Author: Moobs

I have always looked dreadful in photographs. Something about me (perhaps my mass) warps the light on its way to the lens. As I have got older it has got much worse so that when I look at photos taken of me now I wonder how the camera has somehow managed to make me look like a balding fat bastard with a leer like a hillbilly serial killer. My only consolation is that I am told that I look worse in real life.

My wife particularly despairs of my lack of clothes sense – but that is unfair. I grew up in the 70s when any clothes designer worth their salt was smacked out on an array of drugs so mighty that they could not help but design clothes whose awfulness made them visible from space.

Things started out calmly enough in the 60s:

The photographic genius that is Mr Partington rated me 3/5 for this performance. This is the look that later came to be known as my “TV face”. Put a sports event on the gogglebox and this is what I end up looking like; complete with dribble. Apart from having had my cow’s lick plastered to my head with dripping and a look that makes it clear that my first and only word is going to be “duh”, there are no real fashion disasters happening here.

Come 1971 and it would appear that I had at least learned to breathe through my nose. Here I can be seen dressed for my first day at primary school at St John’s School in Gravesend. Still recognisably human, it has been all downhill from here. This was probably the last time anyone risked “tousling” my hair.

By 1973 I had sold my tiny pre-pubescent soul to the great god of fashion. For gentlemen in the 70s, hair meant one thing: sideburns (or as my uncle Peter engagingly referred to them: “bugger grips”). Of course, being 6, growing a beard was difficult without the sort of course of hormone therapy that would have left me apine and impotent by age 10. The inventive “gentlemen’s barbers” of 1973 got around this problem by letting the hair grow into “pretend sidies”. Coming at a point at which my teeth were growing in, this created the alluring look I like to call “Village Idiot”. It conjures the unfortunate impression that I am not only the product of an incestuous union but that I might very well be up for a bit of sibling-on-sibling action myself. This is probably what is worrying my sister, who is pictured sat beside me.

It’s 1974 and the wheels have started to come off the sartorial caravan. This is a picture of me and my younger siblings in our grandmother’s garden in Bexhill. My ensemble consists of a pair of battered brown Clarks’ sandals worn, unforgiveably, with a pair of grey socks. (By the way, dear brother, lest you be tempted to mock me please first note your own raspberry knee-length man-stockings). The shorts are my blue “Chelsea” football shorts pulled up to a gonad shattering height. The top is a picture of caribbean life as imagined by a jaded Yorkshire designer whose evenings are spent drinking Worthington E and coughing away at a skinny joint of ersatz cannabis before walking home in the rain. My hair has been allowed to roam free, in the fashion of the time and gives every impression of trying to eat my head.

At least until this point, I have the excuse that I was wearing whatever my mother insisted I wore. Pictured here on the day of my brother’s first communion, you see me beaming with pride. The pride is not because my brother was about to enter the great communion of the saints (dressed in brown and with his knees showing), but because of my super-cool Steve Austin stylee denim suit. Finished with a bottle green polo neck sweater, there was simply no trendier dude on Stafford Close (except everyone else).The look perhaps lacked the Little Jimmy Osmond knee patch, but I had outgrown him anyway. This look said I was prepared to gun you down suckah whilst sliding on my knees across an underlit disco floor; and in the unlikely event that Frinton had closed down the Elderly Resident’s Social Association and opened up a disco (and handed out sidearms to 11 year olds) that is exactly what I would have done.

I need to stop now because the shame is making it hard to type.

I am living disproof of the adage that the more you do something the better you get at it. What is untrue in my case, however, is true in others. Amongst the bloggers I read regularly are people who not only update with a metronomic regularity but who never seem to get any less interesting. A daily update from me would rapidly degenerate into talking about my toenails and how I got bored on the train. Three Americans whose output, both in terms of quality and quantity humbles me should be an immediate priority visit if you are not already a regular reader:

(1) Redsy. This is Crankmama’s new site. What I love about Redsy’s site is that it does not have a single theme. It is not “about” motherhood or politics or social issues. It is about all of those things. Diversity of topic is tamed by a unity of tone: everything is addressed with an unrestrained passion. Reading her site is energising.

(2) Oh the Joys. I simply have no idea how she does it. The more she writes the funnier she gets. The best friends are those whose view on life is just askew enough to make you see the funny side of everything. I am simply in awe.

(3) Kevin Charnas. I genuinely cannot think of a duff entry this man has produced. You can tell how good he is by how bad most of the comments are on his site (my own especially). Having read one of his entries you want to leave a comment simply to join the party he has created. On the other hand, you know that anything you are going to say has to sound banal sat so close to the effervescent blogging that precedes it.

I was in Scotland this weekend for my Father-in-Law’s 70th birthday – of which more in the next post. He was terribly glum about it. Partly this is because he is Scottish and is therefore genetically programmed to love gloom as moss loves a rock. Today was also my birthday. Not being Scottish, I quite enjoy them and, here is a secret, despite having a miserablist streak of my own, things have pretty much got nicer from year to year.

Over the last 12 months, in particular, writing a blog has made me a lot of new friends. Not just any old friends either, but articulate, intelligent and funny friends. I don’t imagine you can ever have too many of that sort of person in your life but I certainly intend to try to find out. My birthday message, therefore, is “thank you”. Thank you very much. Thank you for your kindness; your patience; the happiness and the fun your company has brought me.

It is customary, however, to waste some of the internet’s spacetime mourning what ageing has taken away. In an effort not to disappoiny, I tried to think of things I said a lot in childhood that I never get to say now. Long gone, for instance, are jokes about “Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen” with punchlines that, thrillingly, involved “bogies” (or “boogers”) but on reflection made no sense of any kind. I have also had few opportunities in Court to say “He who smelt it dealt it! …. er … My Lord”.

After careful reflection, my top three “forgotten phrases” are, in reverse order:

(1)    “But I DON’T WANT TO!”

I used this a lot as a child with mixed success. I was irrationally convinced that if only I could make it absolutely clear to my parents that they were going against my wishes they would immediately repent. I would sorely love to try this with P, but frankly she is scarier than my Mum and I just don’t dare.

(2)    “Hello Mrs Bloom, can Julian come out to play?”

Any afternoon of ritual punching of one’s friend and throwing conkers at his head had to be preceded by a formal entreaty delivered to their parent at the doorstep. Often as not, the friend was to be seen hovering behind the parent hoping for the nod. The request was delivered in a standard formula which all parents drummed into their children (the ultimate fear in those days being not that your child might be carried away by a murderer but that your neighbours might think them impolite).

I get the impression that this has now died out altogether and that play takes place solely at something called a “play date” and that rather than sitting smoking and drinking booze in the kitchen, parents are busy implementing play plans with high educational content.

(3)   “FIIIIIIINNNNNNNIIIIIIIISSSSSSSHHHHHHHEEEEEED”

“Finished”  was a euphemism for “I have stopped shitting now Mum and would be much obliged if you could hurry along and wipe my arse for me”. I have experienced a slight reluctance in including this entry because I have an uncomfortable feeling that in a few years’ time I will be shouting this out again in a care home in Clacton.