A Gentle Reminder. . .

This lovely reminder borrowed from Mad Dogs and Englishmen will go a long way in helping us average guys to kick up our style a few notches. I'll add another point. . . if and when you use up the last of the toilet paper, remove the cardboard tube and put a new roll in the dispenser.

Personal style, when you think about it, is about much more than simply the clothes we might aspire to own and wear. Sure, it's great fun talking and daydreaming about Harris Tweed jackets and John Lobb shoes, but I'd even be so bold as to suggest that the way we conduct ourselves is far more important in the quest to project an aura of style than an immaculately tailored suit made by Luciano Barbera. After all, a person can have the means to wear the most expensive clothing, footwear, and accessories available, yet that individual can still be boorish in the extreme by way of rude, inconsiderate behavior. Any claim of ignorance someone might offer in defense is no excuse.

One place where this is worth keeping in mind is the bathroom. And even if you live by yourself now and habitually leave that area in a less than pleasant state, there will come a day when you want to share your abode with a special someone. Making a concerted effort to overcome any lax habits in this most intimate of rooms now will pay you considerable dividends down the road once you find your lobster and settle down to a life together.

In other words, if you don't already do so, start leaving the bathroom in a clean and neat state once finish your daily rituals before you move on to the next thing. Leave the bathroom looking good enough so that you would not be embarrassed to have your grandmother use the facilities were she to visit. Seriously. Why give your girlfriend/boyfriend/S.O./fiance/spouse reason to rethink his or her feelings? Why risk having someone for whom you have special feelings begin to see you as an inveterate slob?

Still not with me? I'll be frank. What self-respecting person will want to get naked and take a sexy shower or romantic bubble bath by candlelight with you if your bathroom is a damp, smelly, mildewy pigsty? Piles of old Sports Illustrateds on the floor by the toilet, toothpaste and hair all over the sink, and a cruddy bathtub that hasn't had a scrubbing brush and Comet taken to it in months? Trust me, guys. It's a real mood killer. So, come on. Time to get with the program and start picking up after ourselves like Mom and Dad taught us. A good place to start is in the bathroom.

Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Mark HollingsworthAugust 17, 2013 at 6:07 AM
What a wonderful post! I sometimes think I was very fortunate to have served as an officer in the British Armed Forces - in the Officers' Mess we enjoyed the luxury of a single room to live in, but we all had to share the bathrooms. Unwritten rules developed over leaving these communal facilities 'as you would wish to find them'. Good rule to live life by.

Mark

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