Christmas presents 10: Skin care stuff

Woody Allen once said (no doubt incorrectly attributed) that he didn't like growing old but it beat the hell out of the alternative. It's a view with a lot to recommend  it, and Christmas is an excellent time for other halves to drop hints by donating moisturiser.

Actually before you even do that I'd look at the cleanser they're using. Clean skin will moisturise better than flesh with soapy residue on it; Dove has a nice little package available this year of gentle cleanser plus Hydrate+ moisturiser which have the benefit of being completely unscented. They do the job as well as some of the vastly more expensive alternatives you can buy.

Likewise Rehab London (pictured) offers a couple of different moisturisers that won't add their own scent, which is always welcome. Morning Glory is aimed at normal skin, if you produce a little more oil than the rest of us then fine, they have a "no Shine" option (pictured) which works very well indeed. And yes moisturiser is still a good idea after you've shaved even if you have oily skin because it will soothe you - you've just dragged a naked razor over your skin, remember? (And don't forget to use a decent shaving cream as I've recommended here).

If you want something for your whole body or just a few chafy bits (spare us the details) then you could do distinctly worse than Palmers' Cocoa butter formula body lotion, which I've been trying out and is very pleasant stuff. Its only drawback is that you do end up niffing rather of, well, cocoa butter, which isn't at all nasty but will clash with any cologne you might want to use. I put some on after trying out the Original Source Orange and Cinnamon shower gel that's out for Christmas (rather cleverly the company gets its customers to vote for which gel should be released during which season) and ended up smelling like a chocolate orange. Each product is fine by itself but watch those combinations!

Attempting a lifestyle change

OK, it's like this. I'm heading towards 'can no longer claim I'm in my mid-forties' territory, and my dad died when he was 49. I don't smoke so I'm not that worried - much - but I'm aware that my weight, for example, is not my best friend.

So, having started to get into better habits thanks to the Fitbit I bought a couple of months ago I'm looking into other areas for permanent change. This Horizon programme, which you can watch until someone who owns the copyright takes it off YouTube, certainly offers food for thought:




It's 50 mins or so long but worth a look. I've also received a pair of sports socks which I'll be testing for this blog and have been promised a digital skipping rope on test, too.

I will let you know how I get on. At the moment I'm wearing 38in waist jeans from Wizard with a certain abdominal overhang (that's claret-gut to most). By Christmas I'd like a considerably flatter stomach and to be getting comfortably into 34in.

Why am I doing it this way? Because a couple of weeks ago I had the house to myself a few days. I thought, right, I can do something about this. I can go to the gym because there's no distraction, nobody to remind me that the lawn needs mowing or something, nothing to get in the way.

And work being work, I didn't. I just couldn't find the time. This tells me that my lifestyle needs changing urgently; if you can't look after yourself, Clapperton, you're going to go the same way as your father. My brother was 14 when our dad died; I'm not going to voluntarily leave my daughter at the same point in our life. But I have to work.

So, 15 mins skipping in the garden before a shower involves no travelling time, no real inconvenience, just getting up marginally earlier. And cutting down to 600 calories two days a week involves very little in the way of interfering with work appointments and soforth - I should be able to fit perfectly happily around other people, they won't notice.

With a bit of luck it'll cost me a fortune at the tailor because everything will need taking in.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, yes - announcing this in public is intended to help encourage others to do something similar where they need to, but also to embarrass me into keeping it up. I can't tell you guys I'm going to lose weight and then not do so. I'll let you know how it goes.

London Fashion Week: ten male style mistakes

Flickr: Paul-In-London

This is London Fashion Week and the weekend, quite unusually, is devoted to male dress. So, this being a blog for the older male, I thought it might be worth kicking off with a few mistakes we make too frequently.

10: Heavy aftershave or EDT in business meetings
You know that feeling when you're in a meeting and someone's smelling as if they're about to go on a really hot date?  Just don't do it.

9: The cheap, emergency shirt
This week I was away on business and had to go into a meeting immediately I came back. Knowing that I had a bunch of shirts being tailor-made so they'll be ready in a few weeks but not yet, I bought a cheapie from Marks and Sparks - twenty quid - to put on for the meeting. It. Looked. Terrible. Low-grade material, unflattering cut - it even made the suit and tie look cheap, as my wife reassured me on my way in (for which my thanks, you need a confidence boost for meetings). Cutting corners simply didn't work.

8: Clashing patterns
Don't listen to the 'never mix spots and stripes' brigade - they're wrong about a lot of things, as anyone with a colour-co-ordinated striped shirt and spotted tie combo will vouchsafe. It can look rather good. But be judicious: stripes on a suit are fine, so are stripes on a shirt but if you have them on a tie as well it can start looking like interference on an old telly.

7: Buying online and not admitting mistakes
A number of mistakes of mine - ties with which I was less than delighted, pocket squares which ended up looking dull - were made after seeing the items only online. That's on a computer with a backlit screen, which can make the colours look substantially brighter than they are in real life. If you find you've fallen victim to this, the next big error is to go into a strop and insist on wearing the stuff anyway.

6: Modelling your look on someone else
Actually this one's OK as long as they look a bit like you. But be realistic; if you're not tall, lanky and young-looking then the Matt Smith tweed-and-bow-tie look is just going to look middle-aged. One good tip I've seen is to look at pictures of fashion designers; if they have a similar body type to you, it might just be that they're designing for it.

5: Take the catwalk look too literally
Models on the catwalk are there to look extreme. You can take a few ideas and adapt them; maybe the preppy-looking ones are all wearing patterned pocket squares that tone in but don't match the tie; maybe the tweedy look is in, can you incorporate these things a bit without looking ridiculous? It should be fairly easy.

4: Skimp on the shoes
The old saying says you can tell an Englishman by his cheap shoes. Which is a bit rubbish when our best shoes from the likes of Church's are so good; invest decent money in your footwear and look after the shoes and they'll top and tail your look perfectly.

3: Wear boring socks
OK, this isn't essential. Nonetheless when I'm wearing a pink shirt or pink tie I like to tone in a bit with socks - it's a tiny touch that links the whole outfit together. Even if people think it looks ghastly they'll see where you were going with the idea.

2: The comb-over
No, seriously, I still see this. Listen, gents, if you're losing your thatch (or "it's changing" as I like to think of it, I reject this idea that ageing is about loss rather than development) then get it cropped and celebrate it - it's absolutely the only way. Nobody except you will find it at all worth remarking on - unless, of course, you adopt the comb-over in which case everyone will notice.

1: Jeans half way down the bum
Oh come on, even young people can't carry this look (although many think they can - see the picture above). We early middle agers would simply look ridiculous - don't even think about it!

So, ladies and gents, what are your favourite fashion howlers?

Related entries: Dress sense mistakes men make

What would you give for a better body?

Flickr: Tucia

Now this is just silly. According to the BBC's website today, many men are unhappy with their gut. That's not the silly bit, I fully accept it and am not desperately proud of my own. Body image, the piece goes on to say, is no longer (if it ever was) an exclusively female thing.

I'm OK so far on that. I set up this blog with the idea of writing about and for men who were a bit concerned about their appearance but who feel that from early middle age we're a bit abandoned by the style mags and media in general. I have no problem at all with someone wanting to demolish the myth that fat is an exclusively feminine issue, that we don't care how we look, that we're as attached to the idea of being better as anyone else of either sex, regardless of orientation (I don't buy into the idea that self-image and dress sense are exclusively gay things, either).

No, the silly bit is where the BBC has fallen for a bit of spurious research. I hate spurious research and as a jobbing journalist I get plenty, believe me. I dislike it strongly when it actually gets coverage. This one is from the University of the West of England's Centre for Appearance Research (I didn't make that up) and it says - wait for it - 35% of men say they'd give up a year of their lives to have a better body - flat gut, more muscles in the upper body, you know the sort of thing.

Oh, really? They'd give up a year of their lives? What does that actually mean, though? They'd allow someone to come and shoot them a year before their allotted time, if that could be calculated with any certainty? They really wouldn't mind telling their family that healthy though they felt, they'd made this agreement for a decent set of abs so it was now time to go off to Switzerland and face the end a bit earlier than absolutely necessary?

It's a ridiculous statement to make and frankly a stupid question to have asked.

I have a much better one. If you or I were seriously that unhappy with our bodies that we felt we'd shorten our lives to improve them, how come we're not shortening our days by half an hour or so to go for a quick run? Pair of trainers, shorts, t-shirt, 20 minutes or so a day before the usual shower, you think we won't see a difference if we combine it with less fat and sugar?

Of course there are time constraints. There are families to look after, kids to prepare for school. There's always going to be something stopping a lot of us. Nonetheless, the idea that a third of men with an average age of 40 are so concerned that they'd shorten their lives to get fitter (which incidentally is more likely to lengthen life) when in reality they can't find half an hour four times a week to do something about it is more than a little preposterous.

Could we men all stop whingeing about middle age?

There was a piece in yesterday's Times by William Leith. The link is here but due to the Times' Paywall you'd have to be a subscriber to see it. The upshot of the piece, "Is this really my face"?, is that the author is coming to terms with middle age. He's getting lines on his eyes, can see why people have "a bit of work", no longer recognises the guy in the mirror, has trouble accepting that he's not in his twenties any more.

I've read this article in a number of guises by different people and I have to say I'm fed up to the back teeth with it. William Leith - the latest of many to think he's discovering middle age before anyone else ever did - is 51. Poor bloody William - some people are even older. We all get lines, wrinkles, teeth needing work - most of us don't get paid to write about it. That's a privilege.

Actually I'm rather enjoying middle age. I went to a Madness gig on Friday and there were loads of us - the most ludicrous dad dancing ever, we were all having a brilliant time and would have been much more self-conscious 25 years ago. Experience brings you - one hopes - a steadier income and a steadier outlook than you might have had before. I'm genuinely happier than I've ever been, and don't get me started about the delight that is becoming a dad. Middle age, at the early stages at least, is treating me well.

So I disagree with Leith to an extent anyway. Nevertheless I think what really gets to me is that some of my friends are what can only be described as "female". Several are my age (46) and going through changes which are a great deal less comfortable than a bit of grey hair and the fact that your gut fills out more easily than it used to. Physical symptoms include stomach pain, heavy periods and associated iron loss, and then possible side effects from medication to stem the periods. Oh, and the inability to have kids, which will hit some harder than others. We get the clock ticking - they get an almighty bell tolling.

Not forgetting that as a society we're kind of down on women reaching middle age - especially now that there's so much emphasis on appearance and sexualisation. Women getting back to work struggle much more than a bloke with an uninterrupted career. It's better than it was when I was a kid but not where it needs to be yet.

There is of course nothing to be done about the physical stuff. The female body is what it is, it ages as it will and women pretty much have to get on with it, in the absence of any alternative.

Not us blokes, though, apparently. We go into the national press objecting to our paunches, sagging facial muscles and greying hair as if this were a disaster of epic proportions.

Personally I wish we'd just shut up about it - it beats dying prematurely, there's little physical discomfort by comparison to our female counterparts, there are plenty of compensations and quite honestly all this whining makes us look ridiculous.