeing plumes of black smoke drifting across the sky isn’t a pleasant one.

But, if this truly is the new normal then it’s only a matter of time.

And an even more stark fact is that we cannot rely on world leaders to do anything about it. There was a COBRA meeting yesterday to discuss what measures to take during the heatwave yet there was one glaringly obvious absentee. Whilst the rest of the country were ordered to stay indoors and progressively fry throughout the day, our prime minister went poncing off for a Top Gun style jolly in an RAF jet fighter. Glad to see he’s taking it so seriously. Twat!

No, it’s up to all of us I’m afraid, that’s if it’s not too late. We need to cut down on travel, cut down our electricity usage, use less packaging, adjust your thermostat, plant a tree… Oh I don’t know there’s loads of things aren’t there? Just try and make a difference, that’s all.

Please stay safe during this unprecedented weather. Drink litres of water (tap not bottled), wear a hat, try not to use the car unless you have to and stay in the shade. All totally obvious advice I know but there are already reports coming in about people who have died from swimming in reservoirs, canals and rivers and others admitted to A&E with heat exhaustion and sun stroke.

I find it perversely funny that Labradors are so very easy to train and yet human beings, who claim to be infinitely more intelligent than dogs keep making the same tired old mistakes time and time again. We’re not intelligent at all. We’re the stupidest species on the face of the world. Whilst dogs and cats and every other fur covered creature on earth is hiding in the shade, we’re happily baring our beer bloated bodies on Brighton beach to let the Sun do it’s very worst. I know there were a lot of B’s in that sentence but I think it works.

If this is the new normal then send me back to the 1970’s. Yes, we still got sunburnt but back then that was normal. Summer was normal. If you went out in the Sun with nothing on you came home red raw and you doused yourself with calamine lotion and stank the place out for a day or two. After a while you peeled and felt rather foolish and extremely itchy. Tales of sun stroke back then were few and far between. Now, they’re normal. The new normal.

So, in conclusion, I’m on my second pint of water so far today with many more to come. And at the first sign of any rain, I’ll be out there, sans clothing (well, maybe in shorts) and listening to the steam hissing off my body. Too much information? Yeah, maybe, but don’t tell me you’re not thinking of doing it yourself now I’ve planted that seed in your mind.

Something truly wonderful has happened on YouTube in the last couple of weeks, gentle reader, and if you don’t know what I’m going on about then I’ll gleefully tell you. The new/second series of Stevenson Speaks is now up and running. And in case you need me to expound further and are asking yourself, ‘what the bloody hell is he rabbiting on with now?’ then calm down, take a pew and I’ll tell you more.

Stevenson Speaks is a series of charmingly amateurish videos I recorded during the lockdown of 2020. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time what with not being allowed to do anything or go anywhere and all that. And so I sat in the barbecue area at Airedale Boat Club every Monday for a few weeks and knocked out five videos, which all prove that I do, indeed, have a face for radio.

But I did enjoy doing them, immensely, and so I thought ‘What the heck? Let’s do some more!’ And that’s precisely what I have been doing for the last two Fridays; recording, editing and uploading the first couple of vids of the second season of Stevenson Speaks to YouTube.

I’m a great believer in the old phrase – try before you buy, so I’m going to give you the low-down on what Stevenson Speaks is all about. Well, in a tight, compact little nutshell, I sit and talk to the camera for twelve or thirteen minutes or so about my books and all things connected. ‘What do you mean by connected Stevenson?’ I hear you ask. Well, I’ll explain.

In the first season of Stevenson Speaks I talked about:

• My first novel – Ah Boy!
• My second novel – The Ghost of Lenton Wattingham
• Believing in yourself and your writing
• The value of influence in writing
• The importance of planning your writing

See! All very much connected.

In this new series I’ll be talking about the following:

• My new novel – Hot Eire
• My third novel – The Pheasants Revolt
• My fourth novel – Mutch Wants Moor
• Blogging
• Podcasting
• My website
• Fibromyalgia – a condition that has plagued me for almost two decades

So loads to come for your watching enjoyment.

Hey, listen, I don’t claim to be great (or even good) at this video presenting thing but I’ve got a damn sight more charm and charisma than Richard Madeley; mind you, that wouldn’t be difficult would it? Alan Partridge has more charm and charisma than Richard Madeley. In fact, who doesn’t?

But I’m digressing now.

Please do take the time to watch my little videos and give me a thumbs up and subscribe. It all helps me to keep doing what I’m doing. You never know where it could lead. Ok, so none of my vids have exactly gone viral as yet but that’s not the point is it? They’re there to inform and hopefully entertain, and that is what you should expect from a writer.

Oh, and did you like my title for this post? A play on words of that awful new wave song by the Buggles. Admit it; you’ve got an ear worm now haven’t you?

I feel like I’ve had the absolute stuffing knocked out of me gentle reader. Fibromyalgia has flared violently in my body yet again and I’m walking with a stick and wincing at every physical movement. Even as I type this I have an overwhelming urge to shout ‘F*** IT!’ and go back to bed. Yeah, that bad.

However, if there’s one thing that I am it’s a trooper. I’ve always had that ability to push on when things get rough but of a truth I’m struggling, struggling badly. Ergo, this weeks podcast, whilst still 40 minutes long, was possibly my hardest one yet. I just couldn’t raise my spirits when I recorded it and even Joke of the Week hurt me when I laughed. And I’ve got to record a video on Friday. Oo ‘eck, as Joe Wilkie might say.

Then there’s the writing. I had a pop at the new novel on Monday afternoon and managed a paltry 400 words. Compare that to a month or so ago when I achieved over 7000 in one day; a personal best. Still, they were 400 good words so let’s look on the bright side.

You see, that’s the thing with fibromyalgia. It’s always there, a constant nagging reminder with aches, pains and tiredness which you kind of live with, and then you get a flare up, like this one, and by God you know about it then. Right now I feel as if I’ve single handedly arm-wrestled a whole troop of baboons and lost badly to each and every one of them. My shoulders feel like someone has set fire to them and my legs are neither use nor ornament. Especially ornament. As for the fatigue, let’s just say that right now, at this very moment, as I slowly and painfully type these words, I want my pillow.

So things here at Blessham Hall have somewhat ground to a halt. Yesterday was Becky’s graduation from Leeds Art University and I went and helped her celebrate. It was a lovely day, truly it was. Ange and I felt very proud of her. But I shuffled about the place like a centenarian on quaaludes whilst all around me energetic bright young things in caps and gowns with beaming smiles revelled in their academic success. They probably took one look at me and thought, ‘Poor old sod, they ought to put him out of his misery.’

Anyway, my fingers hurt from typing so I’m going to sign off for now. I’ll be back, you know darn well that I will, but for now I’m going to heed the lilting siren song of the mattress and crawl back into bed. See you very soon.

Sooty the One-Eyed Wonder Cat, I call him. That’s because everyone wonders why he’s only got one eye. Seriously, he wandered off one day in the late Spring of 2014 and came back three months later minus his left eye. Where he’d been and how he lost it is anyone’s guess. Anyway, he lives here with me and Ange at Blessham Hall now.

Truth be told he’s Becky’s cat actually (Becky is my step-daughter if you didn’t know) and she’s had him for nearly ten years. Well, apart from that ocular-organ-losing three month sojourn that he went on. He was originally intended to be ours though, mine and Ange’s. We’d lost our cat Pebbles in the June of 2012 and Ange felt like she wanted to fill the void he’d left behind. Also, we (somewhat misguidedly) thought that a kitten would be good for Pixie, Pebbles sister, who was still with us. How wrong we were on that one.

A friend of ours, Sue, rang one day to tell us that her daughters cat had had kittens and did we know anyone who might want one. Naturally we came over all warm and fuzzy at the thought of purring and cuddles and said that ‘Yes, we’ll take one. Thank you very much.’ And so off we went to Sue’s daughters with a large cardboard box (I think it had had bananas in it) lined with a fleece blanket to select our fluffy new addition to the family.

When we arrived we discovered that there were only two kittens left and we chose the one that seemed most lively and interested in us at the time. Sue’s daughter put him in the blanketed box and we trudged down the stairs again with our precious cargo. And then… and then I had a sudden wave of what I can only describe as abject mushiness and said to Ange, ‘We can’t separate them.’ And thus, the other kitten with the black, almost soot like, markings on his face joined his brother in the box and we set off for home again.

We were so excited to see what Pixie would make of her new step-brothers. Would she go into mother-mode and cosset the two little bundles of feline-hood or would she be a tad cautious perhaps and let them take time to get to know each other? The answer was neither.

Pixie threw a cat tantrum on an epic scale. She basically went on hunger strike, refused to even enter the boat we were living on at the time and kept sticking her head through the window to hiss and screech at the tiny newcomers like a woman scorned. ‘It’s no good,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to take them back.’ This of course made Erin, our granddaughter very sad and she begged Becky to let her and her mum keep them. Becky agreed and myself and Ange made a vow to help with the expense of raising two kittens – vet bills, food, toys etc etc.

And so the kittens were named Snowy and Sooty and went to live in the cottage with Becky and Erin and the rest, as they say, is history. And it was all sweetness and light with the exception of Sooty buggering off for a whole Summer and coming back half blind. It was agreed that Snowy was Erin’s cat and Sooty was Becky’s.

Fast forward to 2022. Becky and Erin are now living on a canal boat and are quite fond of moving around on it. And why wouldn’t you? That’s what boats are for after all. If they were meant to remain in one place they would be called Floating Bungalows. But boats they are and Becky in particular likes to cruise. Sooty, on the other hand, he don’t.

Every time that the boat moves he freaks out and disappears for days, sometimes weeks, on end. He never strayed very far and he was always located thanks to a combination of social media and human kindness. The trouble is of course, if your home is mobile then your pets have to be too and it seems like poor old Sooty just didn’t have the stomach for the waterways.

The solution! You’ve got it, he’s now come to live with us here at Blessham Hall. It’s win win win really, for all of us. Becky has got peace of mind knowing Sooty is safe, Ange and I are happy that we’ve got a little puddy tat running around the place again after we lost Pixie last year and Sooty, well, he has all the peace and quite he could wish for.

As with all our pets over the years he’ll be molly-coddled to within an inch of his life. He’ll eat the finest of foods, he’ll sleep wherever he damn well pleases and the whole world will grind to a halt when he starts meowing and we have to find out why. He’s basically going to live the life of Riley.

So welcome to Blessham Hall Sooty. You’ve already made yourself very comfortable so it just remains for me to say: please leave the squirrels alone.

Drum roll please… Dr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-uh!

IT’S HERE AT LAST!!!

Yes, at long last my new novel is out and ready to satisfy all your literary comedy needs. It’s called Hot Eire and it’s available to download Here.

So come on then, what’s it all about Stevenson? I hear you cry. Well, it’s the third installment in the Joe Wilkie series and follows on directly from where The Pheasants Revolt left off. If you recall Joe was having a drink outside the Pig and Whistle on a Saturday afternoon at the end of his last adventure and a certain young lady arrived back in the village. Yes of course it’s Meg, surely you didn’t need me to tell you that, did you?

Anyway, Meg’s back and things don’t go smoothly. Some of the more self-righteous residents of Blessham aren’t entirely thrilled that she’s returned. Joe is though, naturally, and he sets about trying to protect his girl from the clutches of the new organisation that’s been set up to oust her again. Her Ladyship isn’t best pleased at his efforts though.

In a bid to give Meg some breathing space he takes her to Ireland to visit his mum and Seamus on their stud farm and once there all manner of chaotic calamity ensues. Especially when Joe meets a very interesting new character (whose name I won’t reveal – you’ll have to read the book) and takes in a few highly comical sight-seeing trips here and there.

They have to return to Blessham of course but things have gotten worse whilst they’ve been away and a showdown is on the cards. What will happen? Will Meg have to leave? Will Joe save the day? Will Lady Stark-Raven ever stop farting? These questions and more are answered in Hot Eire. There’s a host of new characters, the return of many of your old favourite characters, a spiteful antagonist who you’ll love to hate, romance, riots, raunchiness and of course all the usual barking madness that follows our old friend Joe wherever he goes. Well, you wouldn’t expect anything less, would you?

It’s a real side-splitter and no mistake and I strongly urge you to read it at the earliest available opportunity. In fact, why not do it right now? Go on, head over to Amazon and pick yourself up a copy. Your sense of humour will thank me.

Sorry for the long gap between posts but I’ve been so busy writing that pesky fifth novel that you’re all clamouring for.

Anyway, I’ve discovered my new favourite thing. Purely by accident and just having a go. It’s writing in an accent. I first got the taste for it in my last novel, the hilarious and very well received Mutch Wants Moor. Of course the main accent in that one being the Glaswegian brogue of Mary Mutch which comes to the fore when she loses her temper with her calamitous husband.

I found the character of Mary such fun to write and the influence for her accent came from my many years working with Glaswegian people. I spent six years, no less, working in a crisp factory with expatriated natives of that fair city. I won’t give away the name of the crisp factory other than to say it wasn’t exactly a Golden time in my life and it’s a Wonder how I managed to stick it out for so long.

But, I do feel I have a good ear for accents. My travels across the UK have seen me spend time in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, London, Norfolk, my current home county of Yorkshire and of course my early stomping grounds of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Lincolnshire, which all have their own very distinct accents. Perhaps not as pronounced as Geordie, Brummie or Scouse but still highly evident to the trained ear.

My new novel is full of a particular accent. I can’t reveal which one at this stage as I’d hate to spoil the surprise but what I will say is that I am having the most fun a writer can have by working with that accent. The only problem being that writing in an accent does tend to slow the writing process down a little. You really have to pore over every word and then double check each sentence. Mind you, I’m currently working at approximately 5000 words a day on writing days which is about three a week at the moment. The fatigue and pain caused by fibromyalgia being the dictating force behind my current output.

I do feel I would like to explore accents further in my writing but I do have a reservation about it alongside my enthusiasm for it and that is: how easy is it to read? Does it slow the reader down in the flow of the book and thereby reduce their enjoyment of it. I remember reading a John Buchan novel many years ago in which one of the characters, a bluff, no-nonsense Yorkshireman, got into a fight with some people of a different nation and the line he used was ‘Ah’ve bin knockin’ furriners abart for ten minutes.’ It took me a further ten minutes myself to work out what a ‘furriner’ was until the light bulb went on and I realised he meant foreigners. And that is my concern towards my own readers.

However, a lot of people have told me that they enjoyed the character of Mary Mutch and would like to have seen more of her in the novel. I don’t know, maybe she’ll make a reappearance in one of the Ingleby novels further down the line. Who knows?

But for now, I’m having tremendous fun writing an accent of a particular character that I’m sure you’re going to love. In fact, you could call him a loveable rogue. I’m hoping that you’ll be able to meet him soon and of course re-acquaint yourself with a certain Joe Wilkie. And be honest now, Joe has an accent in your head, hasn’t he?

Mind out. Mind your back. Mind how you go. Mind over matter etc etc.

And so we come to the last in this little series of Self Preservation posts and I’ve rather enjoyed sharing my journey on the road to personal improvement with you. And the final, and perhaps most important stage of the journey for me is how to improve my mind.

Here’s the thing. I have a very profound fear of dementia based on very real facts that my poor brain has taken a proper pasting over the years. I have received more concussions via accidental blows to the head than I care to mention. There have been many such incidents during my time in manual labour and also one particularly bad one when I dived into a swimming pool on holiday when I was twenty years old, swam across the width like Johnny Weissmuller and then connected abruptly with the side of the pool with the top of my head. And yes, of course I was trying to prove my prowess to the ladies although having to be dragged unconscious out of the water by my friend didn’t exactly add to my appeal with the opposite sex.

On top of all this though, as a kind of warped little cherry on the cake as it were, I had encephalitis in 2003 which very nearly killed me and I’ve never been the same since. The last brain scan I had a few years ago revealed that there was something on the brain that didn’t look quite right but they couldn’t say exactly what. The last piece of advice they gave me was to live my life and if I ever had any problems with my head then to come straight back and tell them.

Hmmm!

So as you can see I am a bit of a walking time bomb. I may live to a ripe old age without losing the old marbles but there’s a distinct possibility that it could go the other way. And that frightens me gentle reader, it really does. Terrifies me. I recall visiting an elderly relative a few years ago in a nursing home and it was frankly awful. The odour of the place was as foetid as a navvy’s armpit and the food that was placed in front of these venerable ladies and gentlemen looked utterly revolting and about as palatable as a plate full of John Innes No.3 compost; but sadly those poor old souls were none the wiser.

I do feel that I’ve got genetics on my side a bit though. My mother is now in her 90’s and in rude health for her age. Yes, she’s getting very forgetful now but that’s a fairly recent development. Likewise my grandmother, 92 years old when she passed away, was as sharp as a tack right up until the end. Her secret? She kept her mind active. She read avidly. She watched interesting TV shows as opposed to soaps and trash. She took plenty of fresh air and beautiful scenery. She holidayed in Scotland where the terrain is pure mind candy. She did crosswords and puzzles in the newspaper and the dear old People’s Friend magazine. She kept the old grey matter as busy as she could.

And that, my friends, is what I intend to do also.

Obviously writing for a living will help massively but I want more than that. I want to exercise that big funny shaped muscle between the ears as much as possible. Quizzes, word games, joke writing, studying literature, learning new technical things and keeping up with the times, reading voraciously, engaging in meaningful conversation, appreciating the natural world; it’s all going to help.

Let’s face it. There’s no point in me using Dr Balls Bollock Balm or losing weight or having new glasses if I’m not going to get the most of them due to the gradual deterioration of my mind. And I do think it’s an area that a lot of us neglect. It’s too easy you see. We’re told what to do with our minds all the time. We’re conditioned to come home after a hard days work and slump on the couch to watch mind numbing shows like X Factor, The Masked Singer (God but I loathe Davina McCall), Big Brother, Love Island and a whole slew of trivial shash that does nothing to improve our minds or feed our imaginations.

Revolt, my friends, while you’ve still got a chance. Free your minds. Say NO to Simon Cowell and his ilk, don’t let the media dumb down your life so that they can fill their pockets. Put down that remote control and pick up that crossword book or novel instead. Trust me, by the time you’re in your eighties you’ll thank me.

So there you have it. I’m well on the road to making vast changes in my life, both physically and mentally and I would love it if you’d join me on the journey. As for me, I’m now off to read a few more chapters of the book I’m currently ploughing my way through and then I shall have a couple of hours bashing away at the old laptop on my own current work in progress.

Look after your minds folks. You only get the one.

I believe it was a gentleman called Karel Fialka who sang ‘The Eyes Have It.’ A bouncy and jaunty enough little pop song from the tired and straining arse end of the nineteen seventies. I actually liked it, as a thirteen year old who was just taking his first tentative steps into the realm of heavy metal and all things Black Sabbath. But that’s not where I’m going with this.

Eyes, the windows to the soul. Subject matter for poets, bards and balladeers alike throughout the centuries from time immemorial. Without doubt the most expressive organs in the entire human body. The eyes convey more emotion with just one glance than the rest of the body put together. We can tell if a person is happy, sad, angry, lying etc etc just by looking into their eyes. We can also tell when someone is intoxicated or off their tits on ketamine or cocaine too. Very handy for the boys in blue.

My eyes, however, are a deplorable and shabby mess dear reader. Plagued with blepharitis and looking like they belong to a hungover sow that’s spent the whole night making piglets and now needs a good lie in followed by some strong, caffeine laced swill, they resemble nothing more than hooded razor-made slits in my face that peer at the world through a myopic blur where everything comes in twos or has a shadow.

And, as a perfect and complete fool, I’ve put up with it for far too long. I last had an eye test in 2014 at the Shipley branch of Specsavers. And it was great, for a while. But after an alarmingly short amount of time I began to lose my focus, developed headaches and stopped wearing the glasses they sold me because it was just so much easier to not wear them. What a berk!

My eyesight has deteriorated much since then to the point where driving has become a terrifying, anus-clenching ordeal and menus have to be decoded to me as if they were in hieroglyphics. And so in my new spirit of self care I decided that things had gone too far and that new spectacles were in order. Thus, I hastened forth to Boots Opticians in Keighley last week and underwent a very, and I mean very, thorough eye test.

The long and the short of it is that – I CAN SEE!!!

I now have two, lightweight pairs of glasses (distance and reading) that I am overjoyed with and it’s like a whole new lease of life. I no longer have to squint and stand near a window to read instructions on food packaging. I no longer have to be told by my granddaughter what such and such a road sign says. I no longer have to avoid watching films with subtitles (no, not just because they’re French). I can now appreciate the natural world and my surroundings to the full, as God intended it to be.

And of course, as a writer and avid reader the benefits are unending.

So my advice to you all is simply this – get your bloody eyes tested. Seriously, if you are having even the slightest difficulty with them, get your ass down to Boots, Specsavers, Vision Express or any good independent optician and get yourself sorted out. Trust me, your world will be a much safer, happier and more beautiful one, as mine now is.

As Mr Fialka sang all those years ago, the eyes truly do have it.

Ok, so I mentioned briefly in my last post about the fact that I was grossly overweight. Well, I’m not ashamed (or perhaps I should be) to confess that that is genuinely the case. I won’t divulge exactly how overweight but let’s just say there are probably hibernating Grizzly bears in the Yukon that weigh less than I do right now.

So if that’s the facts, why is this post titled Self Preservation Part 2 then Stevenson, ya big ox? I hear you cry. And you would cry with good reason my friends but here’s the point. Finally, after many years of yo-yo dieting (I can’t stand the taste of yo-yos though) I have finally done something about my wobbling, great, unsightly obesity. All because of that new-found desire to start looking after myself. And people say miracles don’t happen. Tut!

My problem with food goes right back to my childhood. I’ve always been obsessed with my gut you see and filling it has always been one of life’s myriad pleasures for me. My mother was a very good cook and had a propensity for baked goods such as cakes, pies and pasties (no Greggs when I were a nipper) and her Sunday dinners were to die for. Of a truth, we never went hungry and I thank God for that. And it seemed that whenever we went to anyone’s house for a meal and there was food left over, it was always piled onto my plate to finish. And finish it I always did. With gusto!

But despite my surfeit of food growing up I was never a fat kid, nay not even portly. You see, I was also a lover of the great outdoors and physical activity. When I wasn’t hoofing a football about I was tramping over the hills and countryside with our collie and my mantra as a child was always ‘Why walk when you can run.’ Ergo, the fat never had chance to build up as I was always burning it off in one way or another. Even into my teens and early twenties and yes thirties too, copious food went hand in hand with exercise. I’d think nothing of downing ten pints before polishing off a tasty curry and naan or a donner kebab because I knew I would work it all off on the squash court or my mountain bike or in the gym. Actually, I had quite the fit bod back then.

These days however I sport a barrel where once there was a six-pack.

And the reason?

Well, without wanting to go into too detailed an explanation I was struck down by SARS in 2003 which led to a nervous breakdown, mental health problems and severe fibromyalgia. Consequently my food intake increased greatly and my exercise routine came to an abrupt halt almost overnight. And it doesn’t take an Einstein or Newton to work out what happened next. I ballooned gentle reader. I swelled like a beach ball until my gut began to resemble one and my chest was more buxom than Nell Gwynn. During my darkest and most depressed times I developed what I can only describe as an addiction to ginger beer, milk chocolate and those white, filling-loosening spearmint chews that you get in yellow bags from Poundland and such places. Comfort eating basically.

Life changed for the better when I met the special lady that I’m now blessed to be married to and I actually lost over four stone in weight whilst courting the gal. My mood improved and I thought that at last I had a reason to get into shape. It wasn’t to last though. You see, Ange likes food every bit as much as I do and we soon found that we enjoyed often going out for meals or takeaways or cooking high-calorie meals at home and developed a sort of Friday night ritual where we would curl up together by the fire to watch DVDs, drink wine and eat bar after bar of chocolate. I was content and contentment does tend to ignore common sense at times and thus, all that weight I lost went straight back on and a whole lot more besides.

Ok, so where am I going with this? You didn’t come here for a gastronomic history lesson.

Well, last year, thanks to the encouragement of my lovely lady, I started on the NOOM diet. You may have seen it advertised on your television set. So far I’ve lost three stone and my attitude to food has changed radically. I know what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat and how to eat. And by gum it’s working. I feel so much better in my frame. Yes, the fibromyalgia is a constant pain in the old gluteus but I feel lighter in myself, my blood pressure is right down again and I feel happier in my own skin.

And I’m determined to keep it up as part of my new found self preservation regime. Where once I would chow down on a sausage roll or three I now choose grapes. Instead of gorging on a Big Mac meal I now select apples or oranges as a snack. I tell you what else is better also – my tummy. Going to the loo is no longer an ordeal, but then, perhaps, that’s too much information in which case I apologise. But hey! Just a natural function of the body which for me is now a more pleasant one.

My clothes fit much better, I go swimming without feeling embarrassed and I feel that I could lie on a beach now without small children trying to push me back into the sea and crying ‘Will it live Mummy, will it live?’

So ta very much NOOM. It’s all been good, not necessarily easy at times, but good. I feel like a new man and I have a target weight set that I’m hoping to achieve over the next eighteen months or so. I really am a reformed character where once I was just full of reformed potato.

If you had asked the twenty, thirty, forty or even fifty year old me what he thought about men’s personal grooming and the use of lotions and potions I would have laughed and said that it was for big girls blouses who are lacking in testosterone. I simply didn’t believe that ‘real’ men like myself should engage in such pursuits.

I mean, for one thing, I’m too darn hairy to bother with all that guff that the adverts promote. My hair is long (thinning but long) and my beard is a testament to the ambivalent nature of facial hair. I get it trimmed once every six months but during the time in between allow it to roam free as nature intended. As for my body, well, perhaps the least said the better. I look like somebody shaved a bear down and did a bit of haphazard waxing here and there. To wit – I’m an old hairy.

I’m also grossly overweight. But that’s, perhaps, a subject best left for another time.

And so whenever I saw adverts for male hair or skin care products I scoffed loudly and derided such frivolity as being the domain of the effete and the poseur. I mean, you can’t go round looking like the missing link and then douse yourself in all that stuff. Can you?

Well, I’m now at the ripe old age of 56 (in July) and it would seem that the tide has turned in favour of the cosmetic companies. I have yielded gentle reader, yielded to the call of self care.

That hair of mine for example. Once a thick and lustrous chestnut coloured mane is now a grey and drying fly-away thing that requires copious amounts of Australian moisturising shampoo to avoid it getting tangled up like sheep’s wool on barbed wire at the first breath of wind. It was once my crowning glory but unless I maintain it with expensive bouffant products it resembles something a scarecrow would be embarrassed to sport under it’s battered old hat.

Likewise my beard has given up the ghost and any vestige of colour it may once have had is now replaced with something that resembles the rear end of the badger. Ergo, I find myself using beard wash, beard balm and beard oil to keep it looking anything like something a man of my years should wear on his chin. Good grief! Am I finally descending into respectability? Maybe.

Then we come to my arms and face. Well, perhaps the least said the better. I’ve never been what you could call a good looking man. In fact my first wife called me ugly! What the f**k she married for then I do not know as I certainly didn’t have any money. Mind you, she was as thick as pig shit, but I digress. My nose is of the bulbous, hammerhead variety and my eyebrows are so bushy and untameable that they have their own entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica. However, my current wife likes my face and that’s good enough for me. But its now getting dry and I want it to be more kissable for her. My forearms by the way look like corned beef that’s been left out of the fridge once opened and the cat’s got at it.

So with that in mind I moisturise. I use great quantities of the stuff on both my face and arms and it really makes a difference. I never thought I would say that but it’s true. I moisturise. I’m prepared to shout it from the rooftops. And in case you’re wondering, the brand I use is Rock Face. There’s loads on the market to choose from but I like the smell of that particular brand and it’s only a fiver a tube. Thumbs up all round.

And talking of thumbs, or rather my hands, yes, I use a hand cream now also. My hands are the tools of my trade. You can’t type 5000 words a day with dry and chapped hands. Believe me I’ve tried. And so I need to look after my fingers and that means using Bull Dog hand cream for men. And, like the aforementioned moisturiser, it works. I spent many years using my hands in hard labour, a fact I’ve documented elsewhere on this blog, and as a result they are quite rough and even calloused in places. They also cause me a lot of pain due to both this and the fibromyalgia I also contend with. Bull Dog helps. It really does.

And so finally, we come to Dr Balls balm. I won’t go into details but will rather leave it to you to surmise what that particular product does. The clue is in the name. Well, one has to stay fresh all over doesn’t one.

So there you have it. I’m a new man. Still a big, hairy galoot of one but with a new sense of self care and wanting to look my best. Have I sold out? On the contrary, I would say that I’ve bought in to investing in myself.

Give it a go all you he-men. Trust me, you won’t look back.