Frozen Apart

I listened to Emma Watson’s speech to the UN about gender equality earlier this week, after having been made to watch Frozen on two consecutive days by my two sons.

Now, we went to the cinema to see Frozen – and my response at the end was to compare it to a Barbie movie. You know, the kind they show on Nick Jr.

It was a throwaway comment from a throwaway thought. I thought it was a bit girly.

But why did I think that? Because the main characters are female?

Both of our boys have been through a brief phase of strong aversion to “geeee-uurrrrls” and anything associated with them, but they now seem comfortable with them. Possibly because anything that is “for babies” is the current anathema.

Roger Jr and Tancred love Frozen and are seemingly oblivious to the gender of characters and their positions and roles with respect to one another. Roger Jr doesn’t like me belting out “Let it go” but that is probably because I only know three lines, and repeat them over and over again. 

I’d like them to stay oblivious. But will they? Can their innocence or lack of prejudice stand up to social conditioning?

The white one lays eggs, so must be a girl

Both kids love Angry Birds too. Apart from the birds’ often heavy eyebrows, I can’t see any evidence to suggest that they are all male. So why did Rovio feel the need to release Angry Birds Stella or – as it really ought to be called “Angry Birds For Girls”?

We thought the Lego Movie was great (I preferred it to Frozen). Lego has never seemed “gendered” to me. So why do we now have Lego Friends – or as it ought to be called “Lego For Girls”?

I don’t want my boys to grow up thinking that girls are aliens. Attitudes laid down in early childhood colour everything you come to think subsequently. Reinforcing the exclusivity of gender through toys and culture are the first step on the train towards not being able to speak to women as a teenager and beyond, terminating at the sort of hopelessly fucked-up attitudes displayed by the people who threatened to release naked pictures of Emma Watson for speaking out.

I’m a white, middle-aged, heterosexual man who is a father of two boys. The most valuable contribution I can make to feminism, I reckon, is to try and make sure my sons are kept off the kind of path that leads to being unable to comprehend, to fearing or to hating half the population (the more interesting half, I might add...).

Internet trolls and other species of arsehole are not created overnight. It takes a human being a long time of holding and being reinforced in deeply mistaken and unpleasant views to get to the point where they make rape threats on Twitter.

Everyone has their part to play, but parents – especially fathers of boys – have to do more to stop forcing kids to see the world in terms of gender “us” and gender “them”.

This isn’t something I think constantly about, but when I do I realise that I feel quite strongly about it. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and watch Frozen for the third time this week. Have a watch of this yourself if you haven't already. Then let it go...

http://www.heforshe.org/

Reading Homer

Homer, not Uncle Albert

In my last post, I referred to “the child of morning, rosy-fingered dawn”. Some of you may be surprised to hear that I didn’t make that phrase up.

It is, in fact, an epithet used repeatedly by the Greek poet Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Pretty much every time he mentions the dawn - which is a lot – it’s waggling its rosy fingers.

Anyway, these books are kind of a big deal. They are, I hear, a central part of the Western literary canon.

And as we all know, the Iliad tells the story of the Trojan war and the Odyssey tells the story of Ulysses’ (the translations I read were all Romanised) return from Troy.

Or do they?

In fact, the Iliad tells a very small part of the Trojan war. It doesn’t include:

Just good ol' war buddies

1. The beginning
2. The end
3. The bit everyone knows with the Trojan Horse

Essentially, it tells the story of Achilles acting like a dick because Agamemnon acted like a dick, until his boyfriend Patroclus gets killed and then Achilles kills everyone.

Not included, again, is the bit about Achilles getting killed by tearing a ligament or whatever.

In fact, what we primarily have is to pad out the above is:

• Exhaustive descriptions of various Greeks’ and Trojans’ ancestry;
• Followed more or less immediately by exhaustive descriptions of how those sorry descendents died horribly.

If I learned one thing from the Iliad, it is that there are far more ways to fuck someone up badly with a spear than I had ever imagined.

For example:

The spear struck Archelochus, son of Antenor, for heaven counselled his destruction; it struck him where the head springs from the neck at the top joint of the spine, and severed both the tendons at the back of the head. His head, mouth, and nostrils reached the ground long before his legs and knees could do so.

Thereon Polypoetes, mighty son of Pirithous, hit Damasus with a spear upon his cheek-pieced helmet. The helmet did not protect him, for the point of the spear went through it, and broke the bone, so that the brain inside was scattered about, and he died fighting.

Menelaus hit Pisander as he was coming towards him, on the forehead, just at the rise of his nose; the bones cracked and his two gore-bedrabbled eyes fell by his feet in the dust.

And so on.

So that’s the Iliad. Think you know the Odyssey?

Think again. Far from focusing on the well-known, exciting parts of Ulysses’ voyages (eg encounters with the Cyclops, sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, lashing himself to the mast to listen to the Sirens), these are all dealt with in one flashback.

About 70% of the Odyssey is taken up with the frankly rather weird situation going on with his wife Penelope and 115 “suitors” who have been having a three-year long bender round at Ulysses’ in his absence.

So an awful lot of the Odyssey concerns not, in fact, what you and I might call “an odyssey” – but rather:

1. Ulysses pretending to be an aged tramp and talking to a pig herder
2. Ulysses pretending to be an aged tramp hanging around the party, getting abused (someone throws a hoof at him!)
3. Ulysses continuing to pretend to be an aged tramp long after anyone normal would have said “I’m not really an aged tramp – I am, in fact, the king and I am not happy with all this”

Eventually, of course, the “aged tramp” routine wears as thin for Ulysses as it did for everyone else several books earlier and – as is the way of Greek epic poetry – it all ends happily ever after with a massive bloodbath.

On balance, I preferred the Iliad. 

Self Improvement Through Beer

“Two wrongs do not make a right”, it is often said. And yet I have disproved this axiom through the unlikely medium of homebrew.

Permit me to explain. For my birthday, I was given a homebrewing kit – pictured.

I find the image on the box very misleading, because I don’t think any woman has ever reacted like this to the idea of homebrew. Unless of course she is thinking: “At last! Indisputable grounds for divorce!”

Home brewing is almost exclusively a male pursuit. I suspect this is because “yes, it may taste awful; give me the worst hangover I’ve ever; had AND the shits – BUT there’s 40 pints of it” is a thought which has never occurred to a woman. 

But I was telling you how two wrongs can make a right.

Ever since I have had this homebrew kit my consumption of beer has fallen to virtually zero. Why? Because I haven’t started making the homebrew yet, because I am lazy. At the same time, I refuse to buy any more beer when I have 40 potential pints lying around the house, because I am mean.

So laziness and meanness have joined together to create virtuous abstemiousness. And there you have two wrongs making a right. 

The White Caterpillar – Part 3

In which Roger of Sicily completes his daring journey home. Oh, hold on – that’s given away the ending. CONTAINS SPOILERS. Too late.

Part 4 – The Ramp

Five minutes before we got back onto the correct route for a 671 bus, I had texted Elvira saying that if the bus didn’t speed up, I was going to get off and walk.

Oh! The folly of impetuous youth, dear reader!

Turns out, we were stuck behind two cars that had collided in the middle of the road.

Why is it that by the time you get to the scene of an accident, they’ve always just managed to clear it out of the road?

Obviously, I’m not addressing that rhetorical question to any emergency rescue personnel who may be reading. It’s more directed at the casual sitter-and-waiter in traffic jams.

Into Rodley we headed, and I expected the worst. The road up to the notorious Rodley roundabout (the precise analogue of the Traverse of the Gods on the Eiger’s Nordwand) is almost always jammed up. The road from Calverley to Greengates is always jammed too, so I expected gridlock from this point onwards to the end of my bus journey.

“Hold on”, called the driver as we rounded the corner on the approach to the roundabout. I think he meant it in a jaunty, team-spirity way rather than in a literal, alarming way. But I did, just in case.

Well, the roundabout was indeed jammed – but NOT IN THE WAY WE WERE GOING!

I cannot tell you of the joy that went around the bus as we realised that traffic was coming out of Calverley, but none was going in. If the other passengers or myself had spoken to or looked at each other, I’m sure we would all have shared a very special moment of camaraderie. Still, it was implicit.

And on we sped, unimpeded by further traffic. Now that we were back on route, we started picking up passengers – loudmouthed secondary school gobshites mostly.

What is it about being in a school uniform and in a group that makes young people feel an obligation to shout?

And to shout complete bollocks at that?

We crossed the border into Bradford. Friendly territory at last. The bus pulled up and I barged past the teenage guttersnipes. “Well done”, I said to the bus driver as I disembarked.

Part 5 – The Second Ice Field

I had rested for about two hours by this time, and my clothing – while hardly dry – was at least warm.

I must here take the opportunity to pay tribute to my shoes.

The standard, black leather lace-up, brogue-style ankle boot may not be the most fashionable piece of footwear in the men’s department right now. Especially when it has a rounded toe and a rubber sole with “Clarks” embossed on it.

But by god they kept my feet warm and dry, no matter what I was walking through. And as we all know, wet feet are objectively the single worst thing in the whole universe.

Those shoes are the unsung heroes to whom I must pay tribute.

I hopped off the bus and immediately noticed a change in the road conditions since I had boarded.

The snow was now much wetter and rain-like. The road was covered in slush.

Oh brown slush! Child of snow and mud and sly dog poo - how I had missed you!

The thaw had truly begun.

Thus heartened, I began the final yomp back to Casa Sicily.

Walking on snow is really quite uncomfortable. As I had discovered while trying to haul my bike to a suitable berth, brogues afford relatively little purchase. You are therefore forced to walk with flat feet, splayed outward, rolling your shoulders to maintain balance and forward momentum – in a manner reminiscent of the young Liam Gallagher.

[Facebook friends – notice anything familiar? Yes, I am reusing status updates from last month! ODHSNM used to be so much better...]

Back to the plot.

Are we all familiar with the thoracolumbar fascia? Also known as the thoracolumbar aponeurosis?

Good.

Long-term readers will know that this is an area of my back with which I have – if not outright trouble – then nagging doubts.

It turns out that this bit of muscle – which, I must say, feels a little bit too deep to be called a “fascia” – does a hell of a lot of the work when you’re walking uphill in snowy conditions with your feet turned out. And waterlogged, falling-down overtrousers etc.

15 minutes after arriving home, I was unable to bend at the waist. Two days later, the tops of my thighs and the backs of my calves joined in.

Strange, isn’t it, how one’s muscles will often wait a day or so before complaining about over extertion? It makes me think of that terrible silence between the crash and the child starting to cry. The longer that silence is, the more serious you know the screaming is going to be.

Onward and upward, upward and onward I went. By now, the snow was pretty much just rain. I was steaming like a Grand National winner. I kept telling myself “just get to that point then you can stop for a rest”.

I soon realised that “stopping for a rest” would result in my entire body ceasing to function properly – which would necessitate what the mountaineers call a “bivouac” (ie sleeping in a ditch until someone rescued me). In the words of Gaston Rebuffat:

“The human animal in me was unhappy”.

So I didn’t stop and on and on I went. I measured the distance covered the next day. Two miles.

I know it doesn’t sound very impressive. But then the Eiger is only about 13000 feet high, which is about two and a half miles. And I walked further than that. Yes, with a bus journey in the middle, and yes, on a slightly shallower gradient. But a GREATER DISTANCE nonetheless.

Eventually I made it home. My children rejoiced at my return: Roger Jr by carrying on watching TV in the living room; and Tancred by attempting to bring me in on his side in his ongoing, screamed demand for crisps.

Always Tancred with the crisps. Oddly, after he was bought off with chocolate buttons, he proclaimed “I’m not crying any more Daddy” – as if he had only just noticed. However, he started again soon after the buttons were gone.

Part 6 – Epilogue

That evening, I took one final leaf out of the book of Heinrich Harrer – and indeed of the many other 19^th and early 20^th century explorers whose books I have been reading in recent years.

They often treat brandy as a medicine for fortifying people. In general, we no longer use strong alcohol as a means of bringing people to their senses – but I thought, why not? If it was good enough to get Andreas Heckmair down the mountain, it should be good enough for me.

However, by mistake I drank the best part of half a bottle of whisky and instead of being fortified and revived, I became even more tired – and had a hangover on top of the manifold aches and pains the next day. Clearly, my constitution differs from theirs in more ways than one.

Nevertheless, I did manage to get my bike back the next day. All the snow melted overnight, as if it had never been there. Had it all been a dream?

Inside the Fortress of Solitude

The main thing I will miss when we move to our new house is having a loft.

Casa Sicily is built on three stories – with a bedroom, bathroom and small “store” on the top floor inside the roof. This, it seems, is a fairly common trick developers use these days to build bigger, more expensive houses on a smaller “footprint” of land.

As we prepare to move next month, I have been spending a bit of time in the loft digging through strata of junk like a geologist of our lives. The deeper I go, the older the stuff I find and (in general) the less Elvira or I remember ever having owned it. I confidently expect to find a fully-preserved dinosaur skeleton right at the back.

Or if not a dinosaur then a rat.

I never mentioned the rat on here, did I?

No, too bloody right I didn’t. I was trying to sell a house – I’m not a complete idiot.

Last winter, we got a rat. How did we know it was a rat and not a mouse? Well, considering their respective body sizes, no mouse could have survived pooing out what we discovered in the loft.

And unfortunately also in the kitchen, where it chewed through the top of a cupboard to nibble on the contents of the fruitbowl and boxes of breakfast cereal.

So we got the council ratcatcher in, who left little boxes of poison around, which the rat studiously ignored to continue on his merry destructive way. Every so often we’d hear him scuttling about in the ceiling.

Eventually, we got rid of him by pure dumb luck – the ratcatcher pointed out some holes in the exterior of the house whereby it appeared to have been getting in. I poured a load of gravel down one of them, and we never heard it again. Thankfully, it seems I trapped it outside rather than inside.

We did have a mouse die up there once. It liquefied and seeped through Roger Jr’s bedroom ceiling. I scraped it off while standing on my head then painted over it. 

But as I now clear out the loft, digging my way through the “rat shit era” back to happier times, I come to feel a great sadness that our new house won’t have such a manly fortress of solitude above it.

Yes, while the other Sicilies have all stuck their heads up into the loft (Elvira, I should point out, refers to it as a “false roof” – which gives makes it seem much more secretive than it really is), I am the only one who has ever made the desperate scramble from the top of the ladder through the hatch. It is my domain.

In practice, that means there are areas of intense orderliness alongside – and frequently beneath – regions of chaos. It is as good a map of my brain as you are likely to find without actually vivisecting me.

However, what I will miss most is the incredible physical workout a trip into the loft provides.

1. During the summer, it is insanely hot. Sauna hot – and the atmosphere of fibreglass and wood dust stirred up by moving anything is wonderfully exfoliating.
2. While you are up there, getting around involves some of the most demanding Pilates-style gymnastics I have ever had to perform. Diagonal wooden beams, unboarded floors, water pipes and two – yes two – TV aerials force one to manoeuvre with the deliberation, care and prehensile feet of a Slow Loris. Otherwise, you end up taking a heavy blow to the head or spine or impaling yourself in a location where nobody else can get to you.
3. Taking all this into consideration, attempting to extract heavy boxes and other articles between these obstacles without falling through the ceiling – and then to lower them down onto the landing without flattening the inevitable toddler mucking around with the ladder below – is a feat that never fails to reduce me to a state of total physical exhaustion.

Yes, I will miss the loft. But I will have a garage instead...

My Vasectomy – Part 4

So it is done. I have been vasectomised. And it was not as bad as you might think.

Friday night’s alright for shaving

By Friday evening, I was getting a bit anxious about it all. I had not managed to put it out of my mind all day (as my previous post, written that day, possibly indicates) and I was in a bad temper by the time I got home.

Fortunately, that evening, I had the distraction of working out how to shave myself (scrotumnally) to take my mind off the impending operation.

I should really say “the aftermath of the operation”. I’ve had enough local anaesthetics in my time to know that the operation itself was not going to hurt (see below...). What I was worried about was what kind of a state I would be in when the drugs wore off and how I was going to survive the recovery period with two groin-height and fast-moving children careering around the vicinity of my delicacy.

Anyway, back to shaving. I had, as previously mentioned, bought some Veet – and been repeatedly warned of its perils, not least by the estimable Bernard C in a comment on the last post – for which I am very grateful.

To be perfectly honest, I found it no problem. Apart from the peculiar smell – which could have been from the “finishing cream” that came in the pack – it didn’t hurt or even feel uncomfortable at all. Perhaps I have a particularly leathery and unfeeling scrotum, but having prepared for the worst, I was pleasantly surprised.

Some men – I am told – voluntarily shave themselves in this region, ostensibly for aesthetic reasons. I must admit to finding it a very strange interpretation of what is aesthetically pleasing to make any of THAT more rather than less visible.

Palmerston

For those who take an interest in such things, I opted for a style of my own design, which I am calling “The Palmerston”.

Sitting in the waiting room

My appointment was at 10.50am. Elvira drove me down to the surgery and in I went. A receptionist sat behind the desk of the deserted waiting room.

“I have – an appointment – for 10.50,” I said.

I didn’t have to say what for.

“Take a seat please,” she said. I took one.

I tried to lose myself in my book (“The Story of the Malakand Field Force” by Winston Churchill), but Radio 2’s Jon Holmes standing in for Graham Norton kept dragging me back to the moment.

There was a crash from down the corridor.

“I hope he has steadier hands than that,” I said to the receptionist, who smiled wanly. Inside I cringed at the rushed and lazy wording of the joke and tried to return to the Afghan frontier.

“Mr Of Sicily? Will you come through please?”

The nurse didn’t say that. She used my real name. It was the last time I would hear it with intact plums.

What it was like

What do you think it was like? I was lying there, discussing summer holidays and other trivia with the surgeon while my genitalia was operated on through a hole in a sheet. It’s hard to find the positive in the experience itself.

By the way, the surgeon did take the time to congratulate me on the quality of the shaving job I had done. I said I was pretty pleased with my handiwork, for a first attempt.

Look away now if you are squeamish.

What I will say is that the local anaesthetic does the job just fine. You don’t feel a thing when it comes to the cutting and sewing.

There was a degree of “rough handling” prior to the numbing, in order to bring the vas deferens to the surface. This was a forestaste of what was to come.

I was not expecting the extreme discomfort of said tube being pulled out. It was a kind of pain that only a man can understand (sorry ladies – indeed, women seem to have been far more interested in my story so far than men. I cannot understand why...) and it shot all the way up to the pit of my stomach.  It felt...welll...like someone had got hold of the strings my balls are held on with and given them a long, steady tug.

But it was over quickly. I walked out of the operating theatre 15 or so after going in. I was the 8^th bloke the surgeon had seen to that day, and it still wasn’t even lunchtime.

The aftermath

Only once was I unable to walk, and that was a couple of hours after the operation – presumably after the first flush of cocodamol was out of my system (it has been ever-present every since up to the time of writing). Since then, I have recovered much quicker than I thought I would.

The boys have been very good at staying off me. Only once did Tancred hit me in the nuts, when I was drying his hair last night. And I think he knew he had erred.

Lord Palmerston appears to have been the victim of a serious mugging. Gentlemen, if you have never seen your huevos go black and double in size, I suggest you prepare yourself.

Tight pants are a must. Unexpected rapid movement is not pleasant. Lie flat on your back in bed. It took me about ten minutes to walk from the station to my office this morning – that’s usually more like four. Riding the scooter was ok, but I definitely do not want to make any emergency stops.

So what now? Well, apparently the vehicle continues to run on fumes – and that can last for three months. I have to supply “samples” in October and November to see if this has worked, or if my Wolverine-like powers of healing have restored my testicular functioning in the meantime. So I don’t know if it worked or not.

My face, Saturday afternoon

However, I do not regret it. People may ask me, “why on earth did you do it if you can’t even be sure it will work?”

To which my answer is and will remain, “I’d rather go through that than have any more children!”

I love my kids, of course, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

And that, dear friends, concludes July’s gonad-centric entries. I hope it has made you laugh and made you cry. It has certainly brought tears to my eyes on occasion. 

Scott - One hundred years on...

Last week saw a strange coincidence. Firstly, I finished reading "Scott’s Last Expedition" – the diary of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who died on the way back from being the second person to reach to South Pole.

Secondly, I watched Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton’s attempt to become the first person to reach the South Pole on a bicycle. For charity. 

Now, I call it a strange coincidence but it’s not really that strange. It is now almost exactly a hundred years since Scott himself died of starvation and cold, eleven miles away from a supply depot. Right now, we are somewhere between the centenary of Captain Oates going outside to his death (pictured above, as imagined by JC Dollman) and the remaining three members of the South Party (Scott, Wilson and Bowers) dying a couple of weeks later.  As such, the country is full of Scott exhibitions, memorabilia and whatnot.

Naturally, I will blissfully ignorant of any of this until I started reading the diary. Indeed, it was this very blog which led me to do – as in December I said that there were no British explorers whose memoirs were free off of the internet, in defence of my reading Norwegian hard-case Fridtjof Nansen’s account of not actually reaching the North Pole in the 1890s.

Having made this categorical statement, I checked the facts of the matter some weeks later – and found that Scott’s Last Expedition is indeed free on t’internet. Don’t worry about it being “Volume 1” – Volume 2 is just all their scientific findings, and dating as they do from a hundred years ago they are all probably completely (and, to our eyes, insanely) wrong.

So, as I said before, I’ve just finished reading it. The main conclusion I reached is that I have now wasted quite enough of my life reading diaries of historic Polar expeditions.

Nansen at least had the decency to go through typically Scandinavian moping bouts of theatrical depression, which he kindly set down in print.

Conversely, the consistent tone of Scott’s diary is one of primly-stiffened upper lip. “The horses have all died. It is probably for the best” – that sort of thing.

Ah yes. The horses.

Now, I am far from an expert in such things, but as both an ENGLISHMAN and a BLOGGER I’ll be DAMNED if I will let that stand in the way of me reaching conclusions I cannot be swayed from that are based purely on my own opinions.

Many people have suggested that Scott’s decision to rely on horse transport was a fatal error. Firstly, it gave the race to the South Pole to Amundsen by making it necessary to start much later that he did (going by dog sled). Secondly, it slowed them down on the way, what with carrying all the necessary hay and other horse food, picking them out of crevasses and getting naughty horse Christopher into his harness every day.

Apparently, Oates himself (the resident horse expert of the expedition) thought that the particular horses they had were dreadful – begging the question, precisely what kind of horse should one expect to be good at climbing over sea ice in a blizzard.

Also, it is in respect of the horses that Scott comes closest (not close, but closest) to admitting that perhaps his preparations were not 100% perfect – when he mentions that they only had one pair of horse snow shoes for the whole party and that they hadn’t actually practised making the horse walk while wearing them. 

Despite, I should add, having had NOTHING TO DO for the preceding six months.

From my own experience, I have noted that horses always look bloody miserable in snow - while dogs absolutely love it. Sadly, nobody asked for my advice, even though it could have saved them. 

I don’t blame the horses for Scott’s failure. Indeed, they were all dead and eaten long before then. But they are indicative of Scott’s attitude – which brings me back to Nansen.

Clearly Scott had read “Farthest North” - he mentions it somewhere. OK, the Arctic isn’t exactly the same as the Antarctic (fewer penguins, more polar bears for starters), but Scott seems completely wilful in his disregard of the lessons on “how not to die while travelling across Polar wastes” that Nansen had released some 20 years earlier.

Did Scott and his party die because of British chauvinism?

Ah yes, I have found the angle for my Guardian column! Certainly, there are a lot of references to the virtues of tea throughout the book.  

Firstly, the Terra Nova expedition took about 40 dogs to pull sledges, but sent them back fairly early in the attempt on the Pole because Scott didn’t believe they would do any good. On what basis, the diary does not mention.

Guess how Roald Amundsen got to the South Pole before him? Guess how Nansen got back from Farthest North? Dogs. Not horses. Or walking.

Secondly, Scott seems to regard skiing as a bit of a novelty – something he could do, but which he didn’t regard it as essential for all the members of his party to be any good at. As far as I can tell, Henry Bowers didn’t ski at all and walked the whole way. 

Thirdly, Nansen went on about how they were far too hot in their fur gear (“wolfskin capes” to be precise). What were Scott and co wearing? Seemingly stuff they’d bought from Milletts. I might also add that as you can see NONE OF THEM had the sense to GROW A BLOODY BIG BEARD as a means of warding off frostbite of the facial areas.

And yet, all those lessons had been available for almost 20 years. Amundsen followed them and he got to the South Pole first, and he got back alive - here he is, feeling the benefit. Scott didn’t follow them. 

Was this the product of the belief that while things like riding on dog sleds, wearing fur, having an inner life etc might be alright for silly foreigners, it was quite unnecessary for British people to do anything quite so dramatic, and that a combination blind optimism and good old amateurism would see them through just fine?

And it’s not just Scott. Let the record also show that Lawrence Oates – who plenty of people right now would canonise – did not regard having had his thigh bone shattered in the Boer War some ten years earlier and one leg shorter than the other as likely to represent any kind of an impediment.

I don’t know. The last section of the book is genuinely moving, particularly the account of Oates’ death.

Should this be found I want these facts recorded. Oates' last thoughts were of his Mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his death. We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not—would not--give up hope to the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning--yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, 'I am just going outside and may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.

So, some 48 hours after having read this, to see Helen Skelton refusing to kite surf on her way to the South Pole because it was too easy and insisting on riding a bicycle instead made me realise just how much the world has changed in a hundred years.

Again, the strange coincidence of the opening paragraph is perhaps not so strange. She was raising money for Sport Relief, and of course, as the sun begins to show its face for more than a few minutes before and after work, the season of aggressive charity fund-raising is upon us. And I expect she probably chose this particular challenge not entirely without reference to the Scott centenary.

Had Scott taken her route to the South Pole, I think he’d almost certainly have succeeded. Seemingly it was completely flat and the weather was lovely.

That’s not to denigrate Helen Skelton’s achievement. Well done to her indeed. But – and here my Guardian piece turns into a Daily Telegraph piece – doesn’t the world seem a lot smaller when the unconquered wilderness that made heroes out of those who died trying to tame it is now a tourist attraction where people go for an “experience”?

I will say it again. After setting the world record for the fastest 100km kite surf, Helen threw away her kite and decided to carry on by bike – because kite surfing wasn’t hard enough.  

That must have been one hell of a hundred years. 

The power of muesli

Along with quiche, salad and tofu, muesli is frequently portrayed as a food that is inherently effeminate and in some way shameful for real men to eat.

Well, I have been eating muesli for breakfast since the New Year (it’s T-325, in case you regard this as another harbinger of the apocalypse) and let me tell you: in the immortal words of Discharge, muesli ain’t no feeble bastard.

The Full English satisfies more, but it leaves one greasy, crapulent and feeling guilty. Fruit and yoghurt...come on. People only eat that (i) in hotels and (ii) for the sake of appearances.

Muesli alone has the power to keep me from feeling hungry until lunchtime without making me want to go back to bed. It is a freaking miracle food.

So why has it become so closely associated with bed-wetters and Liberal Democrats? Maybe it’s the Swiss thing.

So the story goes, muesli was invented in 1900 by Swiss doctor Maximillian Bircher-Benner to feed to the patients in his hospital, after he had been fed something similar by a mystical mountain-dwelling peasant on a hike in the Alps.

We like to think – don’t we? – of the Swiss as a bunch of effete bankers and diplomats, concerned solely with manufacturing clockwork devices and helping criminals avoid taxation.

And yet, this is a nation of hard-ass do-it-yourself mothers who:

1. Have seen off pretty much every challenger to their political and religious independence (apart from Napoleon) since the 14^th century.
2. Created the first ever democratic multilingual and multiethnic state.
3. Were, for much of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the go-to mercenaries for anyone wanting their enemies crushed underfoot, impaled on sea of pikes or chopped to pieces with a halberd. They were the goddam Chechens of the time.

And look at them now. Sat in the middle of a collapsing Europe, winding their cuckoo clocks, eating their Toblerones and telling the rest of the world it’s too poor to come in.

THAT is the nation that gave the world muesli. So mock my breakfast at your peril. 

Top ten unfinished blog ideas

It is well-known that even the crappiest article with “top ten” in the headline will be ridiculously over-rated by Google, and therefore attract way more visitors than the content legitimately deserves.

To that end, here is my very own contribution to the entirely unnecessary top ten genre. Like a ruminant, I’m bringing these half-digested ideas back up from one of my many stomachs for a last chew. Too rambling for a Facebook status update, too under-developed for an entire post –here we go, my Xmas gift to you:

1. All the thrill of the escalator

Does anyone else still get a frisson of big city excitement when they go on a “down” escalator? None of the towns I lived in up until the age of 18 had any shops with a down – it was lifts or stairs only for us yokels.

Every time I ride the down escalator, part of me wants to sing “New York, New York”.

2. Now or then?

Is this London St Pancras 2011 or Berlin Templehof 1936? Fascist art is alive and well...

3, Everyone’s a critic

Has anyone here read “The Communist Manifesto”? I did recently, and I was surprised by how clear and modern Marx’s critique of capitalism is. His descriptions of the finance-driven economy are shockingly prescient of the situation we find ourselves in now.

The second half of The Communist Manifesto is also pretty funny, where Marx kick starts the favourite pastime of every leftwinger ever since and slags off every other kind of socialist who has any point of disagreement with him. Because it’s SCIENCE after all.

And does anyone here like Nietzsche? As far as I can see, his demolition of the foundations of Judaeo-Christian ethics in “Beyond Good and Evil” and “The Antichrist” is irrefutable.

The trouble is, both Marx and Nietzsche go on from their brilliantly-argued critique to erect some batshit alternative scheme on top of it – in Marx’s case, communism; in Nietzsche’s case...errr...well, I’m still not entirely sure. Something to do with “act like a Homeric Greek and don’t give a toss about what anyone else does”.

And the funny thing is, both of those two explicitly denigrate “mere critics”. Why is it so easy to knock things down and so hard to produce alternatives?

4. Don’t put your daughter on the internet Mrs Worthington

If you put a picture of your kids as your Facebook profile picture, no one is going to know if you are who they think you are.  

5. Literary heroics (a)

Thanks to Anonymous (for god’s sake people – just put in any old name when you leave a comment...) for pointing me in the direction of Xenophon. I read the whole of “Anabasis” while on jury duty.

“Anabasis” is the ancient Greek “Bravo Two Zero”. Secret mission in Iraq goes wrong, escape from behind enemy lines, fighting all the way – sound familiar? ANCIENT GREECE IS NOT BORING!

6. Literary Heroics (b)

Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooo lives in a pineapple under the sea? FRIDTJOF NANSEN!

If Xenophon is Andy McNab, Fridtjof Nansen is Bear Grylls – but without the overnight hotels. I just read “Farthest North”, relating his polar expedition of 1893 to 1896. That’s right – three years in a wooden ship on the Arctic Ocean.  

In fairness, there are times when the repetitive prose manages to not only describe the ball-aching boredom he suffered being frozen into pack ice with 13 Norwegians waiting to drift to Greenland but also to elicit it. I could only care so much about what they had for dinner EVERY DAY FOR THREE YEARS. "Took the latitude. We have drifted 12 feet north in the last week. Took a sounding. The sea is very deep. It's been night for six months. Thought I saw a polar bear, but I didn't. I am so bored."

But the unbelievable fortitude of the man – a man of action, and of science and (later) a humanitarian statesman - is just inspiring. Sure, there are plenty of British polar explorers I could have idolised. But their books were not free! Nor did any of them have quite such an impressive moustache and stare. 

7. Vests are not outerwear

It is not acceptable to wear just a vest in public in the UK if you are a man. Even if it’s hot.  Especially when it’s cold.

Also, is it wrong that when I hear the line “don we now our gay apparel” in “Deck the halls with boughs of holly” I can’t help but think of assless chaps?

8. The most revolting cocktail ever

I give you the “Scotti”.  

9. The day I quit the gym

I cancelled my gym membership – and had to work out a three month notice period @£72 a month! Outrageous. If anyone has any ideas on how I can avoid turning into Jabba the Hutt, I’d be most grateful for your input.

10. And then the abyss stared back into me

The trouble with writing a blog is that when I meet people in the real world, I don’t have anything left to say to them. In telling every interesting anecdote I have on here, and polishing and grinding down the sharp edges on the facts until it becomes a routine or a bit of schtick, I lose the will to ever mention it again. 

A remedy for society's ills

So while the government fumbles around trying to decide which recipe of "same old shit" to serve the country in the aftermath of last week's rioting – almost certainly with a squirt of "...but worse" topping – I've taken matters into my own hands.

I am challenging the sick culture of the early 21^st century by growing a big bushy handlebar moustache.

Now, I know that this is does not fall anywhere on the conventional left-right spectrum of "what to do" responses that have been aired in the last few days, which has generally covered the more familiar options from "give them more free stuff" to "spray nerve gas on them".

To that my answer is – so much the worse for conventional left-right distinctions. I'm growing a moustache and you can interpret that however you want. It's not retro. It's not ironic. If Eugene Hutz can do it and still be this cool, why can't I?

Throughout history men have had the freedom to grow all sorts of crazy hair on their faces and get away with it. The 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th century represent the apex of this trend.

The Second World War killed off a lot of moustaches. Most effectively, I suppose, by killing an awful lot of people with moustaches. Perhaps – as with the British car industry - the critical mass of skills was lost. Perhaps after all that, shaping a moustache seemed rather pointless.

Some moustaches died by the company they kept. The toothbrush moustache of Charlie Chaplin and Oliver Hardy never escaped its association with Hitler, although his equally-distinctive side parting got away with it – eerily paralleling the respective roles of Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd in the 2007 Celebrity Big Brother race row.

Just ten years ago, it was fairly unusual to see anyone with facial hair below the age of 30. But today, one just has to look around to see acres of sparse, wispy, "is it or isn't it?" beard adorning the faces of pasty youths, clad in their androgynous uniform of nerd glasses, jeggings and ballet shoes. Something, I fear, has been lost to the meaning of the moustache in this barrage of bumfluff.

Reclaiming the moustache fills me with not a little apprehension. I can't help but think that in taking this step, I am making a very significant statement. People are going to make assumptions about my politics, my personality and my sexual proclivities on the basis of what's on my upper lip as soon as I start waxing it. At best, I'm going to be called "eccentric"...

Still, I'm married, I've got two kids, I have a decent job and I have the self-confidence to look like Friedrich Nietzsche – what do I care what conclusions strangers leap to about me?

I REJECT the tyranny of conformism.

Thus spake Zarathustra.

On doing it yourself

This weekend, I designed, constructed and erected not one but two gates in our back garden.

The primary purpose of these is to stop Tancred getting down the passages either side of the house. He's at that age where the mere sight of gravel fills him with an insatiable desire to eat it. Unfortunately, these areas are also our cats' favoured latrines. So, to avoid Tancred (i) eating gravel at all and (ii) getting an unpleasantly soft-centred surprise when doing so, I built these gates and put them up.

We've been talking about putting barriers across the alleyways at the sides of the house since Roger Jr was at the gravel/cat poo eating stage.

Every so often for the last couple of years when at a garden centre, we look at the gates available, inhale sharply at how expensive they are, and finally realise we don't have the measurements anyway.

But not this weekend.

After Elvira measured up, Roger Jr and I jumped in the car down to Wickes – whence a quick foray into Morrisons revealed that you can buy 440ml of their own brand curry sauce for just 9p! – and bought the raw materials.

A couple of hours later – MY NAME IS ROGER OF SICILY, KING OF KINGS: LOOK ON MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR. Then on Sunday, I did it again on the other side of the house with the leftover bits.

That means you can get 22 jars of it for less than a £1.99 jar of Pataks. Unbelievable value.

Now in the past, I've always been a bit crap a DIY. This is largely down to impatience and an outright contempt for inanimate objects.

From the impatience, we end up with projects begun with no idea what step two will be, let alone the finished product; whatever tool is to hand used rather than the right tool for the job; compromises made, injuries sustained.

From my hatred of the material world, frustration, rage and injuries sustained at the refusal of objects to bend to my will.

But since then, I've got a lot better. Part of that is perspective – I've seen what a bloody terrible job I've made of innumerable DIY tasks in the past, and rather than hurling myself into the same trap once again like a First World War general, I've started thinking things through beforehand. Anticipating problems – and most importantly of all, observing the vital maxim "measure twice, cut once". I've lost count of the number of times I have believed that I've measured something properly, only to get a completely different reading on the second attempt.

Apparently, they were selling for 5p each at one point.

I've also reached that age where I have accumulated almost every tool I could ever need for any straightforward DIY job. I say "accumulated" because I have little or no recollection of ever buying or being given most of the tools I have. As women magnetically attract clothes, shoes and paperbacks with bright pink covers, so tools are drawn to men. At night, they shuffle forth, edging their way towards sheds and garages, to nestle alongside others of their kind arrayed in plastic crates. Then when you go to get a new lightbulb out, you find yourself staring at a broken angle-grinder wondering where the hell it came from.

But most importantly of all – and if any idiot comes to this site looking for advice, (i) god help you but (ii) here's a good bit – my transformation was effected by upgrading from ordinary screwdrivers to an electric screwdriver. Even the simplest DIY used to be a miserable, time-sapping affair, usually concluding in a botched job with screwheads poking out or snapped off, and a huge blister in the palm of one or both of my hands. No more! Now, I just whip out my Bosch and –bzzzzt- problem solved.

Another digression – this time not concerning curry sauce (even curry sauce of unbeatable value).

Manufacturers of screws: it is highly frustrating when the err....(checks Wikipedia)... screw drive disintegrates under the pressure of the screwdriver, leaving me unable to get the screw in any further or indeed out. I know you think I'd be even more pissed off if my screwdriver's tip ground off. And I would. But can't you find a slightly tougher material for making screws than frozen butter?

Can anyone recommend to me a brand of screws whose...errr...Phillipsy bit won't just crumble out under pressure?

9p. I still can't believe it. Morrisons at Five Lane Ends in Bradford. They had loads left on Saturday.

My second favourite tool is my jigsaw. I love it (i) because sawing through anything manually is a total pain in the arse and (ii) because it feels spectacularly dangerous to use. Installing a cat flap using the jigsaw was one of the first jobs I did that went well, and instilled in me the sense of pride that turned around my standards of workmanship. It's thanks to that raging mechanical instrument of devastation that I am the thoughtful man I am today.

Putting the gates together went unbelievably well. I clinker-built them, like an old fashioned sailing ship. Well, like the garden gate that came with our house.

Hammering the nails in saw me sustain the only injury of the whole weekend – a blister from holding my finger out along the hammer's neck to achieve greater accuracy. I don't think I'm giving too much away about my identity by including a picture of my hand. Yes, I am ... a white, right-handed man.

Putting them up gave me cause for concern, though. I fear drills.

I have always imagined electrocuting myself by drilling into the mains. Imagine my surprise then, when a couple of years ago, I drilled into NOT an electrical cable, but a water pipe! At night. In winter.

Yes, we had to get an emergency plumber round who turned up about 1am, drain down the entire central heating system and clean up a lot of flooding.

Ah, happy days.

But it went fine – primarily because no one, to my knowledge, has ever installed a water pipe or an electrical cable inside a brick. Another handy tip – don't use a cordless for masonry drilling. You'll be there all day.

And I was so proud of my handiwork you know what I did? I sanded the tops down. Attention to detail much? Then I promptly hit myself in the ankle with the unsanded bottom of the gate, which I had cleverly mounted at exactly the same height as the middle of my Achilles tendon. And, like Victor Frankenstein, I cursed my creation.

It is often said that the men of my generation are pitiful children in adult bodies, who can't take care of the basic maintenance, construction and mechanical tasks that our fathers take for granted – and indeed, literally have to get their dads to do for them.

I blame school. No one ever told me to change a plug, but they did make me into a big ponce who knows more about the Second Empire of France than how electricity works.

I did have to get my dad to put in a new light fitting for me. But I did the second one, under his supervision. I have also made cement, laid a patio, boarded my loft, put in a drain, built a wall that is still standing after two years, thawed frozen pipes and identified and removed the source of a mysterious stain on the ceiling of Roger Jr's bedroom (a decomposing dead mouse). And I only stuck my hand through the ceiling plaster once.

Gradually, I am battling my forced exile to the world of the mind. I am reclaiming the material world, inch by inch, stone by stone, block by block.

Unbelievable.