It’s Movember again!

Two nice-looking chaps with moustaches: A. H. Cloutte and J. Beresford, with the 'demon' attacking the strokeside oar. Despite that, the Thames oarsmen did not have a problem winning the 1911 Silver Goblets.

Today it’s the first of Movember, the first day in the month when we are to celebrate the moustache. Well, it’s actually a global campaign to raise funds for men’s health, especially to fight prostate and testicular cancers. Celebrating Movember has been a great deal among rowers, men and women, in Great Britain, and British Rowing has stood behind the campaign in earlier years and is doing so again this year.

However, the Mo-Movement is growing, just like your moustaches should do this month, and more and more men and women are joining in by donating money for this good cause. Here is the official website “Movember 13” in the USA.

Just like last year when I wrote about this on HTBS, I had to go back in time to find some oarsmen with some stylish ‘Mos’, and on top you see Arthur Cloutte and Julius ‘Berry’ Beresford (bow) of Thames RC, winners of the 1911 Silver Goblets at Henley. This photograph has been famous as the ‘Demon picture’, a devil ‘attacking’ the stokeside oar.

My children and I supporting Movember (photograph taken yesterday, just before Halloween's trick-or-treating).

To round off this piece, allow me to quote myself from last year:

‘Although, I wholeheartedly support a campaign like this, my dear wife, Mrs. B., made it clear already when we dated (in Wales, as a matter of fact) in the 1990s that our relationship would never last if I grow a moustache, or any other facial hair. Then, on top of that, a couple of years ago, our cute children could not stop laughing when I showed them my old Swedish drivers license from the beginning of the 1980s showing me with my elegant ‘Mo’ – but to you who are allowed: Grow and Groom!’