Movember Men in Mankinis

Our team are stepping up to the challenge of changing their faces in the name of men's health.

Monsieur Mearns looks so much like a 1980's RUC man that he's considering changing his name to Billy. Greg's going for his trade mark wild man of the hills look and I've got my incognito, skin colour Mo. I think a wee drop of Just For Men might be in order for me.

We've raised £126 for The Prostate Cancer Charity, so far, thanks to the generosity of our friends and family. There are significant contributions in the pipeline from our respective places of work and I am quietly confident of reaching our goal of £500 by Friday next week. However we could still do with YOUR help!

Here's the most recent photographs of our burgeoning upper lip accessories. To rate us, AND DONATE TO US, go to our team page at: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/107595/

Thanks a million and remember, if we raise the £500 we will be going for a swim in the conker-crushingly cold Irish sea with only mankinis to protect our manhoods. Apologies to Mearnsy, not sure why your picture came out so small. Perhaps it's a premonition of what's going to happen to your genitals in the Irish sea?

Movember motivation

It's halfway through Movember and so far I've raised a grand total of £10.

I put in the £10 myself to get the ball rolling and thanks to my serious lack of commitment, so far, the ball has stayed stubbornly stationary.

So the time has come to up the ante, to roll up the shirt sleeves, grease the elbows and put in the hard work for the cause.

For it is a great cause.

Yes, the growing of a fine moustache may be, in some measure, a selfish pursuit but don't be fooled by the glamorous side of the Movember.

The event is dedicated to fighting prostate cancer, a deadly killer and ruthless enemy of gentlemen everywhere in the world.

Your moustache may make you look more sophisticated, more atttractive to women and gain you greater status amongst your peers but I say, ask not what your moustache can do for you but what your moustache can do for humanity.

Out of respect for the charismatic American leader, whose speech I've just blatantly plagiarised, I've decided to dedicate my midway point photo to those frequently misunderestimated Americans. The red necks.

Truck driving, god botherin', gun totin', tobacco chewin', trailer park dwellin', moustache lovin', comedy stereotype red necks.

And here it is:

Nice.

Now to the important business of raising money.

I feel there is obviously further incentive required to persuade our friends and rellies to part with their hard earned cash.

What do people like to see more than anything else? Our friends hurting themselves? Or perhaps humiliating themselves? You do, you know you do.

So, to utilize both of these elements simultaneously, the members of The Dunfast DynaMos, Northern Ireland division, have agreed, if we raise £500 before the end of November, to venture into the icy waters of the Irish sea dressed as the moustachiod hero Borat in his famous Mankini.

So if you want to see us suffer, turn blue and look like complete eejits for your amusement. Get your wallets out, go to http://uk.movember.com/mospace/107595/ and donate some money!

Planning to dress something like this at Larne Tennis Club's annual Senior Men's tournament today. It's an experiment in sports psychology. Will my opponents crumble when they see how professional I look? Wish I had the hair but C'est la Vie.

Bravado and Melanoma

Today my head looks like a ripe strawberry and feels like a baked tomato.

I normally avoid the sun due to my almost translucent, pale blue complexion. But yesterday there was pride involved. There was my fragile ego, a lack of preparation and a fair amount of stupidity.

I started a game of tennis with my 16-year-old cousin at approximately 1pm. Yes I know, the hottest part of the day. And it was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, birds singing, the breeze gently soughing through the leaves, old ladies dressed in white, playing lawn bowls. Idyllic.

By the time it got to 5-5 in the third set I was not only running out of energy, enthusiasm and patience but was horribly aware of the fact that my 2L bottle of water was already empty.

I could have stopped. I could have given in, let him win, suggested an honourable draw but no I continued to play and the sun continued to cook me with it's damned ultraviolet radiation.

My thoughts ran something like - you can't let your little cousin beat you, you're still fit, you can do it, you're at your peak...your peeeak.

I lost the set 12-10.

My pride and my epidermis may never fully recover.

TV

Last night I vowed not to turn on the TV for at least a week.

Not a single coherent thought had crossed my mind for...maybe infinity and I hadn't moved except to press the channel up button with my thumb.

flick...boring

flick....crap

flick...dull

flick...back to boring again.

Literally, this was the sum of my brain activity for maybe an hour before I suddenly snapped out of my trance, realised what I was doing and turned off the TV in disgust.

I am not saying that all TV is crap, I have seen some great programs.

I am talking about my inability, when everything on is shit, to turn off the TV and do something else!

If Shakespeare had had TV he'd never have finished a single play.

First night of no TV tonight, will I crack?

Why are they called defence forces?

There has been a lot of talk in the news about the defence budget and Gordon Brown's decisions as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Britain is spending too much on defence and trying to punch above its weight. It needs to consider the future of its defence forces.

This got me wondering about the meaning of the term 'defence'.

If you are a football fan, you'll understand defenders to be those big guys at the back, who head the ball away and gently bump into attackers sending them into balletic back-flips across the penalty area.

Attackers are the speedy ones up front who fire shots at the enemy's goal and try to defeat them.

So why are the armed forces the defence forces?

I think they really should be re-named the attack forces. They go forward, not stay back and defend. Maybe they are like the Brazilian wing backs?

When was the last time they were actually used to defend this small group of islands? Yes, it was World War II.

Unless you count defending the Falklands in 1982 or defending Northern Ireland against the IRA.

In terms of big full on wars they are definitely camped in the other teams' penalty areas.

Maybe it's because most politicians grew up in the private school system playing Rugby rather than football.

The backs are the attacking players in Rugby. That must be what confused them.

Why support Spurs?

Top four this season? No problem.

Old fashioned, tax-evading, London gangster, manager. Silkily passing, smoothly finishing, forwards and lightning fast, creative mid-fielders.

A team capable of winning 9-1.

And a team that, in their last three games, drew with Hull, lost to Liverpool and threw away a cup tie against Leeds in the 94th minute.

It was frustrating, and pretty boring, when we always finished in the middle of the table. But this season we had genuine hope, backed up by some scintillating performances.

Hope, that is looking increasingly likely to be dashed, on the big, black, pointy rocks of reality.

Spurs are not chokers, they've just got very short attention spans.

Players, who are paid more in a week than the average fan earns in a year, sometimes just don't feel like playing.

Easy enough to understand, I mean, concentrating for 90 minutes or so, once or twice is week, is pretty taxing.

Especially when you play football all the time, you must get bored of it.

I am pretty fed up watching them at the moment that's for sure.

Sigh.

The power of advertising

Has anyone seen those stroke adverts on TV?

The ones with the fire on the victim's brain burning away their life. Starting with the droopy face and the little bit of dribble at the corner of their mouth. The voice-over describing how their intelligence, their memories, their humanity is being burned away.

The slogan says the quicker they get help 'the more of the person you save'.

The adverts are supposed to scare the crap out of you and they do. I have found myself watching my older relatives like a hawk. I see them dozing off in front of the telly and wonder...are they having a stroke right now? I think, should I ask them complicated verbal reasoning questions? Or have them tell a joke? Just to make sure.

Do you ever think you are having a stroke yourself?

I am 30 years old, skinny, eat fairly healthily and am reasonably fit. Not your typical stroke candidate. But sometimes, I'll have a slight headache or a funny feeling and I'll think...I'm having one now, what do I do?

So I'll mutter under my breath a full sentence and try to recall a happy memory from my childhood just to check my brain is still, more or less, fully functional.

I never used to do this! It's those damn adverts, they are too effective. They are turning me into a hypochondriac. Or maybe I already was and they are just fuel.

Now there's a real downward spiral. Worrying that you might be a hypochondriac. There's nothing good can come of that.

Have you ever seen those anti binge drinking adverts? No neither have I. Or a least, I can't remember them.