Opening Lines: Movember isn’t the only themed month

ROUND about now you’ll start to notice it: a general untidiness among even the cuff-linkiest of work colleagues. Go on, ask them. They’re just ITCHING to tell you.

Movember — growing a moustache for charity — is one of the more established secular traditions of ‘doing something for a month’. Of course, November has been like that for centuries. The Holy Souls are said to get a fill-up this month, as prayers are offered up for remission for their time in Purgatory. (You don’t see much mention about purgatory now, unless it’s in an article related to waiting lists in the public health service.)

This year, in the UK, Movember has been joined by Octsober — going off ‘the drink’ for the month.

Doing something for a month chimes with our sense of what’s practicably achievable in our lives. The ‘47’ days of Lent always seemed too long. That is why experts in theology, sometimes as young as eight or nine, argue strenuously that Sundays don’t count and it should be possible to eat chickatees after mass.

If you are trying to create a better you, you could do worse than break the rest of the year up into manageable chunks. Planuary — a month of to-do lists and getting your life in order. The knowledge that you only have to do it for a month means you’ll last for more than a week, which is six and a half days longer than most things you resolve to do in January.

Plebuary is compulsory. Having paid the bills from the Christmas in late January, you need to live like a pleb for a while.

March: your month for protests. The anti-water-charges campaigns will be fairly regular and are likely to be well-catered with nice food vans. Use it as a spur to become more active. You can warm up for it by calling everyone ‘sheeple’ in your Facebook updates.

April is already Gaypril, to raise awareness of LGBT issues, but could be Tapril (saying thanks, conserving water, or just drinking tay).

May should be Maybee, when we cut down on the use of Neonicotinoids and instead plant wild-flowers for bees. But not wasps. They’re DIVILS.

Jejune celebrates being naïve and taking things at face value, or could be a month when everyone uses a word they don’t quite know the meaning of. I will be using lugubrious and effete in 2015.

Mint Julyp seems the perfect month for sitting on the verandah, sipping cocktails and discussing the situation in Rhodesia against the soundscape of sprinklers and Mellers the gardener busying himself in the azaleas. Or My-My July, a month of Mundy. Augusto: after the indolence of mint Julyp, it’s time to approach life with renewed vigour. Augusto ends with the Rose of Tralee and trying on the school trousers to see will it do for another year.

Sleptember: you’ll be worn out after all the gusto. Then, you’re back to Octsober and Movember. This just leaves December, which should be left alone, as you’ve enough on your plate. If you find all of that a little contrived, you could govern your life by another calendar. The Ethiopian one offers plenty of scope for life-change, with months called Megabit (for giving up broadband) or Ginbot (for celebrating automated spirit dispensers.)

As for me, I’m spending November apologising for mentioning Christmas.

Colm’s third Book, It’s Earlier Tis Getting The Christmas Book Of Irish Mammies, is out now