Today’s post is about the Six Nations rugby tournament, which to date has been great. The game I enjoyed the most this year – France versus Wales - which was even better than England beating the Irish. The England/Wales game takes place this weekend and I am very much looking forward to it.

But the Six Nations is under threat, Coronavirus has seen the remaining Italy games postponed and it is quite possible that the tournament won’t actually get completed at all this year.

And if the virus wasn’t bad enough, the long-term prognosis is even worse. There is the possibility that from 2021, the games might not appear on the BBC & ITV. The news shared on the BBC – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/51704956 - on Monday this week was depressing to read.

There is every chance that the Six Nations will end up behind a pay per view barrier.

For me, that will kill it and, in my opinion, P.P.V. TV will knock off a far greater proportion of viewers than Coronavirus will bump off those that catch the bug.

I have written before about the impact that a similar barrier has had on my love and enjoyment of Formula 1. Last year I only watched the British Grand Prix, the other races I just read about the results later. I accept that the highlight shows on Channel 4 were available, but watching those was pointless once the race results were already public. Bearing in mind that for the previous 20 years, I had watched more than 90% of the live races, the change in viewing behaviour was stark.

It’s not just F1, back in my youth, boxing was shown on terrestrial TV (admittedly there was nothing else available at the time). Watching Mike Tyson, Frank Bruno or Barry McGuigan fighting was a treat. These days despite the British boxing scene being more exciting than ever, the only thing I ever see are a few post-bout photographs. I’d have loved to watch Tyson Fury beat Deontay Wilder, but there was no chance I’d pay the viewing fees.

If the Six Nations ends up on Sky, I’ll probably never watch another game at home, which would be a damn shame.

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But not to me.

I gave up on my hair a long time ago, what’s left is grey and periodically buzz cut by Mrs Baldwin.

My younger male office colleagues, who spend a small fortune on getting their barnets coiffured on an almost weekly basis (Ed if you ever read this, consider yourself included), are of the opinion that getting your hair cut by the Mrs is the sartorial equivalent of wearing shorts, socks and sandals. Bad, apparently. Like you’ve just given up on your appearance and lost your style mojo.

I of course disagree on the basis that I now have the perfect hair style to wear underneath a crash helmet.

There are of course risks in having your hair cut by amateurs. Last year in one rather amusing incident, my lovely wife armed with the electric clippers made a bit of a mess of things. Having handed the Wahl to her with the three comb already attached …

… she took the comb off for some reason even she didn’t understand. And then buzzed a strip off my bonce.

Panic, hers I might add, followed. In Mrs B’s defence, she was mortified. The rest of my cut went from the planned three, to a two and then to a one … and the go faster stripe was still bleeding obvious.

My colleague Ed would have died of shame; me, I went to work without giving a damn. To be fair, I did get laughed at but I really didn’t care. That’s how little the hair matters.
 
My flowing locks and days of hairspray are long gone, but perhaps surprisingly, I have written about hair before. Here’s a link to a post from 2015.

To be honest, I’d pretty much forgotten I’d even written it, when out of the blue, I started receiving emails from Louise Boury, writing for www.hairtheme.com. Louise thought that some links from my earlier piece to her website and advice article could be useful to my reader (so, Tracy Westgate, I’ll leave it to you to decide).

Here’s an extract from one of Louise’s notes – “I just published a comprehensive guide about balayage or ombre.”
My initial response was “what on earth are balayage or ombre”, two completely new words to my lexicon. So, because every day is a school day, here’s where I went - https://hairtheme.com/natural-hair-growth/ …

And it took me no time at all to feel like I was a very long way from target market. I might as well have been reading about knitting or decoupage.

But a fellow blogger is welcome to a link from me, and of course, Tracy might find the page interesting.

Louise emailed me four times, that’s how much she values a link from my earlier piece. She must be mad! But she got the result she wanted in the end.

I’ll be honest though, I still don’t know what balayage or ombre are.

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Fat and balding? Reasons for optimism

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After my last post (which, to be fair could have been … but obviously isn’t anymore), I have had a few months away from the blog and have achieved different things in my spare time.

I have not put myself under any pressure to publish, and have instead enjoyed writing for work rather than for my site. The time away has been useful in that I have refreshed the batteries, polished the bugle and, most importantly, returned with some renewed motivation.
 
There have been lots of things that were worthy of trumpeting about.

My eight year bloggerversary passed without comment (well that perhaps wasn’t worth writing about), Christmas came and went, 2020 rocked up and then I got another year older myself (you’ll be pleased to know I moaned about that elsewhere). Brexit happened, Boris is completely in charge, Harry hung up his royal boots, the AACI has closed down, there has been widespread flooding in the UK and terrible fires in Australia, Ozzy Osbourne has Parkinson’s, Tyson Fury pummelled Deontay Wilder, the world has one less python in it, and the spread of Coronavirus is decidedly worrying.

That is quite a lot of missed blogging opportunity!

On the subject of Covid-19, I have spent the last few weeks managing the snot factory and fighting off the annual cold; so have many of my work colleagues in fact. But let's be honest, it's not great being stuffed up with cold knowing that people around the world are dying from flu.

This time of year though is always the same, but whereas normally everyone just gets on with getting better, now there is a sense of nervousness. The office has sanitiser gel dotted around all over the place, HR has sent out “guidance” on hygiene, and every cough, sneeze and nose blow seems to make folk jittery. Contingency plans are being made.

In my lifetime, I can’t think of anything that has come close to this in terms of global government reactions. The lock downs, travel bans, hazmat suits, enforced isolations, the Geneva Motorshow cancellation …

It’s all been more dramatic than Aids or Ebola when, in theory at least, the personal risk to folk that pick it up is relatively low in comparison. 

In my days of working at Masterlease in Birmingham, I used to sit on the disaster recovery team. It used to be chaired by a chap called Iain, who was a real doom and gloom merchant. His end of the world predictions used to annoy me and, in my defence, the outbreaks at the time, like Swine and Bird flu, all amounted to nothing in the UK.

But in the case of Coronavirus, the WHO declaring a global pandemic feels inevitable to me. The run into spring and summer is going to be weird. One thing is certain, 2020 is going to be an interesting year. 

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