LifeOver35

Discounts on Smithfield Case

2012-03-08T05:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I wrote about the success of the Smithfield Case personal shopping service. There was nothing to be gained for me in doing this, I was genuinely pleased to be recommending a service I found useful.

They took payment from my card as agreed - this really is an easy process - and sent me a discount code for anyone else who wants to try it. Feel free to order a case of clothes and add the code "CLAPPERTON-30" at the checkout and they'll give you £15 off your first selection.

This offer will expire on 7 April, and in the interests of full declaration I should say they'll give me a fiver for everyone who orders, up to a maximum of fifty quid. Once again I had no knowledge of this before the two previous blogs on the subject, which weren't written with any gain in mind - but I'd be daft not to mention this discount to you now.

If anyone else orders with them I'd be delighted to hear how you got on in the comments section below.

Genius or idiocy? The Smithfield Case

2012-03-07T01:34:00.007-08:00

Just over a week ago I wrote about the Smithfield Box, this idea of ordering clothes from someone who'd choose them for you based on a few sizes and hints on your taste. Was it a good idea or plain crazy? Here's the blog entry and here's the service. As promised I tried it, and here's what I found.

I opted for smart casual clothes, set a budget, put my sizes and a few colour preferences in but deliberately left out the photo. Let's see what they send, I thought.

Signing up was painless. It took them a couple of days to get back to me but then they had to choose the clothes. There were, to be fair, a couple of stinkers - a Boss jacket that was too young on me as well as being too small (they'll replace mis-sized items of course; given that size varies from brand to brand it's no surprise that they allow a bit of leeway and occasionally send something that's large rather than XL as I asked, or XXL just in case). Loads of detailing on the pockets, not my taste at all. A Paul Smith floral shirt was marked XL but also had that appalling slogan "slim fit", and a pair of Paul Smith plimsols - I don't call those trainers - just didn't do anything for me.

Most of the clothes, though, were pretty damned good. I've kept a Polo Ralph Lauren cotton ribbed V-neck and would happily have helped myself to a zip top one as well if I hadn't found it cheaper on the House of Fraser website (Smithfield claims to be convenient, not the cheapest); a pair of brown chinos were not my usual colour but my wife assured me they looked great so they've gone into the wardrobe rather than the returns box, and a paid of Pied a Terre tan Chelsea boots were excellent - no way were they going back, until the tag on the back snapped. Smithfield is of course happy to replace them.

I'm sending a couple of Polo Ralph Lauren shirts back because they were in L rather than XL - it was worth checking - but also because I'm not short of shirts. Had I been in that market then the pink/red stripe shirt and the blue linen they sent would have done very well.

So on balance I'd have to quantify this as a resounding success. Friendly staff - I have a personal shopper called Beatrice on hand anytime I want to order again - no obligation and above all convenience. They delivered free on Saturday morning and collected yesterday evening at no extra charge - they'll simply debit my card with the value of the items I've kept.

I'm going on holiday in a few months' time and depending on what I find needs replacing in my summer wardrobe I'll certainly be in touch with these guys again. Aside from not getting the same discount I found elsewhere - which is absolutely not something they claim to offer - I can't think of a single drawback.

Is size(ing) important?

2012-03-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

Today I start something new - an occasional paid-for blog entry on the Wizard Jeans site. You might recall I blogged about the jeans towards Christmas - we got talking and they've asked me to submit a few entries.

There will be nothing biased in this, the entries will be on similar subjects to the normal blogs here and there will be no sneaky product placement - but I'll be giving you the first paragraph here, the rest will appear on the Wizard blog.

So, entry 1: Is size important?

Today I am in a good mood because I am down to a size 14. Granted I am of the male of the species and therefore shouldn’t be, but I’d almost bet someone, somewhere would make a size 14 that fits.

The reason is simple: sizes are FULL BLOG ENTRY ON WIZARD JEANS SITE, CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

Give away a suit for homelessness

2012-03-05T04:36:00.000-08:00

Before and after pictures of the case study candidates below

OK, time for a bit of a change - I'm going to write about suits again but this time it's not about buying one, it's about getting rid of one.

Tailor A Suit That Fits has announced it's teaming up with three charities, Amber, Broadway and Emmaus. These are homelessness charities and they've found that people picking themselves up after being made homeless is difficult partly because of confidence levels when they get into a job interview. They have nothing suitable to wear so they go in nervous and the interview doesn't go well.

So, quite simply, A Suit That Fits will hand over a £50 voucher for any old suit (in clean and wearable condition), men's or women's, that you donate to their offices or those of the charities between now and 26 April. They'll also welcome clean shirts and ties, as well as smart shoes. The scheme is called "A Suit for Success".

Of course this isn't a complete answer to homelessness but if it helps someone who's been affected by it and ended up getting as far as a hostel to get back into the job market it's an excellent start. Details of where to drop suits can be found here.

The tailor has offered some examples of people who've benefited from the charities' activities (I've just cut and paste this from the press release):

Paul is a trustee at Broadway – he is 57 and came to Broadway in 2008

In 2003, Paul was married with two children, and living in London, where he owned his own construction business with a childhood friend. When he caught his wife having an affair with his business partner, not only did his marriage breakdown, but it also signalled the end of his business. When he approached the council for help, he was informed that he was not a priority for housing, and he ended up sleeping on the streets. Due to the trauma of this, Paul started drinking heavily as a coping mechanism. After a long process of rehab, social services put Paul in touch with Broadway. Paul is now an incredibly active member of not just Broadway, but homelessness services throughout London. He is now living completely independently, and looking for a job.

Jared, aged 20, came to Amber in August 2011

Jared spent 2 weeks living on the streets following a period of ‘sofa surfing’ - being homeless meant he was unable to get a job. Jared says “I recently attended an army selection weekend and interview; for the interview I used the money I had saved since being at Amber to purchase a suit as I wanted to make a good impression.”

Hollie, aged 19, was at Amber from April to December 2011

Hollie was forced out of home because of violence in the household and then was subjected to domestic violence by her boyfriend. Holly says, “Amber supported me through everything; they helped me increase my confidence. Now I have a managerial role at one of the biggest food companies in the world!"

It's a tremendous idea, and I urge anyone who has a suit they no longer use or which no longer fits to consider donating it in this way.

Weekend silliness: There was a Welshman, an Irishman....

2012-03-02T06:20:00.001-08:00

It's that "weekend" time again - so with a belated Happy St. David's Day to any Welsh readers and a forthcoming Happy St. Patrick's Day in the middle of the month for any Irish followers, here's a Guinness film that made me smile.

More ties that bind

2012-03-01T03:59:00.000-08:00

Regular readers will be aware that I've been looking at hand-painted or at least individually designed ties recently. I was on stage speaking on social media for O2 this week and had a few compliments on the Victoria Richards blue bar model I was wearing at the time. She's due to put some new designs up this month, more on which when they arrive.

There are also some good new designs on Sue Forrest's site this week; I'm getting Pink Link from the Spring 2012 collection which will add a nice splash of colour to my neckware. Today, though, I wanted to draw your attention to Julie Riisnaes. She sells through Etsy which defaults to dollar prices but you can select pounds and she's in the UK.

Some of her ties are a bit brash for me but I have one of the Mosaic pattern (pictured with her permission) and it looks very good with a grey suit. The reason I draw these to people's attention is simple: they're hand painted, therefore unique, and look good - and at £16 only just over a quarter of the price you'll pay for a Victoria Richards, a third compared to one of Sue Forrest's.

There are reasons for this. Julie tells me she buys plain ties in and paints them - which is absolutely fine. they don't feel quite as solid as one of Victoria's, but then that's fine. So she doesn't make ties. She also paints the visible side and leaves the other blank apart from a signature.

So that's pretty much where the cost differential comes in - they're attractive and lively and I may well wear mine on TV sometime; I probably wouldn't if I were moving around on stage as the blank underside might show. But as long as you understand what you're getting, a hand painted design at this price makes something unique accessible to a much wider market. Recommended.

Prostate cancer awareness month

2012-03-01T02:00:00.000-08:00

OK, serious blog post time. No picture, even.

It's Prostate Cancer Awareness month. The most common cancer among men, 10,000 of us die of it every year and if you're over 50 - and I know this site is aimed at people starting at a younger age but some of you are in that category - there's no reason your GP won't happily test, advise on prevention and try to see you don't end up as one of that 10,000.

I don't fall for the various bits of cancer charity propaganda saying "we can beat this" - we're not immortal, something's going to get us eventually. But you can shorten the odds through lifestyle and getting yourself checked periodically.

Tomorrow I'll write about brightly coloured shirts or something - but meanwhile do have a think about getting your prostate checked if you haven't already done so.

Win a McCartney trip with JBL

2012-02-29T09:56:00.004-08:00

I wouldn't normally do this but it's my blog, so I set the rules. Speaker company JBL is running a competition and will take two people to see Sir Paul McCartney in concert in Rotterdam, Antwerp or Zurich in March.

Essentially you click this link and tell the company why you should win.

I've seen him perform twice and am a big Beatles fan. He plays a load of the old stuff, his last single is among his best ballads, although I'm sorry to say the rest of the album doesn't stand up as well - Rod Stewart's Great American Songbook it isn't quite, mostly because McCartney himself has written more hits than many of the composers he highlights in it. The shows, though, are unbelievable - for a guy who's about to exit his sixties, performing a two and a half hour show must be utterly shattering but he does it with aplomb. His backing group are great, of course he can afford the very best sound systems and if a couple of the higher notes aren't quite what they were in 1967 that's fine. For most of the songs he doesn't need them. "Hey Jude" remains the best singalong of all time. "A Day in the Life" is distinctly eerie with McCartney singing both of the solos, "Eleanor Rigby" certainly stands the test of time, "Back In The USSR" is the belter you'd expect as a live number (REFERENCES TO 37 MORE HITS DELETED HERE).

Anyway, there it is. Expenses paid, you and a partner, to one of those cities. Tell you what: don't enter. I wouldn't mind seeing him again myself, and the less competition, the better my chances...

Clean under your car

2012-02-28T04:54:00.018-08:00

My thanks to the people at Karcher who sent a review unit of their Chassis Cleaner. They pitched it as a lifestyle accessory for men; that's fine, I'm a stereotype, although if you haven't got a driveway (I haven't, we park on the street) it's not going to be easy to use.

The principle is simple. Your car gets damaged not only when it gets dirty on the surface but when it gets dirty undereath. This is where salt gets into the wheel arches and elsewhere and you might as well start saving up for its replacement immediately.

So if you haven't got a garage with a platform onto which you can drive the car and clean it from underneath - which I'm guessing covers the vast majority of LifeOver35 readers - you need something that will turn the average jetwash into an underneath-the-car jobbie.

This is easy to assemble and does the job well. Typically from Karcher the water pressure is impressive. Yes, you'll need a good bit of space and an outside tap is a help - the distance between the kitchen in our terraced house and the pavement outside would make this impractical as a regular thing. Nonetheless if you have the set-up then the just-north-of-£80 including VAT I found on a website could be a very good investment that will extend the useful life of your motor.

This is idiotic or brilliant...

2012-02-27T04:37:00.001-08:00

I'm going to try a new service. It's called the Smithfield Case. In spite of its name it is nothing to do with a meat market in London. The idea is simple; you decide it's time you had some new clothes, the wardrobe's due for a refresh, so you order a case of them.

You can make specific requests of course but mostly the system seems geared towards blokes who can't be bothered signing up and hitting the "I'd like some decent clothes please" button. They deliver them, you try them on, decide what you like and what you don't. They pick the rest up and then charge you for the stuff you've kept. It sounds very simple, and of course you can specify stuff you like and stuff you don't - I've asked for "no jeans" for reasons that will become apparent very quickly to regular readers (he says, mysteriously).

They take your sizes, your preferences - I opted for "casual/weekend", ignored "edgy" for example - you say which colours you like and what styles you like wearing. You also set a budget and they're quite frank that the cheaper stuff isn't their market; anyone wanting trousers for under £75 will need to shop elsewhere.

So I'm just waiting for my first box to turn up. It might contain stuff from APC, Bertie, Diesel, Gant, Paul Smith, Reiss, many such designer brands.

Reasons I think it might work: I rarely have the time to go out and look at shops. And when I do I often find my wife has a better eye for what's going to suit me than I do. The convenience and the ability to ask her what she thinks at leisure could get me some very nice pieces.

Reasons I think it might not work: The idea of just getting "some clothes" bothers me a little. Many people will be a little more specific than that in their needs. Or a lot.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Economy making us slimmer

2012-02-24T07:26:00.000-08:00

The people who sent this pic swear it's a lawyer
rather than a model, and who are we to judge?

A travelling tailor in the City has noticed that suit waistlines are getting slimmer - which means two things. First the economy might be disastrous but it's doing our health no harm at all. Second, I am way out of step - but that's not important.

Tailors Norton and Townsend say the average waist size has shrunk from 36 to 34.5in, and chest measurements have gone from 44 to 42.

"The majority of our clients are at executive level who would have seen a business lunch almost as part of their daily working life," said boss Austen Pickles. "But that is no longer the case with expense accounts and lazy lunches out of keeping with the downturn in the economic climate.

"With the emergence of so many different online networking platforms, businesses can often do without the business lunch with its demands on time and finances. It is most noticeable as average sizes drop."

The other thing that's happening is that people are going for lighter-weight fabrics. Pickles believes this is because they want to move about more easily and quickly than they did before.

To be fair this is nothing new. I had my first tailored suit made in the early 1990s and even then the tailor told me that although the classic suit hadn't changed much since the 1970s he'd typically be using lighter fabrics than he used to; that this trend has continued is no surprise.

So is everybody losing weight except me? And have you noticed either tailored or off-the-peg suits coming in lighter-weight cloth?

New scent: Spiecebomb from Viktor and Rolfe

2012-02-24T05:57:00.000-08:00

My thanks to the people from Viktor and Rolfe who have sent a bottle of their new scent, Spicebomb, arriving as it did in its own neat hand grenade shaped container. So far, so extremely blokey - it's a bit of fun. St £45 for 50ml it probably needs to be; that said, why so many people sell scents in 75ml bottles is beyond me as some of them can go off way before you've used them all up.

So the bottle's fun but what about the scent? It has a lot of spice as the name suggests, like a stronger Dunhill 51.3n if you know that one. Grapefruit, bergamot, and leaning towards berries rather than citrus I thought. It's very modern and I'd guess targeted against stuff like the Hugo Boss range I reviewed here.

This has a similar dizzying quality - like the King says in Amadaeus, for me there are "too many notes in it" - I'd advise it for a younger man, it'll rise above some of the others when you're out clubbing. It's called "Spicebomb" and absolutely isn't claiming to be subtle so fair enough, it isn't at all; for that reason it's not for me, but if your tastes are for something a bit bold then this might be the one.

Bluebeards helps fight cancer

2012-02-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

Just a quickie today, normal service will be resumed very shortly (half term last week) but I did want to draw everyone's attention to a new campaign by shaving company The Bluebeards. It's about testicular cancer and it's trying to draw attention to the fact that a quarter of we blokes never check ourselves for changes in shape and other danger signs.

This. Is. Lunacy.

During the seventies and eighties, the female cancer lobby did an admirable job of highlighting breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Prior to a lot of campaigning people didn't mention those illnesses, they were a taboo, and guess what - people didn't check themselves and died unnecessarily early in some dismal cases. This awareness continues and is an excellent thing.

Blokes, meanwhile, like to kid ourselves we're pretty much immortal. We don't need to check ourselves, we don't get cancer, we don't go to the doctor much because we don't need it, right? And anyway, feeling for new lumps and changes is embarrassing, and what we don't know won't hurt us, seems to be the logic.

Well, dream on, folks, that's not how it works. Bluebeards is working on building awareness and I'm pleased to support them. Campaigners on female cancers have set and continue to set an inspiring precedent - it's time to get over ourselves and join them.

The £40,000 whisky tipple

2012-02-08T05:35:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is coming so you can expect some gift-related posts between now and Tuesday - but first, here's something I certainly couldn't afford but would like to support. It's an auction - you can bid online here - of a bottle of Janet Sheed Roberts' Reserve whisky from Glenfiddich, in aid of Walking With the Wounded.

It's a very nice whisky (click the picture for a larger view). At least I hope it is because the last bottle of this malt went for £46,850, making it the most expensive single malt in the world up to and including the present day. It's 55 years old, comes in its presentation case as you'll see, and is very much the sort of thing rich people buy because they can rather than because they intend to drink it (even in tiny measures that price wold tot up to around a thousand quid a tot). Janet Sheed Roberts is descended from the founder of Glenfiddich and at 110 is Scotland's oldest living person.

Londoners can go to the auction itself on Friday from 6.30-8.00pm, Armoury House at the Honourable Artillery Company, EC1Y 2BQ. Apply for an invitation by emailing this link - it's nothing to do with me so no use chasing this blog for further info.

The whisky itself is pale and light, with oaky notes, says the release. That's unlikely to matter much as the buyer isn't going to be prone to drinking it. I've never understood buying drinks in order not to drink them, it's like art collectors putting their paintings into storage.

Of more interest is Walking With The Wounded, which will get the proceeds from the sale. This aims to re-skill and re-train injured people from the armed services with particular attention to the physical and mental damage they'll have suffered. Whatever your political standpoint on the various conflicts in which they've been injured, the individual servicepersons were out there in conflict zones representing our country and I hope people will want to support their successful reintegration; click here for the website to find out more and - if you're not going to be spending tens of thousands on a dram this weekend - donate if you can.

Beer for breakfast?

2012-02-06T06:39:00.000-08:00

Some of you will be aware I had an alcohol-free week a short while ago and was pretty frustrated - not by the absence of drink in my life, which was fine, but with the variety of non-alcoholic items on offer in a standard supermarket.

Help may be at hand. I was sent a press release about Bavaria, a brewery which produces not only a standard lager but an alcohol-free version. And, more interestingly to me - never a lager drinker - a zero alcohol wheat beer called Bavaria 0.0%. It's available from Waitrose and Sainsbury's and last week was on offer at half price, so of course I got a six-pack for just over two quid and tried it.

I'm not going to say I don't miss the slight kick of an alcoholic beer. I'm not going to claim that the depth the alcohol flavour offers, say, a Heffe Weissbeer isn't something I miss. But in terms of tasting like something you'd volunteer to drink, something that compares reasonably to some of the full-strength offerings on the market, it's pretty good. I'd compare it with some of the citrussier wheat beers, more like the Meantime Brewery than Heffe - and I do prefer the Heffe if I'm honest. But it's a long way from the low-alcohol tosh we were sold in the 1980s, quite drinkable and if you must have beer - even for breakfast - then this one will do you no harm and allow you to drive afterwards.

That said, my wife wasn't a fan and prefers a good ginger beer from Sainsbury's - which, because of the ginger, actually tastes stronger than a whole load of actual beers and also doesn't contain any alcohol at all.

The eyes have it

2012-02-04T01:49:00.000-08:00

As regular readers will know, I'm not averse to a bit of moisturiser here and there. In fact when you reach your mid-forties, a good routine in which you wash your face properly with a soap-free cleanser before shaving (soap can in fact clog the pores) then moisturise afterwards makes a definite difference.

I've been less impressed by eye creams. Not that I don't think they do much, I'm sure they do - I just haven't seen the necessity. So when SkinMedica sent me a sample of its Biometa Eye Repair product I was a little cautious.

First we'll get the rant out of the way - could we all stop calling this stuff "repair"? The fact that I'm no longer 21 years old doesn't mean I'm damaged. As Dame Joan Bakewell said in an article recently, looks don't "fade" as you age, they change. A bit of relief from a bit of increased dryness would be good of course, and restoration of a little suppleness in the skin is always welcome, but please don't tell me it's a repair - there's no actual damage. End of rant.

So, the cream comes in a nicely designed, expensive looking box and tub. It's aiming to look good in your bathroom and for an eyewatering (no pun intended) £89 a pop it had better. The cream itself goes on pleasantly enough and works, like most of them, by plumping up your skin a bit so the wrinkles are a bit less noticeable. It's unisex but I'd be surprised if they didn't get a whole bucket more female sales than male.

The manufacturer says the cream improves and restores elasticity in the skin, boosts the skin's regenerative qualities, boosts natural collagen production, moisturises and attacks the pigments that make you look like a panda. OK, the last bit is my phrasing. I'm no scientist and would recommend you do your own research before accepting any specific claims about what a product like this does and how. It certainly helped a bit with moisturising the area under my eyes.

My wife has also been using it and finds it's pretty good. She pays particular attention to her eyelids and I never have, so perhaps it's no great surprise that I haven't seen a huge difference - she'd be happy to buy it again and tells me the price is about average for this sort of item. It does reduce dark circles under the eyes if you have them. Mine are certainly there, I'm approaching my late forties for goodness' sake - but not badly so, which is why I'm not in much of a position to say just how well it copes with that. I'd welcome comments.

So if you're into your eye creams this should certainly be on your list of ones to try. If you're not, and if my experience is anything to go by, then this isn't going to convert you.

New accessory shop - ties, cufflinks, braces...

2012-01-30T01:02:00.000-08:00

It's always good to welcome a new business so today I'd like to introduce a Dorset-based company called PerUomo - here's a link to the website - which gets brownie points immediately from me for using a model who looks as though he may actually have seen his 30th birthday, men's magazines please take note.

Cutting to the chase it has some good stuff on display. As regular readers will know I've been looking at refreshing my tie collection a bit as I've been doing a small amount of telly. One of my pet hates is boring Paisley designs; you get a lot which are self-consciously loud but end up a bit samey. The pattern on PerUomo's Italian pure silk green and blue is regular enough not to be utterly garish but spaced out enough to be a bit interesting, which is my idea of a good design. Others may disagree of course but at £34.95 it's certainly on my list of possibles. There's a good range of colours for people who don'y fancy this one. I can't speak for how well-made they are because I haven't actually seen one in the flesh, but I have no reason to doubt them.

To accompany this I might consider a pair of cufflinks from the company, although if I were matching them I'd have to see them in person to decide. There are a lot of designs similar to many I've seen before but I'm quite taken with this blue and white gilt pair. You know the routine, a shade too big and they might swamp an otherwise quite tasteful outfit. They also sell braces which are not my thing, but they have a good selection for wearers.

The family members who run this site already have one placeholder for a forthcoming range of cufflinks in addition to those already on the site. I'll be watching what comes in with interest.

Tee time - but maybe not yet

2012-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

I feel for makers of tee shirts this time of year. Sometimes they get in touch with me to promote their goods, as did a business I hadn't heard of called T-Lab recently. We design good tees, they say, of course you do, I think, but what muppet's going to wear them when it's this cold outside?

The answer is of course that the weather is changeable at this time of year. Whereas we might well be in with a chance of snow in February we might just as easily come up with quite mild temperatures, and of course you can always put a jumper over the tee.

Which in this case might be a bit of a shame because these are rather good. I was thinking about buying something with a bit of a design on it and the ones these guys put together are well suited to a bloke my age - as you can see from the picture of the one I've got, it's a logo but not so much of one as to look a complete mid-life crisis.

Where the garment really scores, though, is in the quality. We're talking heavy duty cotton, comfortable, roomy (it's an XL and doesn't feel as though it's stretched right across me in spite of the fact that I could clearly lose a stone or three) and the stitching is solid. The neck has the right thickness to last longer than the five minutes you'd expect from something cheaper.

It's pretty good for the £20 the company currently wants (down from £25). I could see myself stocking up - but maybe a little later in the year when it's tee-shirt type weather.

Getting knotted - more on ties

2012-01-23T23:11:00.000-08:00

I've been refreshing my tie collection this year. I've done a bit of TV and if I'm honest the ones I have, although they're fine face to face, tend to end up showing up as pretty dull. The studio lighting doesn't do them all any favours.

Over Christmas I wrote about ties from Victoria Richards andI remain a fan. She designs them for Jon Snowand they look distinctive without - necessarily - appearing garish. Granted she can do brightly-coloured if she's asked. Her website will be stocking up with new designs in about eight weeks; in the meantime a load of ties come up as out of stock, which is frustrating.

Tie 15, Sue Forrest Ties

So I've been looking elsewhere and found Sue Forrest, - notice the spelling of her website omits one 't' in "sueforresties.co.uk' and hasn't bought the .com version. Based in Hay on Wye, which is always going to earn Brownie points from me as I had my honeymoon nearby (COUGH) years ago, she hand paints her own designs onto silk and makes them into ties. They don't have names like the Victoria Richards models, and I appreciate my buying "Percy Bar" from Victoria probably sounds a bit more exciting than buying "Tie 15" from Sue. But it's a nice design; regular enough to be coherent but fairly obviously hand painted and therefore unique - even someone buying the same thing will have some slight variants due to the hand made nature of the thing.

I like it very much. Her website says people tend to love or hate her ties which I can understand - but to enliven a standard dark suit and white shirt they're an excellent look, and at £45 not bad for something hand made and unique. You'd pay more for many so-called "designer ties" in a department store. I'll be keeping an eye on her site to see what else comes up.

I did think I'd found something original at first - an exchange of emails, however, tells me she also supplies Jon Snow and he's a good customer. I am not stalking this man.

As with previous posts on the subject I have no affiliation with these craftspeople - this blog is not incentivised by any vendors in any way

Win tickets to Woman In Black premiere

2012-01-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

Those of you with kids, come to the front. Those without, I suspect most readers are a little senior for this. However...

Daniel Radcliffe's new movie, Woman In Black, premieres tomorrow and there's a chance you can win tickets, sit with the stars including Radcliffe and Ciaran Hinds. I'm not running the competition (get you into a premiere? I only wish I could...), it's from the PRs promoting the movie.

This being a style blog there is an inevitable dressing-up bit to what you have to do. It's simple, although the chances of winning are low. You turn up to the premiere - which is at the Royal Festival Hall - dressed as your interpretation of the Woman In Black. If you're very lucky you'll get chosen to go into a VIP fan area of the red carpet.

Then the best dressed entrant is given a pair of tickets to the premiere and will be invited in. It really is as simple as that.

Good luck - and if you're lucky enough to win, or send one of the kids along and they win, please tell LifeOver35 all about it!

Dry December and the middle aged

2012-01-10T04:46:00.000-08:00

Flickr: Tim Pearce, Los Gatos

As regular readers will know I'm temporarily off the booze because of a mild gum infection (cleared up now) and antibiotics, and of course you always have to finish a course of antibiotics even if the symptoms have cleared up.

So I'm feeling fine but am unable to drink until Thursday evening - well, technically Thursday lunchtime but I'm not a midday drinker. All of which leads me back to last night's Inside Out London, that link should work for one week on iPlayer, in which BBC London journalist Wendy Hurrell documented her staying away from alcohol for the whole of December.

It's worth watching if only as a reminder of the stuff we all know about alcohol. In excess it does harm, not only to you but to people around you, and you're likely to notice benefits from cutting down or cutting it out even if you don't classify yourself as a heavy drinker. We all know this stuff but a reminder never does any harm - it's well made and some of the facts on what it does to your health and appearsance are worth going over again.

Of course Hurrell isn't "one of us" - this blog is primarily aimed at the over-35 male; I'm certain she doesn't qualify as a male and I have serious doubts as to whether she's seen her 30th birthday yet, not that it's any of my business. The programme covers older people too.

My own experience has been enlightening from a number of other angles. It's only been five and a half days so not comparable with Hurrell's experience but there have been things I'd expected to improve which haven't done so. Sleeping patterns - I tend to wake up a few times overnight - are pretty much unchanged, although last night was good. Any thoughts of "cut down the alcohol and you'll sleep better" have proven so far illusory.

Likewise feeling more alert and refreshed on waking in the morning; I'm still the same drowsy, incoherent waste of space I've always been first thing. And nodding off in front of the telly, let's not even go there. Talking to my friends I wonder whether that's just a fortysomething thing. The only difference now is that instead of thinking "this wine must be stronger/lower quality than I thought" on finishing a glass after dinner and dozing off, I'm now thinking "either this orange juice is off, this programme is unbelievably soporific or I'm genuinely knackered".

On balance this is positive. Blaming tiredness and lethargy on alcohol and deciding I would do something about it 'eventually' was sloppy thinking. You don't have to underestimate the harm alcohol can do to understand that attributing every bit of fatigue to it could be masking an underlying issue which isn't drink related at all.

It's only been five days so I wasn't expecting a radical change in wellbeing. And I'm not going to fall back into the habit of having wine with a meal because we "might as well" and it's easy. I'm sure I'll lose a little weight by cutting down, which will reduce my risk from heart disease, diabetes and all those other things we all understand and know as we order the next pint.

Nonetheless, going without it for a few days and noticing so little difference in so many areas has left me determined to look again at a few other areas of my life - diet, stress and exercise in particular - and stop using "I really must consider cutting down on alcohol" as an excuse not to do anything else.

What would you give for a better body?

2012-01-06T05:38:00.000-08:00

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.

Everybody duck, the patterned shirt is back

2012-01-05T02:12:00.000-08:00

Flickr: Smath

I've just been reading the as-always-excellent MSN men's pages and today it's all about fashion looks we're going to be sporting over the next 12 months. The first one was the one that made me shudder the most; the patterned shirt is going to be a big seller. MSN highlights this example from John Lewis. Usefully it's reduced - the picture on this page is from Flickr (I don't have the rights to lift John Lewis pictures).

On the right person these will of course look great. This blog, though, is called Life Over 35 and for that reason if none else I won't be buying a shirt with a particularly loud pattern. The reason is simple; I've pulled off the remarkable trick, at 47-later-this-year, of not drinking much beer but growing a beer gut nonetheless. Of course I'll be working on getting rid of it (and how often have I said that in the past) but for the moment anything that draws attention to it - like a really loud pattern - is out.

There are many myths about what clothes to wear when one's become a little bulbous. Most are based on the principle that vertical stripes are slimming. This is rubbish; first tests have proven it doesn't work (look at a square with vertical lines through it and another with horizontal lines and the majority of people will find the horizontal version looks thinner when the sizes are in fact identical - so vertical lines are fattening) and second a set of vertical lines over a belly actually ends up working like a contour map of your shape.

The jeans I highlighted from Wizard before Christmas are good in this respect in that they're well cut and very matt black - my wife tells me they're slimming on me. Blocks of colour are always good if you're less than confident about your shape. Combine with a casual top from Fat Face (the Henley top in that link works well on me with a white or off-white tee underneath it) or the one I highlighted from Sea Salt last year (I have bought one of these and it works well as very casual - although they seem to have sold out now) and you'll look fine.

I suspect the MSN site is aimed partly at a younger constituency. Early twentysomethings do indeed look great with a bit of a swagger and a loud shirt. Standup comics and TV presenters often get away with it because of the context; Paul Merton wears something with a fairly extreme pattern most weeks on "Have I Got News For You". If you've worked hard enough to have an athletic build then the chances are you'll look pretty damned good, too. For the rest of us I still recommend blocks of colour.

An alcohol-free week

2012-01-04T05:13:00.000-08:00

Flickr: Tim Pearce, Los Gatos

'Tis the New Year and inevitably the papers have been full of how to get yourself fit, how to detox and soforth. The most reassuringly sensible advice, to me, is the one that's been doing the rounds about a month of detox being a waste of time - you need to be reasonably sensible all year round to make any lasting impact on your health.

I'm no expert but this seems so sensible it has to be true, and is at the very worst a harmless idea. Nonetheless, following a minor gum infection and a visit to the dentist I have antibiotics and yes, they're the sort with which you mustn't drink alcohol.

Contrary to popular belief this isn't true of all antibiotics. I know, I saw it on QI so it must be true. The fact is that in the early days of antibiotics they were prescribed to sailors who'd been into port, found a prostitute and got themselves infected with something nasty. So they were prescribed and - because the patient would be more amenable to getting reinfected before the last lot had cleared up when under the influence of alcohol - they were told drink would render the drug ineffectual.

Nonetheless I've checked and mine are indeed the alcohol-free variety (and the infection is, honestly, a gum thing). The snag I'm going to face is that I don't like sugary, sweet drinks, so sitting at dinner with a can of Coke isn't an option I'm going to relish. I find water quite dull and elderflower gets a little cloying after a while.

It's while looking at the range of drinks available at supermarkets that I start to realise just how in love with alcohol we are as a society. At the end of last year I referenced the excellent blog by Wendy Hurrell (who I see has been kind enough to reference this entry for which my thanks) in which, for a TV documentary, she went without alcohol for a month. I'm only aiming for a week so it's going to be a pushover, but I'll be interested to see whether I start to notice changes in my health and sleeping patterns - and indeed alertness and maybe even weight (a tall order for a week).

At the moment I'm still at the stage of being struck by just how much we orient ourselves around alcohol at the moment, and whether I'm going to find anything I find halfway palatable to have as my preferred 'tipple'.

Suggestions welcome...

The gift card: a rant

2012-01-03T04:26:00.000-08:00

Flickr: Wonderdawg777

Hello, welcome back and I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year. I was lucky enough to get a Fat Face gift card.

Regular readers will know I like Fat Face. Casual clothes, watch some of the patterned excesses if you're my age but good quality, nice design. You get the picture. So I went online to the site and found they had a rather nice pair of black Chelsea Boots (I'd have preferred the brown but they'd sold out, fair enough). Casual, slightly beaten-up looking, really nice for casual wear.

I haven't got them though. And why not? Because like so many other retailers they don't allow you to use gift cards over the Internet when the cards were bought in a shop. This is far from unique to Fat Face. Last year I had a WH Smith gift card (by now a useless shop I'm afraid; when I asked on the week of its release whether they had the Blu-Ray of "The King's Speech" they didn't, whereas every other DVD retailer in the universe had made damned sure they had loads - WH hadn't even stocked it in the first place) and once again, I could only use it in actual premises.

I'm sure there are technical reasons it's difficult to have a preloaded and top-uppable card working online. No doubt someone from IT would be able to explain it to me.

But as a tech journalist since 1989 guess what - I don't care. If you're a High Street retailer you're going to be under threat by now from the online world, and if you have an online presence as well then your gift tokens need to work seamlessly - or else I'm going to start buying my gift tokens elsewhere next year.

A stereotype says men hate shopping. Personally I don't - but I do like a business to accept genuine money when I offer it regardless of the channel. It's now 2012 - retailers, your New Year's resolution needs to be to make buying with you a seamless experience, whether the customer is in front of the computer, on a smartphone or in your shop.