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Oliver Cross: The happy 'tache
We got talking in the pub about urinal-based male etiquette and it occurred to me that if women were made aware of the complications involved in nipping to the gents, they might concede that there was more to life than glass ceilings, menstruation, the agonies of childbirth and making unnecessarily cutting remarks about the inadequacies of males, although I fully realise that won't happen.
Anyway, Nigel said he was bursting but couldn't visit the urinal yet because his friend Pid had just gone to the toilets and it would look as if he was following Pid there, although as everybody knows, without underestimating either Nigel's or Pid's capacities for all sorts of disreputable behaviour, neither has the slightest interest in sinning in gents' toilets.
But all urinal users act as if other urinal users need to be assured that this is the case, so if there are three spaces and you stand at the far left one, you expect any decent chap to stand to the far right one; any other position could cause great alarm and interrupt your flow.
Then Karl pointed out another difficulty; you can be standing in the urinal when another gent enters the gents and decides that, rather than standing beside you in a friendly, innocent way, he would should shift sideways and stand up in one of the sit-down stalls. Karl thinks this is rude and unsettling, implying there is something wrong or unpleasant about you, and, although I hadn't thought about it at all until he brought it up, so do I.
Talking is also a problem; I've seen dark, complicated thrillers where men in suits and shades arrange assassinations while having a wee. This is one of those things that only happen in films because although in real life, I've been told, it's quite normal and almost expected for women to talk to other urinating women over the partition walls, in gentlemanland grim silence, accompanied by a chin-up, straight-ahead stare is always the rule.
Which brings me to the point; it's well known that manly silences and stiff-upperlipness doesn't help at all in the Everyman Campaign for the early recognition and treatment of male cancers.
So everybody should sign up to the Chemic Moustache Growers association, which will give supporters the chance to do their bit for the charity by doing less than nothing at all.
Weigh it up; would you rather be sponsored for climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in the blazing heat or for spending two weeks trying to encourage your moustache to grow while watching telly or maybe visiting a local pub, or sleeping.
On Saturday September 27 the Chemic Moustache Growers will unveil their creations with an evening of music and "a whole load of moustachey fun" at a venue which I don't need to name because you've had enough hints already.
I've decided not to grow a moustache myself because frankly, I haven't the time but I will take my black marker pen to the event so I can do my hilarious impression of President Robert Mugabe.
There's nowt so queer as folk musicians
LAST week was my birthday and as my friend Steady has been reminding me every year for as long as I can remember, I should have said it was the anniversary of my birthday, my birthday being a once-in-a-lifetime, unrepeatable event, very much like my deathday will be unless things take a very weird turn indeed.
So to start again; last week was the anniversary of my birthday and to celebrate – not that that's quite the word for it, it not being a landmark birthday-anniversary, just a getting-older one (58 if you must know but I've still got my teeth) – Lynne and I went to Whitby Folk Week.
I love Whitby Folk Week, although my views on folk music are rather ambiguous. In its 'twiddly dee', Captain Pugwash version, it sometimes induces a kind of twitching of the fingers which makes me wonder if I would have any defence were I to strangle one of the perpetrators.
But this is mainly my ignorance; my friend John, a very accomplished folk musician who acts as our guide to Folk Week, explained that this wasn't, as I had thought, some sort of crazy and dreadful sponsored event involving 100 people playing exactly the same tune in 20 pubs for 100 hours.
John said there were subtle differences between all the tunes, although it would need a trained ear to recognise them. In any case, he, like me, preferred the gentle anarchy of one of the leading Folk Week pubs, the Middle Earth Tavern beside Whitby harbour.
Here there are reciters, clog dancers, singers and musicians of all types, although given that most of the performers were ignited by the great folk revival of the 1960s, not that many hair colours. It's mostly grey, or missing.
Still, taking into account the talent, inventiveness, creativity and good-humour on display, there's little you are likely to come across which makes you regret never having learned an instrument or having a decent voice more than experiencing the Middle Earth Tavern, in all its diversity, in full flow.
Danger flagged up
THIS is something I shouldn't be telling you because it might be seen as socially irresponsible but I couldn't quite resist it, social responsibility being far from my forte.
My friend Gary had a friend who was doing some kind of arty graphic design course in Brighton and for one of his projects, the friend produced a stencil saying 'Where there's blame there's a claim' followed by the telephone number of a firm of compensation-shark lawyers.
He spent days and days spraying the message on half the broken paving stones in Brighton and the following week, as if by magic, half the broken paving stones in Brighton were brand new again.
You should expect a very long sentence
Have you noticed what I've been doing in this column? I have a fear of becoming demented and I read last week that the ability to write long, complex sentences acts as a predictor of people likely to avoid dementia, although, as we all know, nobody is immune.
So, as a sort of mental gym-work, I've been writing sentences as long as I think I can get away with, often going way past 60 words, even though a very fierce former editor of mine once told me that readers shouldn't be expected to follow a sentence longer than 25 words. Which is probably true. And I won't be doing it again. Promise.
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Weather for Leeds
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 1 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
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