Day 29. Confessions of a boffin...

With the 'stache at its all time longest I have started to ponder on whether keeping the tash may or may not be a good idea. It's starting to grow on me, both literally and figuratively speaking. It is even growing on Aerospace girlfriend and she kept pawing at it trying to see if it would twiddle 'Dali' style. I could see myself as a facial gardener, although rewind to a couple of days ago and I was literally rubbing my face on Velcro, combs, fingers, forks and Aerospace girlfriend's dog. Okay, the last one was a small fib, but I would have had he stayed still long enough. Plus the constant rubbing and stress from Uni has made my face hate me, and my skin has developed a dryness only matched by the Sahara desert. Luckily the mighty facial topiary masks the hideousness of the face. In fact every day in uni people comment on how it is a 'proper moustache'. Not sure what qualifies it as a proper moustache, although I am 100% sure it involves a hairy lip I am less sure of the other things. Anyway here it is, judge for yourselves.

Yaaaahhhhoooo

I can also comment on one small observation I noticed two or three days after I started to grow the moustache, in which I was no longer getting asked my age when buying booze. Usually I would have to have my passport with me as people didn't believe I was thirty one and once even though I had the passport, I was refused. This particular human being, and I use the term lightly, asked me for ID. I handed it over and had the pleasure of watching him struggle to compare me to my photograph. Why was he struggling? Well my passport has a photograph of me with a black mohawk hairstyle, and yet when I stood in front of him I had it dyed orange. Cue him calling his manager, and me questioning his parentage. I might call into Lidl tomorrow and see if the appearance of a moustache and normal hair will confuse him even more? Anyway I digress, my original point was that since I have started growing a tash I haven't been ID'd once. Nor have I been subjected to the scrutinising stares of the bored old women behind the tills who think all underage teenagers disguise the fact they are buying booze by cleverly hiding it amongst a trolley full of shopping.

I am often asked when am I going to update my blog. Well I'm sorry but one of the difficulties of being a boffin doing an engineering course at Uni is that some tutors have no concept of undergraduates needing sleep. This means I have no time to tell you all about my latest moans or the time I accidentally went dogging, (true story). I will tell you that I have come to the conclusion that once you're born a nerd you're always a nerd. I realised this while watching penguins. Yes you read that right, penguins. Instead of cooing at their comical walks or underwater aerobatics, I was watching the wing tip vortices's they create as they swim and thinking ''I wonder if I can apply lifting line theory and vortical lift equations to a penguin? I wonder what the lift curve slope of a penguin is?'' If you have some degree of normality then none of that should make any sense, if you understand what I am saying then you have my sympathy. But for everybody else I can only describe it as leaving the world of the muggles and going into Hogwarts. Once you know this stuff your brain cant switch off.

Day 21. Toilet Humour..

I woke up and went to the toilet as usual. I spend a good deal of my life on the toilet, and have read a few books and played a fair few games while perched on it. Not today, some kind soul had left the window open. Now I am not the kind of person who enjoys having the biting cold air caress my nether regions, nor do I enjoy having to endure ice cold splash back, which isn't pleasant at the best of times. It really annoys me, it should be a place of quiet contemplation like the cloisters of a priory or the Fortress of Solitude. Well technically it was as cold as the Fortress of Solitude but like Justin Bieiber I do not possess super powers, or maybe I do and cold is my Kryptonite. Being cold inhibits my ability to do anything, I lose powers of speech, my sight is blurred from the tears my eyes produce from the lightest of cold winds, while my shivering body prevents me from completing all but the most rudimentary of tasks. I can't even reach to pick up an item from the top shelves in the supermarket cold aisles because my nipples shrivel and the rubbing on my clothes feels like torture to me.

It was Saturday night. I closed my eyes and started the long drawn out process of falling asleep, trying to remember what coursework is due in and when, what things I need to do in the morning and then trying to go through the problems I'm having with some vague mathematics I'm trying to weave into a jet engine simulation. The multicoloured fuzzy shapes start dancing in front of my eyes, and I start to nod off in the silen.... "ARRAAAGHHHHHHHGGGLLLEEeee ARGHHHH WHAT THE HELL!! OH MY GOD ARGGHHHHHHHHH... WHAT THE... ARRRGGHHH '' Shattered the silence just inches from my ear. Now I don't know if you've ever experienced sphincter flutter, well I did and before I could understand what was going on I was bravely clung to Aerospace girlfriend hoping she could fight off the nasty shouty person so that I didn't have to get involved. But then as seconds passed and the shouting stopped and I heard the shallow breathing I realised it was Aerospace girlfriend having a nightmare. What could have made her scream like that? I didn't find out as she didn't want to tell me, and promptly fell back to sleep leaving me somewhat unnerved and now faced with a room where every shadow was some kind of monster who wanted to rub my nipples or worse. When I woke the next day into the bright light of rational thinking, I asked her ''So what was that screaming about last night''. I was expecting tales of vampire sheep, ravenous twisted readers of the Daily Mail running through the woods chasing us.... But no the truth was weirder if a little  mundane, apparently she dreamt I had springs for eyes...

Day 16. Suited and Booted

I have said this before and I'll say it again, I have seen the worse that the internet has to offer. I have seen society at its lowest, from 'two girls, one cup' to pictures of things removed from peoples anuses in accident and emergency. Google 'sheep hose alien dwarf sex' and in all probability you will get what you're looking for, nothing surprises me online these days and I could regale you with tales of strange internet sites and videos all day long. But I can honestly say that I was shocked when I found out that Justin Bieber is a mere mortal. I'm not sure that other people realise that our yellow Sun does not give him powers beyond mortal men. He cannot run faster than a bullet. In fact he is far slower, physically and mentally, than my old car. Nor does he wield a pair of nun chucks or posses sight beyond sight. No, it seems his ability is to make hordes of girls scream. It's like nothing I have ever seen before, turning teenage girl after teenage girl into puddles of passion under the might of his hands and inoffensive voice. I'm not sure this news has filtered down into the mainstream media, who continue to plaster his gimpy face all over the papers.

I had the unpleasant experience of wearing a suit to Uni today, not entirely sure the look suited me, no pun intended. As I walked down the road I passed some cars and the reflection looking back at me was not too flattering. In fact I looked like an extra from Brookside or maybe a wimpy version of Charles Bronson. Considering I had just done a formal presentation for one of my projects this did not bode well.

In other news mo'bros and she'bros here is the long awaited picture of the my moustache.. If it looks ginger, that's because it is. I should also admit that I am a fully paid up member of the Ginger Panthers. Ginger is not a colour to hide from, it's fire and passion! Not sure how to style the 'tache yet. I have a handlebar thing going on at the moment which involves minimum maintenance. I may need to construct some form of facial trellis in which to train the growth. That's all for now, so in the words of Bill S. Preston Esquire, be excellent to each other!

Day 15. Don't worry, be happy....

Things have been more than a little busy these last few days, This last year of my MEng degree has me working harder than Ron Jeremy's old chap. But I know that excuse wont wash with you my eager blog readers and I promise to get my act together!

I haven't really done very much except work, I did spend an enjoyable weekend at aerospace girlfriends which involved a poo. Not mine, or hers, In fact I am not sure who did it but it is one of two suspects, Bella Lugosi and Mr Sprout, two guinea pigs who live in Aerospace girlfriend's bedroom. These guinea pigs have previous poo flinging form and have become quite adept at launching a their droppings across the room at a rate of knots. Now it wasn't the rogue guinea pig poo that surprised me, or the fact that I was lay on it. It was the reaction of aerospace girlfriend who casually picked it up in a tissue and remarked ''It's ok. It's completely dry". Can't fault her logic.

I think as we get older we get used to getting up at the crack of dawn, getting ready, grabbing a coffee, the long commute into uni/work. Having to labour through the boredom and monotony of the day, putting up with slack jawed yokels, driving home again. Spend all night at the desk, watching the news, the mad dash for the remote when Hollyoaks starts, kicking yourself that you heard the theme music and you now also have to resist the urge to jam a pencil into your ears, and then the white noise of the local news drains the last of your will to live.. It is then that you do it. Ladies cover your eyes, guys, you know what I'm talking about. The 'twiddle'. I don't mean some dirty attempt at flicking one off to a thirty second, grainy Latvian Porn clip on some rip off Youtube site, I mean the old ballsack fiddle where you while away the hours rolling your ball skin about like a redneck whittling a stick. Don't be scared to admit it, I know you all do it, I do it. The whole point of me writing this blog is because I am growing a moustache to raise awareness to get men to touch their balls. Now this isn't some thinly vieled attempt to get you to inspect your bits, I do have a point. It's a tiny insignificant thing, but it's the small things in life that make it worth living and today one such small thing was watching an Audi driver go apoleptic because I blew him a kiss. 

He had tried and failed to overtake every car at every possible opportunity and after fifteen minutes had managed to get several car lengths behind where he started. After undertaking me and several others, blowing his horn and driving up everyones rear end he realised he was in the wrong lane and attempted to bully his way back in, usually people let them back, but not this time. The traffic lights changed to red and we all gently rolled past him, I was the last car in the line, while he was stuck there, stranded in the middle of a junction of several roads at rush hour. As I passed he desperately made eye contact and was gesturing for me to let him in, I shook my head. He called me a naughty word. I blew him a kiss. He literally erupted and realising he had nowhere to go, left to join another queue going the wrong way home. I realised that despite all the annoyance in the world, it's the small things like a quick scrotum twiddle or scoring one against an idiot that transforms you into the young, carefree teenager whose only concern was who was going to lick your balls that day, not whether you managed to finish that twenty page report and presentation...

So back the 'tache.. The worst of the itching has now passed, or so I hope and have had several comments on the bushyness of growth. But this has brought on a new set of problems, in that it has now started to collect food when I eat. Dammit, who'd have thunk it! These issues never occurred to me before I started growing it. I saw Dick Strawbridge and said that one! If only I had stopped to think that my large cappuccino froth or mayonnaise from a sandwich would find its way stuck onto my baby 'tache.. I can only hope my emulation will be worthy of the name Strawbridge.

Will post a photo tomorrow so you can share the power of my 'tache!

Day 11, Oh The Huge-Manatee

Today I have made a monumental discovery, Velcro. It's the perfect moustache comb! The mini beast has now reached a length where it is starting to interfere with my drinking, despite my joking about growing a 'soup strainer' with Aerospace girlfriend, I have my doubts now and have resorted to drinking Vimto from a huge jug so as not to disturb the torment that lies on my lip.

So what have I been doing these last two days while not blogging about the ins and outs of moustache topiary. I'd like to say I have been battling my way up the Amazon, hand carving Jimmy Saville's headstone or maybe even solving the European debt crisis single handily. But no that would be lying, something that is forbidden now I have the responsibility of a moustache on my shoulders, (or should that be face). However I have been busy, busy working out who I would like to kill first. First, second and third on my list happen to be a certain university person who I shall refer to from now on as 'Bastard'.... But I hear you say ''Why are you being mean Paul, you're not mean Paul, it's not like you Paul''. Well 'Bastard' annoys me in ways which only the Daily Mail knows how. 'Bastard' not only a seeks me out to annoy me specifically, like some sort of bizarre Quidditch game, he will actually stop talking to take a fairly obvious gawp and then dribble mid-way through a conversation because a woman walks past. It disturbs me, deeply. As if the workload isn't enough I have to cope with perverts too.

On a lighter note, because I know many of you only read this to hear humorous tales from my younger days where I tell you tales of nudity and shame, well not today. Today marked my first public appreciation of my 'tache, where a rather posh middle aged lady tell me how refreshing it was to see a young man with a moustache, despite me being thirty one and dressed like a scruff. So at last my hairy face stirs the loins of old lady spinsters. Take that smooth faced Brian Cox, with your eyes like Hawaiian lagoons and the soft Mancunian undertones that makes my mother say things like ''He can park his slippers under my bed''. Well move over Paul's in town now..

Day 9. This moustache mathematics malarky...

I went to an after hours lecture today to listen to Professor Marcus du Sautoy talk about mathematics, which was great although it would've been a faux pas if I had bumped into him with a hot coffee due to my teenage like reaction when I saw him. What wasn't great was the woman who sat on my left in the lecture. She was perched on the edge of her seat and spent most of the time enthusiastically nodding and shaking her head like a woodpecker with epilepsy, while saying ''yes, yes, yes..... no, noo, yes!'' in response to any statement Prof Marcus made as though we were watching an episode of Playschool. This woman was a pharmacologist, she proudly told us, although I kept my feelings on those who don't do engineering/maths/physics quiet to prevent a scene, unlike her excessive muttering later on. He was talking about the fusion of maths and art, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine several weeks ago. She is training to be a teacher and one of her projects is to 'design a school'. Her group is lead by somebody who has a degree in expressive arts, and wanted to include 'expressive arts' as a core subject for thier school. Which made the people in the group with science degrees, like my friend the physicist, snort with derision. When my friend told me about this I replied that ''I have never been asked to solve an equation using the medium of dance on an exam before'' and cue much laughing. Fast forward to tonight and I had the pleasure of watching a video of Marcus du Sautoy dancing like an ill advised love child of Louis Walsh and Kate Bush, expressing prime numbers with the medium of dance. In your face Paul, you maths snob.

Every day is now a milestone, each day is one day closer to getting over the incessant itching and irritation and one day closer to follicular glory. Although I am dangerously close to being classified as having a 'porno' tache, here what do you think?

Personally I think it looks like a proud and noble beast sat on my face, like a third eyebrow, majestic in stature and not at all like a 'porno' tache. Although the quizzical pose looks a bit weird, note to self - must improve my camera posing.

Day 8, The Itchy and Scratchy Show!

Apologies for not posting over the weekend, but a combination of driving Aerospace girlfriend about, Uni work and sheer laziness had kept me busy all weekend.

The itching has grown worse, so much so that I considered rubbing my face on the pavement. God only knows what horrors are stored for those who grow full beards. Another true story, in about 2004 I shaved my ahem 'gentlemans area'. Yes that's right everything went, no trimming, no pubic topiary, nothing left... Wow, the freedom, I felt like I was in a Bodyform advert, and if there had been sand dunes around, I would've run through them with a kite. Ahh, I thought, this is what the freedom to run about while unfettered in the nether regions feels like!  But that freedom was short lived, approximately two days later I was in perpetual agony when my body took it's revenge for all the abuse I had given it over the years by giving me stubble. It wasn't until over a week later that I felt comfortable enough to sit down again without looking like I had hemorrhoids. I had put that episode behind me and never thought about it again until today. Every word, twitch, sip from a cup is uncomfortable but I will not back down to my ginger stubble, just hurry up and grow!

One last word, thanks for all the donations!!! Our team at Movember

Day 5. Treasure Hunt!

It itches, just like that crap 90's film The Field Of Dreams with its almost Hippy like mantra 'if you build it, they will come' well I have decided facial hair should come with the caveat of "if you grow one, you will itch". It wouldn't be so bad, but its something that is constantly there, like X factor or Dancing on ice. Highly annoying but not offensive.

Keeping on the theme of hairy things, myself and Aerospace girlfriend were watching Autumn Watch, as opposed to watching Kate Humble's Badger. For those who don't watch this, you should, listening to Chris Packham say ''hoaaiiiii'' then watch him sniff a poo. Highly entertaining. Before I carry on with my ramble on the evenings televisual wonders, let me tell you a story....................... When I was a youngling, about twelve years of age I went into the garden armed with a small beach spade and began the 1992 summer search for treasure having been inspired by Time Team. I dug little holes here and there until I could resist no more and started 'the hole'. Deciding where to dig the hole was a task in itself, too near the house and I'd surely be seen by my mother and grounded as usual, too close to the mental neighbours and I'd be found out. Couldn't dig up the few patches of grass that I hadn't yet set fire too, previously dug up or destroyed with paint. Location found I started to dig, I found small bones buried by a long gone dog, interesting rocks and small pieces of brick. I carried on regardless and still the treasure eluded me. The next day I returned to my hole and carried on digging, and the next. The small beach spade was useless for the large scale excavation I was doing but my hole was soon as deep and wide as I was tall. I spent all summer digging in one form or another in the garden and I didn't find shit, and neither was there any in Autumn Watch tonight, Chris Packham you let me down!

I have also been told not to call She Who Must Not Be Named, Aerospace girlfriend. I did offer the following choices 'Fish wife', 'Shoe girl', 'Crazy cat lady' but all were met with a look that had my testicles running for the hills. So while I dwell on that let me remind you of Movember and to not only donate your hard earned cash, (or easy earned student loans) but to check your balls!

Day 4... Its a moustache Jim, but not as we know it...

Today marks my first day walking amongst the public, no longer am I a hairy faced virgin. Although I felt a bit inconspicuous with my three day old 'towel fluff face', I also had trouble reading the looks of the women who serve me my daily pint of coffee in Costa's. I like to think they were feeling the power of the 'tache, in fact I can feel the power of the 'tache. I no longer walk, I strut, confident in my moustache's ever increasing power to both humble chavs and leave women lingering for more... Although I don't like to dwell on the fact I am well over 6 feet tall with a gait that any Gibbon would recognise, so strutting is technically out of the question. Despite my penchant for the joys of Oi and anarcho punk I am quite partial to a bit of Tom Jones. Aerospace girlfriend knows this only too well, when I start singing in her flat. The man can command an entire room just through his walk, I'm almost certain this is due to his impressive chest wig. I am starting to see the correlation between body hair and strutability and my analytical brain is trying to work out whether hair growth is proportional to masculinity or if it is just down to luck that certain men can carry off walking like a panther. Answers on a postcard please.

I caught myself thinking I'd look cool in a pair of aviator sunglasses while sat at the traffic lights in the car this morning. I was miles away, imaging how cool I'd look with the windows down, the soft pokey notes of saxophone jazz noodling from the radio as George Michael's 'Careless Whisper' floats through the air... Then it struck me.... A MULLET! Why had I not thought of it before! A mullet! A moustache! Awesome, awesome to the max!

So moment of truth readers, I suppose you want to me to cut to the chase and see the beast, enough of this mullet talk and walking like a panther. Here it is in all its follicular glory.

 

What do you mean you cant see it? It's there!!! 

Still cant see it, for those of you who have less than perfect looking balls, here it is in extreme close up. I estimate a good 2-3mm of growth.. Not too shabby.

I hope that I get past this '80's Footballer' style moustache fairly quickly, it is not a look that agrees with life in the 21st century. A pack of Bourbon cream biscuits should help growth along nicely. That's all for now Mo'bros and She'bros.

Day 3 In the moustache house....

The first conversation of the day went like this..

Mum:   Morning.

Me:      Morning.

Mum:   Have you been using my blue towels!!!?

Me:      kerflumph?

Mum:   You have blue fluff all over your face!

Me:      kerflumph!

Mum:   Are you growing a beard?

Me:      Humph.

I pride myself on being immature, even now when I hear somebody say 'gonads', I will stifle a little laugh. What makes it worse is that it was probably me who said it in the first place. So now when I think that other people of my age are trying to come to terms with the onset of their own 'middle age', I think maybe they are fighting through the start of a mid life crisis and hoping to finally find themselves. Me, I'm growing a moustache, wearing an offensive T-shirt and air guitaring to an old Blink song. Some may interpret this as a mid life crisis, but I have never really been mature enough to be able to regress in the first place. Here in lies my latest worry, with the new facial hair will I be expected to dress in chinos? Wear blazers? God forbid, loafers.. Arggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I'm supposed to be drawing some sketches for one of my Uni projects, but inbetween drawing undercarriage parts I also drew a robot attacking a house. That should be enough stave off maturity for at least a week. I apologise for the drawing, but I have never been much good at drawing anthropomorphic features. I once came home from work, several years ago, and started to draw a small face on one of my testicles in biro due to boredom and binging on several packets of prawn cocktail crisps. It turned out to be an excellent likness of Robocop, with some judicious stretching. Just be thankful I dont dig out that picture.

Now the exciting bit, clearly the six sausage rolls I bought from Morrison's yesterday have had the desired effect, and growth is now at a good millimetre, maybe a little more. But I hear you cry ''the Mighty Strawbridge requires at least 30mm of growth''. Which is an excellent point, since there are only thirty days in Movember, that means a maximum growth of 15mm, so efforts must be doubled. I dont really want to tarnish the name of Strawbridge with a poor Tom Selleck lookalike 'tache, that would be blasphemy. Any ideas for increasing growth rate? I could do with a bottle of Dimoxinil!

I'll be sure to post a picture of my new fuzz later..

Day 2.... Scruffy sheek...

So the day has dawned, the first day of my new tash and first day of Movember (Please go, donate, even if its only 50p!!!)

It's strangely like puberty all over again, excitement at the new growth of bumfluff appearing on your top lip. Running to the bathroom, your feet dancing on the stairs, the rushing to the mirror.... Has it grown?.. Except this time its a gingery, browny stubble that usually annoys me after two days of no shaving and brings no end of complaints from she who must not be named, who I shall refer to from now on as aerospace girlfriend. 

So here is a pic of me at about 11pm last night just after mowing the old chops with the rubbish old electric shaver..

Hopefully I will go from that clean shaven, baby face to this....

...This is of course, the man.. The legend... That mustachioed hunk of beef, Dick Strawbridge.. That moustache makes me want to stand up straight. Stand up straight and sing him the full national anthem while giving him the full Rimmer salute..

I have no idea what aerospace girl sees in me, but when I look at that picture up there all it does is remind me of a mushroom face... The resemblance is uncanny.

But I digress, you're not here to read about my self loathing but to get your fix on the growth of my facial hair!!! Some educated guess work with a mirror and some serious eyeballing has it at around... Drum roll please.. Bbrbbrbrbbbbbrbrbrbbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbbrbrbrbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppp 0.5mm. Not much, but enough to look even more scruffy than I usually do, maybe the tash will bring me an air of authority and respect, instead of having to elbow my way around the old dears and chavs at Morrison's. At any rate the frequency of being asked to prove I'm over 18 should drop in proportion to the growth of my tash!

I'm sure my daily intake of sausage rolls, coffee and cheese will increase my growth rate. I am on a strict diet of brown, so Gregg's baked goods are in, flaming sambuccas are out.. I can almost feel my follicles flexing, or possibly my arteries furring, either way somethings stirring in my face...