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Bond Ambition: Roger Moore’s bid for better etiquette

When I read that former James Bond, Roger Moore, derided the notion of the eponymous Intelligence hero being played with a regional accent I couldn’t help agreeing with him.

James Bond just has to have an accent as impeccable as his Savile Row suit, his Omega Watch, that Aston Martin; if he sat round the Craps table sipping his Vodka Martini introducing himself as “Bond, James Bond” with a Brummie burr I would definitely be more shaken than stirred.

It’s not that I’ve got a problem with regional accents: as I mentioned in an earlier blog you’ll know that you only have to give me a man with a Liverpudlian accent and he’s mine for life – but Bond has to have that almost unattainable X-factor to enforce his credibility.

Roger Moore’s rant wasn’t so much a rally against the regions as a plea for good diction, annunciation and good old fashioned manners.

It got me thinking about how Bond sounds when he converses with agents in another language: when he speaks Russian, for example, does he sound like a genuine Moscovite or an Old Etonian trying too hard? Even when Bond has it large with the lower echelons of society, he never seems to ‘downgrade’ his character.

Here are 10 things we could NEVER imagine James Bond doing:

- Supping a can of (warm) Tennents Extra

- Starting a homing device through his Timex Jelly watch

- Emerging from a tanning booth

- Picking his toe nails

- Queuing up for an EasyJet flight

- Emerging from the sea wearing budget Speedos

- Mimicking David Brent’s dance from The Office

- Having his credit card declined

- Signing on

- Snogging an ugly bird!

Mindful of Manners

We’ve talked about modern etiquette before (remember the Debrett’s Motoring Guide? ) but not so much at the dinner table. I have one pal who almost regurgitated her meal when her date chewed his supper like a cud-munching bovine. Consequently one of her prerequisites for accepting a second date is that the man in question has the decency to keep his mouth closed when eating and that he waits until he’s swallowed to finish his sentence.

A recent Reuters Report has made me question how much I really know about being a Lady who lunches and illustrates why it is I haven’t been invited into the Royal Box during this year’s London Season.

Also hailing from Debrett’s and written by Jo Bryant, their London-based etiquette advisor, its tips include:

“Squash peas onto the back of your fork rather than scooping them up from an upturned fork.” So that’s how you do it! I spend half my life squashing them with bare feet after they’ve rolled off my plate onto the kitchen floor.

And “To eat a whole fish on the bone, work down one side of the spine at a time, from head to tail, then lift the entire bone up and gently ease the flesh out from beneath. Small bones should be removed from the mouth with fingers and placed on the side of the plate.” Frankly that’s way too much effort but it’s nice to know when someone else is doing it wrong!

So there you have it – (almost) everything you need to equip you to bond with Bond. Now there are just the elocution lessons to practice… innit?!

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English Abroad: Time to Change the Image

I am preparing for my summer holiday, in which we will motor to Switzerland and stay on a farm with my common-in-laws. My father-in-law’s wife is Swiss-French, he’s lived and worked there for eons and I don’t want to seem like the hapless foreigner but is it worth me trying to fit in or should I enjoy my ‘stupid English’ status?

“Pardonez-Moi je suis sorry but je ne compris much…?!”

If I parlay with my smattering of Seventies’ schoolgirl French, will they think I am polite, prosaic or pathetic?

I know for a fact that if I lived in another country the first thing I would do would be to enrol in language lessons because I think it is a disgrace when we assume everyone else is going to speak in our mother tongue. However, when holidaying abroad it could be deemed a pain for everyone to have to endure the embarrassment of misunderstood phrases, frantic hand-waving and the occasional accidental profanity due to mispronunciation.

Once, when working in Germany for six months, I managed to have a four-hour conversation in a bizarre mix of French and German on a train ride to Milan but that is the only time in my life I’ve ever totally eschewed English.

Floundering Foreigner Fitting in

In order not to be treated like a British version of Fawlty Towers’ Manuel on my hols, maybe I should just arm myself with this useful phrase, in each of Switzerland’s four languages:

I am English – Sorry! I speak a little French/German/Italian/Rumantsch but not enough to impress. I will however, do my best, Now, where are the toilets, please?

Or as Google Translate http://translate.google.com would have it:

French: Je suis anglais – Désolé! Je parle un peu français / allemand / italien / Flemmish mais pas assez pour impressionner. Je vais toutefois faire de mon mieux, maintenant: Où sont les toilettes, s’il vous plaît?

German: Ich bin English – Entschuldigung! Ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch / Französisch / Italienisch / Flemmish aber nicht genug, um zu beeindrucken. Ich werde jedoch mein Bestes tun, jetzt: Wo sind die Toiletten, bitte?

Italian: Io sono Inglese – Scusa! Parlo un po ‘di francese / tedesco / italiano / Flemmish ma non abbastanza per impressionare. Io però, fare del mio meglio, ora: Dove sono i servizi igienici, per favore?

Rumantsch: Not an option. (Get with it Google Translate!)

Brits Abroad: Behaviour Unbecoming

It’s no revelation that Brits Abroad have a shocking reputation overseas. Although it often comes down to our third favourite subject after football and the weather… class. Much of the bad stuff seems to go hand-in-hand with alcohol-related incidents.

A new Foreign Office report has revealed alarming figures about the thousands of UK tourists who were arrested or in trouble overseas last year.

For example: “944 Brits were arrested for drug-related offences last year, accounting for a seventh of all arrests of British Nationals around the globe.”

“Prevention is better than cure” suggests the Minister for Consular Affairs Jeremy Browne, who recommends four things:

- Take out comprehensive travel insurance

- Research the local laws and customs

- Check if you need vaccination or medicine

- Make copies of important documents

You can see more in the YouTube UK Foreign Office video:

Right, I’d better sort myself out and re-visit the Travel Check List my common-law Mother-in-law gave me. Now I must arrange my travel insurance so, until next time, au revoir and bonnes vacances!

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The Big Lunch: When you’re peckish in Peckham

When you live in a south London enclave that’s synonymous with Del Boy, Damilola Taylor’s demise and destitution (thanks to most media coverage), you’d hardly imagine you’d spend your Sunday afternoon visiting a number of sunny street parties but that’s what we did today, thanks to The Big Lunch

Now in its second year, the idea of The Big Lunch began at The Eden Project in Cornwall. They thought street parties were a great way of getting communities together and when you look at some of the statistics, you can see why The Eden Project felt the need to take action:

- There will be two million more single person households by 2019.

- The social divide shows there are more rich areas, and more poor and ethnic ghettos than ever before.

- There was a 7% annual drop in trust between neighbours from 2003-05.

So, in keeping with The Big Lunch’s aims to ‘Make Isolation History’ and get to know my neighbours better I joined the fun, which was taking place between midday and 5pm in Denman Road, on July 18^th 2010.

The street was blocked off to cars and the festivities got underway: bagpipes and impromptu busking, a veritable feast contributed by all of the residents, and fantastic decorations. The bunting alone was inspirational: every piece had a picture of the street’s varied Victorian houses printed on it; like a scene from a wartime victory movie it seemingly flapped in time to the band, in the gentle breeze.

In either a nod to street parties of bygone times, or simply to get the party started someone had taken a piano into the street and the kids were making the most of the traffic-free tarmac to scoot, cycle and play ‘just like the good old days’.

What made the good old days good?

Although we’re coming out of a recession back in ‘the good old days’ they appeared to have more to celebrate than we do at present: Peace Time.

You couldn’t ask for more in 1945 – even though every one of the flag-waving folk, chomping on their street feasts, probably knew at least one person who had met an untimely end on some war-torn battlefield. Still, they celebrated. They were the mothers of Make Do and Mend and they did just that with what they were tucking into.

At the end of the war the faces smiled as broadly as those in SE15 but their fare was more likely to have featured Spam sandwiches! One lady from Amber Valley is recorded in the BBC’s People’s War archives for making a “sponge sandwich using liquid paraffin from my medicine cupboard,” for their VE day street party.

My neighbour Charlie showed me, which took place outside our house to celebrate VE Day in 1945. He recalled the street party his mum Mary Ann Johnson arranged in our road, outside my house! There were a number of trestle tables and the whole street was there, although the food was only supplied for the kids and there was plenty of it; everyone pooled their rations.

One of his favourites was powdered egg sandwiches with OK Fruity Sauce, which you can still get today!

Charlie also remembers the games that were put on, including the Egg and Spoon Race, which made him laugh when he thought of the old folk doddering up and down with their eggs wobbling on spoons!

The future: Dancing in the street?

The first street parties, as we know them, started after the First World War in 1919. Like The Big Lunch they were also held in July to celebrate the June signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

They were coined ‘Peace Teas’ and were a sort of precursor to Children in Need and were far more formal than the wonderfully rambunctious event down the road from me.

The Big Lunch may be more of a national bun-fun way of getting to know your neighbours, but it doesn’t stop there. The organisation Streets Alive is taking the idea to another level. As well as food, their street events include sports and games initiatives in traffic-free environments, to get the community working together.

I love where I live and I love the fact that my community pulls together like this. In a couple of months there’ll be a music festival in the local park. Despite the amount of crime in the area, recorded with regularity on the news, it’s events like this that encourage a sort of subliminal Neighbourhood Watch. When faces become familiar you start watching out for each other.

I may be trying to turn Peckham into some sort of urban Xanadu but it’s been a sunny weekend and I’m going to let it stay that way for now; my local street party provided food for my soul and it tastes good.

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Lack of Motivation and the Graduate Male-strom

We ladies can take a breather from bemoaning our other halves because, a new think-tank study has revealed that recently graduated men are falling behind their female counterparts on the work front.

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) study shows that in December 2009 17.2 per cent of young male graduates were unemployed compared to 11.2 per cent of female graduates.

One problem seems to be that, unlike the girls, the guys are failing to knuckle down whilst in Higher Education. But do they need to when their sex has a clear advantage of the ladies? Their earning potential, over time, is far greater once in the market place.

The HEPI report says this is a discrepancy that needs further investigation but could be to do with “discrimination and subject choice”. It comments that “it might be as a result of different attitudes on the part of male and female graduates to jobs/life choices/nature of jobs applied for”. That’s all very good but what are we going to do about it?

The Evening Standard’s Richard Godwin and The Observer’s Will Hutton each consider what is behind the apparent lack of drive. A vaguely tongue-in-cheek Godwin highlights the need for affirmation – if men are told they’re useless often enough, they become useless (sound familiar?). He admits to sneaking a peak at Zoe Strimpel’s new book ‘What the Hell is He Thinking?: All the Questions You’ve Ever Asked About Men Answered’ , and calls for more understanding. After a raft of interviews with the less-than-fairer sex Ms Strimpel believes men find it harder than us to accept ageing, which is why they resist moving in with their lovers: “’Regardless of what age I am, mentally, my youth is now gone.”

Maybe their fear of growing up is behind their lack of motivation in higher education and the workplace; and it’s this lack of motivation Hutton suggests needs addressing.

It’s simple: they need encouragement and a positive economic environment (even though the current economic downturn and years of undermining haven’t stopped the girls forging ahead, but no matter) to revive their flagging futures.

Good grief! How about this – bring back National Service! I cannot believe I have written that – especially when I’m terrified of my boys ever being conscripted, and it’s being phased out in the EU as I type. National Service, which was brought in after World War 2 to try and tie-up loose ends in the after-math, ended in Britain in the Sixties. It was a bit like child birth, in the sense that everyone I’ve ever spoken to about it talked of it warmly, as an all-encompassing, unifying experience but if you look at the reaction at the time, National support had waned.

I had a friend who was born and bred in Britain but due to his Spanish ancestry he was required to head off to his homeland to endure his country’s military service. But he came back revived, more manly and incredibly self-sufficient. He didn’t have a particular direction beforehand but hasn’t stopped working. He was always pretty positive but now he’s almost invincible.

A pre-PM David Cameron revealed plans for a possible solution to our motivationally-challenged younger people, inspired by the post-war initiative, called eight-week National Citizens’ Scheme. I would have expected a negative response to such a suggestion but a recent Mori poll revealed eight out of 10 people support the initiative, which involves 16-year-olds doing six weeks of voluntary work. They’re split on whether the scheme should be voluntary or compulsory, but the concept gets a clear thumbs-up.

David Cameron set out the ‘national service’ plan for teens to put an end to a ‘pointless waste of potential’ and if it nips male (and female) reticence in the bud, it is a start. It’s also given certain kudos thanks to the backing of Hollywood A-lister Michael Caine!

I have never been, and refuse to become, one of those women who defames men as a sport and, as the mother of two boys, I never want to become one BUT if my boys end up wasting their opportunities, taking them for granted and expecting results for no input, I will find it hard to find verbal restraint.

You see guys resourcefulness is the key to respect and happiness long-term, so, guys, quit the whingeing and put motivation back on your ‘to do’ list, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll find yourselves a job and… a mate!

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Kids’ Obesity Issue: the School Meals vs Packed Lunch Debate

It’s hard not to think about your family’s nutrition when new health minister Andrew Lansley’s lambasting Labour for the way they tackled child obesity on the back of Jamie Oliver’s TV campaign to improve school dinners; stories like: “UK kids getting fatter at twice the rate of Americans” are making headlines and then there’s Satan in saccharin (the ice cream van) parked outside your house.

Not only that, my lack of parental resourcefulness has led me to offer rewards from the sweetie jar in return for good behaviour.

But seriously, I am concerned. My eldest boy starts primary school in September and I’ve got decisions to make: Do I go down the packed lunch route, ensuring he gets healthy chow on a daily basis OR do I opt for school dinners: mass-produced stodge, which will guarantee he’s stuffed to the marrow if not nutritionally satiated?

And here I make my first mistake – a knee-jerk reaction to Mr Lansley’s comments, which he made to Doctors at the British Medical Association.

While I disagree with the coalition government’s policy that improving diet “would be driven by evidence of what worked” with little regard, it seems, for common sense, I do agree with his comments that: “If you are bringing packed lunches, that’s OK but we’ve got to determine what’s in your packed lunches, we’ve got to decide what’s in them”. School meals are moderated, packed lunches are not.

A report from the School Food Trust revealed evidence that, compared to packed lunches, the food quality and the nutritional intake of primary and secondary school children are superior when school lunches are eaten.

I knew that kids bartered with their lunch boxes, did it myself – ‘swapsies a marmite cream cracker for a Jammie Dodger’ – but I hadn’t considered that, on the whole, school meals were more nutritionally balanced than the everyday packed lunch.

After Jamie Oliver’s TV campaign to revolutionise school dinners the number of children eating them dropped. My guess is that conscientious parents thought they were going for the healthy option, keen to ensure no Turkey Twizzlers would pass junior’s lips, but it looks like we may have been doing our kids a disservice.

I am having to re-evaluate my opinion of packed lunches and admit that I know very little about school dinners.

A primary school food survey from 2009 found: “Of the 84% of pupils bringing packed lunches that had sandwiches, 51% had savoury fillings without salad, 13% with salad, and a further 20% had sandwiches with a sweet filling (jam, chocolate spread, etc.), whereas 35% of pupils taking school lunches had vegetables in mixed dishes. In contrast, more packed lunch pupils ate dairy products (e.g. cheese, yogurt, milk, milky drinks), and a higher percentage ate fruit or fruit-based desserts.”

And research from Datamonitor revealed Britain’s children are getting fatter at twice the rate of America’s. It shows that in an average year children in the UK spend about £372 on sweets and chocolate, compared with £150 spent by American kids. I’m cutting out pocket money…

What we need is information. Lansley’s gaffe has at least put school dinners back on the menu and we mustn’t forget he agrees that Jamie Oliver was right to want to improve school meals.

My mind still isn’t made up about the coalition government but I agree with Lansley: “We have to understand that this is a behaviour-change programme we’re engaged in and if behaviour doesn’t change, our likelihood is that we will fail.” It’s about us, as parents, taking responsibility for ourselves. (Now who’s lecturing?!)

While it’s up to me to ensure I give my children tasty, healthy meals they won’t want to swap, it is possible for individual schools to feed their children locally sourced, healthy meals. The money is there, if only they had the time to find it.

I want my little boy to have the lunchtime privileges the children at Charles Dickens Primary School in south London have. For starters they have a kitchen on site, where food can be freshly prepared. But they are also privileged to have had the bar for nutritional excellence set by the school’s former headmistress, Liz Owens, who believed there was a link between her children’s concentration, behaviour and food intake.

Mrs Owens “worked with the Food Commission and Soil Association, brought in locally-sourced fish, organic fruit, salad, vegetables and meat, insisted the food was cooked from scratch in school rather than processed in a factory, and had fresh produce delivered daily”.

This drive, coupled with the services of an excellent school cook meant that the children (over a third of whom qualified for free school meals), would have at least one good meal a day. Consequently she was named Teacher of The Year at the Pride of Britain Awards in 2005; her award was given to her by Jamie Oliver.

In my opinion Jamie Oliver is a national hero. But maybe it’s time he had a little coalition of his own and I suggest Michelle Obama. When we’re faced with facts like one in six of children in England were classed as obese in 2008, while only 20 percent were eating the recommended five pieces of fruit and vegetables a day, it’s time to bring in the heavies, so to speak. Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign (‘America’s Move To Raise A Healthier Generation Of Kids’) www.letsmove.gov is big in the US and appears to be having more of an impact than any current British campaign. It’s time to stop chewing the fat – we need more than a slim chance of keeping our kids healthy.

We are responsible for feeding our kids sensibly but that’s not the only solution – they also need to able to exercise more than just their digits; so whip away the DS and send them out playing in the parks where they can interact and burn-off all those sedentary calories. But that’s just one solution… what do you suggest?

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‘Menimism’: an Emerging Male Movement?

When ‘Menimism’ the new male movement was brought to my attention, I was fascinated. I thought it must include an intelligent reaction against the portrayal of men in the media: think Becks showing his pecks (and pecker) in those (glorious) Armani Underwear ads for budgie smugglers. That must rub some members up the wrong way.

The name’s catchy, if a little unoriginal, and why shouldn’t guys have their say? I’m pretty non-PC but even I found, for example, the new Dove ads for men’s care failed to represent ‘real men’ even though that’s what their ad campaign seemed to promise.

The Dove guy looks more like a Gillette G.I. than your average Joe Public, despite the fact that Paul Connell, Dove Men+Care brand manager says: “Dove is proud of its pioneering approach to women and with this new campaign we now have a fresh approach to men as well. We’re taking a light hearted approach and acknowledging the life events that help men become comfortable with who they are, without a cheesy grooming stereotype in sight.”

According to German website iHeartBerlin, Menimism’s a movement which encourages blokes to shout out about their vulnerable side demanding a ‘rethink of masculinity’ and start talking to each other.

So, ‘real men’ are fed up with being undermined in the media. They do want to share; with other men. I didn’t think they had any inclination to do that. How wrong I was.

Women talk at length about female health issues encouraging each other to see the doc, or try out some new remedy for PMT, why shouldn’t men take more responsibility over their health to tackle things like male cancers. I am a great advocate of openness – surely it isn’t just women who benefit from what is perceived as a feminine trait? Knowledge is power and we all have the power to impart knowledge, which could extend our life expectancy. A problem shared…

One Menimalist who seems to have got the right idea is Ben Wild, founder of the University of Manchester’s MENS society. He feels there’s a need for such a society because: “Because issues such as prostate and testicular cancer, male on male violence and rape, domestic abuse against men, stigma against men in ‘unmasculine’ jobs, custody and parental leave inequalities, and general stereotyping of what it is to ‘be a man’ are not being addressed”. At last! Spread the word – http://themoderncaveman.wordpress.com/

Unlike some anti-male feminists who alienate the less than fairer sex, on paper Menimists appear to be the perfect partners. They’re in touch with their feelings, discuss their heart-ache, they talk and listen and they support women. So why isn’t Menimism being heralded as the (second) best movement ever to have been created?

You’ve only got to check out the dedicated Facebook page to see that any hope the movement serving as the making of modern man is little more than a vapid dream, rather a pager for all Neanderthals. The clue is in the title ‘Menimism: It’s all about tits and beer’. It serves only to remind men of their inner ‘blokey’ bloke and seems to have few followers.

I have to hope that I’ve missed the joke and am reacting like some po-faced prig who has completely lost my sense of humour.

Occasionally men will appear in the media railing against the way they are being portrayed but it just doesn’t seem to be a priority to them. There are interesting articles across the world but not enough to make them front page news.

My partner reads Men’s Health religiously and never comments on the six-pack selection of cover men but does comment on the health articles within. Despite his devotion to MH and the fact he’s an avid reader of the broad sheets he has never heard of Menimism but seems to embody less-vulgar perception of it. So maybe others, like him, just quietly get on with their Menimist bent without having to shout about it. I think we should thank our lucky stars for this special breed and reject the ‘blokey blokes’ whose vulgar link on a social media site sets them back to the days of the dinosaur.

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Is Microsoft HealthVault the solution to keep healthy, well-thy and wise?

I’ve always thought it would be really useful to have some sort of store where I could consolidate all of my health paraphernalia and monitor my weight, tracking steps etc, in a bid to maintain good health all year, rather than use the run-up to Wimbledon as a reminder to flex my forearms. Sadly I didn’t patent the idea because Microsoft has beaten me to it with a new platform called the ‘Microsoft®HealthVault™’. Set up in partnership with Nuffield Health, HealthVault is not just about getting fit and looking good, but more about taking responsibility for your wellness (for free).

So who, apart from me, is likely to make the most of this new repository?

Well, the Edelman Health Engagement Barometer study shows that a growing number of the UK population take an active interest in their wellbeing – from walking the dog, to looking after their diet, blood pressure and so on; they’re interested in checking their vital signs and overall health and they’re not all sports fanatics but ordinary people. It’s a relatively low 13% but it’s a start.

The way I see it HealthVault will enable me to make a conscientious effort to time manage my health programme: Get back from the doc/gym/receive blood results etc and immediately load any relevant information onto the PC. Instead of faffing around in my hectic home-filing system looking for requested information, I know it will be in one place : HealthVault.

And in this digital age we can pick up any number of health-related gizmos in the local chemist: precision monitors, thermometers and scales, many of which you will soon be able to plug in; you can utilise a myriad of health-related applications from your mobile phone or computer; all that and health-related articles. I need to sit down!

For me, the safety and privacy of my personal data is paramount. The Microsoft HealthVault platform has this covered and we are assured that standards are based on Microsoft’s secure cloud infrastructure. Basically, the contract we enter into with Microsoft is that they will do whatever we ask them to do with our data with records being safely held within the UK; I like the ethos behind HealthVault, which empowers me to hold, edit and control my own data from a range of different sources outside of government-held medical data.

In my opinion we still find it all too easy to take a back seat with health issues and leave it up to the professionals, but they’re so stretched. In the long-term it could give the NHS the chance to do its job and work on getting people better while we work on our own illness prevention, which can’t be a bad thing.

I feel like I’ve had a bit of an epiphany, like when I was trying out the serums (and still loving them!), and I’m not the only one to think it’s a good idea.

Only last year the now Prime Minister David Cameron revealed plans to ‘move the UK’s health records into the cloud’ through Google or Microsoft, rather than Labour’s suggested central computer.

HealthVault is not to be confused with the NHS HealthSpace, which is based on the provision of a Summary Care Record. Here the medical data is owned and controlled by the NHS.

Google Health is a possible contender but, although similar, this application doesn’t seem to offer the same wealth of healthcare experience, in Britain.

You can set up individual plans like step-tracking plans, slimming/diet plans at individual fitness websites; even Kellogg’s Special K offers a selection of plans which can be tailored to suit your needs but there isn’t a competitor for all-encompassing health management.

I am trying to gain weight after being sapped to the marrow by my two small boys – I will use this tool to help me manage this. Tracking our wellbeing on a regular basis is a way to see clearly how our lifestyles are affecting our lives.

As a mother and partner of a man with very high cholesterol this is a great tool. We need to keep a firm hand on our wellbeing. If my health provider is willing to give me my health records, why would I opt not to have a copy in my own personal file?

And I welcome the services available from medical practitioners to personal trainers. I also welcome simplistic ways of understanding acronyms like BMI (Body Mass Index) – what it means and what it means to me.

What about you? Do you think you would use the HealthVault? Are you already using “the cloud” you keep an eye on your health?

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