Ryan Giggs, the award ceremony and the amazing beard

Last night Ryan Giggs won the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award. Side-stepping the obvious reservations about whether Giggs truly deserved the award on the basis of pure sporting achievement over the last 12 months (some sympathy must be extended to those nominees who'd actually won world title's and set world records during the past year), it was a fitting recognition of a player who has not only had a stunning career, and who at 36 can still turn out top quality performances for a title-winning side, but also someone who is genuinely liked and admired for his personal qualities as well as professional abilities.

As Giggs rose from his seat to accept the award I couldn't help but be amazed by the gentleman with the extraordinary beard sitting to his left. By his reaction and subsequent embracing the gent was clearly a member of the Gigg's family, but he certainly made for an incongruous sight, more reminiscent of Grandpa from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang than a family member of a modern footballer. He was my hero of the night.

The Joy

The Embrace

The Beard

A Pretty Place to Blow Your Nose

Recently I have become a devotee of the handkerchief. I was given a box by my late Grandmother during my teens, presumably because firstly, I was beginning that passage to adulthood, and hankies are a proper thing for a proper man, and secondly, it's the sort of thing a Grandmother would give you isn't it?

Needless to say as an image conscious teen there was no way I was going to produce a handkerchief from my pocket in the middle of the school playground, gosh, how old-fashioned, how grandfatherly, I'm not a pensioner! This is the (by then ingrained and unconscious) line I took on handkerchiefs right up until my sudden, unexpected conversion.

So, what changed? I don't honestly know. One day it occurred to me that I'd been habitually putting two fresh paper tissues into my trouser pocket every morning before I left for work, and I'd come to realise that there was a considerable flaw with them, namely their propensity to become wet, mushy and well, disgusting. One morning I picked up one of the long-untouched squares of fabric from my sock drawer, slipped it into my pocket and that was that, hankies are now part of my everyday life.

Every so often I purchase up another pack of handkerchiefs and I now have a small range in different colours, patterns and shades. This leads me on to what is undoubtedly one of the greatest pleasures of the hankie - the ability to match or contrast one with your shirt or outfit. This is a wonderful little charm, something that appeals to a man with a sartorial pursuasion. It's also endearingly self-indulgent. Hankies are so small and they're hidden away, not shown off. Yes, they come out for a sneeze but essentially the only person who will appreciate the colour co-ordination will be the person who's pocket it is in. An indulgent pleasure indeed.

I do wonder whether the handkerchief is at all a popular item for the modern young man or whether I am cutting a lonely path through a world shared only with the old and middle-aged. With interesting design such as the hand-printed handkerchiefs of Thornback & Peel, pictured above, I can only assume that there are other like-minded people out there.

Movember Man

My brother dedicated his November to the cultivation of a very dashing piece of facial topiary, all in aid of Movember and The Prostate Cancer Charity.

He braved public transport and important business meetings for a whole month looking like a Seventies sex-king.

I got a photo of him just as he prepared to shave it off on December 1st.

Music What I Been Listenin' To

I seem to be a fairly erratic purchaser of music, often buying 3 or 4 records at once before not dipping into my pockets for sometimes two months or more. Mentioning 'buying' music, it might be worth doubling back over what a few years ago might have been a innocuous statement but now is not such a certainty, even for those devoted to music. Yes, I still buy albums, solid, physical albums.

Despite the advent of downloading (legal and ill-) and the more recent arrival of Spotify (a programme I have been using for most of this year and which I love wholeheartedly) and the myriad predictions of the death of the album format I still refuse to relinquish. I'm aware that I could save myself a large wodge of cash buy simply never buying anything again, but the collector inside me desires to have the little plastic cases stored neatly on a shelf in front of me. I like having the artwork, the case, the physical signifier that I own this piece of art. I'm aware that this is seen as bemusing to anyone over the age of 40, including my father, who has never loved the CD sleeve, seeing no merit in the scaled-down, poor-relation to the vinyl sleeve. But hey, I was raised with the CD, this is what I know.

Anyway, on to what I intended to write about before I was characteristically sidetracked - what I have been buying, and listening to, recently.

First up The Beatles. I have always been disinterested in the Fab Four a mixture of over-familiarity with their most famous material, which without trying is so easy to achieve due to their omni-presence in media and culture alongside the fact that with not growing up with any of their records in our home. I did listen to my brother's copy of the '1' album in my teenage years a couple of times but again, because I already knew the tracks I found it hard to get into (I like having to get to know songs on an album, and as a rule of thumb the albums I know least of when I buy tend to work out as my favourites). I just was never interested.

However, for no discernible reason last week I decided to give The Beatles a go. I decided that the only real way to do it was to start at the beginning and work through their 12 studio albums in chronological fashion. So this week I have been listening to 'Please Please Me' and 'With The Beatles' which I have enjoyed immensely. I should also say that an added incentive to buy The Beatles catalogue is that all the band's records have just been remastered and re-released in three-fold glossy card cases. They look and sound wonderful.

This last week I have also been listening to:

Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street

The Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace

Little Richard - Here's Little Richard

and, a lovely mixtape made by a lovely someone!

Umbro's New 'Football Wardrobe' Range

Umbro's rehabilitation from manufacturers of dull football gear for a handfull of achingly average sides (plus England) to purveyors of interesting and innovative design is advancing steadily.

Building on the success of their 'Tailored by Umbro' range (see England and Manchester City's new shirts) they now bring us a new selection of training / leisurewear, branded as the 'Football Wardrobe' range. The collection is typified by simple design, bright colours and the re-introduction of the classic Umbro lower-case logo not seen since the early mid-nineties. The range is supposedly out this month, though no appearance on Umbro's (achingly hip / manifestly pretentious) website's online store yet.

Personally I have my keen eye on the drill top (shown in blue, top centre, above) as an alternative to either the England light grey or Man City branded drill tops which I swooned over earlier this autumn and then decided not to buy. The royal blue looks rather dashing but even better I think would be the drill top in the yellow.

GreyScale

'Gridiron', Wembley

For the third year in a row the NFL brought an american football game to the UK. This year the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were at 'home' to the New England Patriots, and for the second consecutive season I attended with my brother and father, a long-time NFL-fan.

In terms of sporting contest the game was a one-sided washout, the far superior Patriots stamping their claim to the game within the first quarter whilst the Buccs faffed around making tragi-comic attempts to pass (and receive) the ball.

I made a bit of an effort to capture a few shots with my camera, nothing brilliant but I was reasonably pleased with a few of my resultant images, including the following:

I think they capture the energy reasonably well. I also noticed something Bruegel-esque in some of them, the sense of a discordant mass of bodies crowding the scene, often seemingly ignorant of others, moving independently and travelling in (apparently) different directions.