Drinking for charity

...but there's no alcohol involved. Soft drink maker Bottlegreen is donating a percentage of sales of the pictured special edition bottles to the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer campaign and I'm pleased to urge everyone to go out and buy some, the elderflower never lasts long in my house and I find the ginger has a nice kick.

I find increasingly as I get older (or maybe just less fit, as this doesn't seem to hit everyone equally) that a sudden increase in temperature makes alcohol a less and less good idea. A cool beer in the middle of the afternoon would have had me salivating in my twenties; it now has me anticipating an evening in which I'll be a bit drowsier than usual. Which is why I rarely touch the stuff before evening meal time.

I also don't drink when I'm out as often as I did. There are two reasons for this. First, in my day job I'm a jobbing journalist and in the past there have been a lot of occasions on which wine and beer has been on offer as part of a hospitality package - and I've found I'm very bad at finding the "no thanks" switch when I'm having fun. Second if I'm out during the day and someone offers me a glass of something and I take it, that's it - I can't and won't drive. Which, as I grow further into middle age, feels pretty much like an inconvenience.

So drinks like the above are more than welcome, less sugary than the fizz I grew up with as a child and with more actual fruit juice in them to boot. The charity angle is a bonus. If you're interested in that angle then do spare a thought for the male cancers as well, which are just as nasty but as yet not as well publicised. If you're a middle aged bloke - and that's who this blog is aimed at - or even a younger male, do yourself a favour and check your testes for unexpected lumps every so often; you can save not only yourself but your family absolute agonies if you find something before it develops too far.