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NICK GRIMSHAW // CHRIS PACKHAM // JOHNNY DEAN // INNER LIFE // THE RANT // DEAR JOSH
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CALM
CONTENTS
GREETINGS.
MANifesto ......................................................5. Hypochondriacs Unite....................................6. CALM’s ‘How To’ Guide .................................8. Inner Life: Johnny Dean ................................10. POEM: Man Up Man Down..............................13. INTERVIEW: Nick Grimshaw ..........................14. ART SHOW: Finsbury Park Deltics .................17. Jog On, January! ........................................... 20. Masculinity: A Redundant Weapon ...............22. CALM MEETS: Chris Packham ...................... 24. POEM: And What Do You Do? ....................... 26. Disappointman............................................... 29. Adventures in Freelancing .............................30. The Rant......................................................... 32. Dear Josh....................................................... 34.
So, it’s the festive season already. Hoo-bloodyrah! It seems only last week that we were hanging out in the sun at Secret Garden Party, but as sure as eggnogs is eggnogs, Christmas is tapping us on the shoulder, demanding our attention through overly sentimental TV ads and moth eaten tinsel adorning the shelves of the local newsagent. However, after the festivities comes the Buzz Killington of months, the ultimate hangover: January. Booo! But fret not. In this issue we are all about batting away the winter blues via some seriously top notch content. Radio 1 DJ and TV stalwart, Nick Grimshaw shares some pearls of wisdom on how to not sweat the small stuff; wildlife expert and Smiths fan, Chris Packham talks about the importance of hanging out in the great outdoors and animals on anti-depressants; Menswear frontman, Johnny Dean, shares his very personal experience of depression and illustrator extraordinaire, Chris Sav gives us his usual quirky take on life with our favourite comic book hero, Disappointman. Our awesome cover art is a product of the über talented Finsbury Park Deltics, plus The Rant and our very own Agony Uncle, Dear Josh! Just when you thought the season of giving was over! Most importantly, remember that we can get through the winter months together. Bros not woes, mate, bros not woes. Need Help? Call CALM. London: 0808 802 58 58 Nationwide: 0800 58 58 58. Lines open 7 days a week 5pm - midnight Want to advertise with us? Email editor@thecalmzone.net CALMzine is printed on paper from sustainably managed sources. Printed by Symbian Print Intelligence, paper from Gould International UK.
CREDITS EDITOR: Rachel Clare ASSISTANT EDITOR: Jack Rooke DESIGNER: Silvina De Vita COVER ART: The Finsbury Park Deltics VAN DRIVER’S ASSISTANT: Bríd McKeown MANAGERIAL DIRECTOR OF OMGZ: Niamh Brophy LA PRESIDENTE: Jane Powell Contributors: Chris Owen, Chris Sav, Joshua Idehen, Rachel Clare, Jack Rooke, Ian MacEwan, Johnny Dean, James McMullan, Ben Tallon, Rhodri Marsden, Oh Standfast, The Finsbury Park Deltics, Peter Raynard, Hannah Goodwin Special thanks to Topman and JC Decaux for their ongoing support.
CALMzine is the first port of call for all your manspiration needs. We all have issues at the end of the day, so what do you want to talk about? Who do you want us to talk to? We want to hear from YOU. Email us your ideas and views at editor@thecalmzone.net If you want the hard stuff, go to the CALM website: www.thecalmzone.net or follow us on twitter @CALMzine thecalmzone.net - CALMzone Helpline London: 0808 8025858 Outside london: 0800 58 58 58
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HYPOCHONDRIA UNITE!
There are two well-worn clichés surrounding men and their health. The first is that they moan constantly, boring lovers, friends and relatives senseless with their perpetual malingering over minor niggles. Alternatively, they’re ludicrously stoic in the face of potentially life-threatening ailments, refusing to see a GP and saying things like “Oh, it’s only an eye, for god’s sake, it’ll probably grow back.” Most men, of course, sit in the chasm between those two extremes, with a reasonably sensible attitude to being ill – although, for some reason, we seem to worry much more than women do, and singularly fail to adopt their awesomely pragmatic attitudes. Those looking to make sweeping generalisations about blokes and health (like I am, right now) might point to the extraordinary success of Men’s Health magazine, which shifts a quarter of a million copies
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every month thanks to its inexhaustible angles on abdominal muscle development. But, you know, that’s not about health, really. Not in my book. That’s Extreme Health. To me, good health equates to not feeling totally lousy, not bleeding too much, and being reasonably free of contusions and tumours. To Men’s Health readers, good health means to have mastered the one-arm chin-up. I don’t want to be able to do a one-arm chin up, not least because I’ve got two arms – I mean, what’s the point? Having successfully failed to die young, I just don’t want to die in middle age. That’s all. So, men might worry, but traditionally we don’t talk about these things to other men. I’d class myself as a lower-league hypochondriac who spends a significant proportion of his mental energy wondering if various pains will develop into full-blown beri-beri, gout or
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ACS By Rhodri Marsden
cancer. They never do, of course – but, given the understandably withering contempt I get from my GP (who has to deal with people far more ill than myself), it would be good to talk to other men about all this. And in a rare moment of confessional honesty between me and my friend Tom the other day, he said exactly the same. So we’ve started this thing. It’s called Health Club. Health Club isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a health club. It usually takes place in a pub, for one thing. But a group of male friends assemble, get drunk, and talk openly about their preposterous health concerns. “I’ve been having this pain roundabout where I think my prostate is,” someone might say. “It comes and goes. Obviously I’m terrified.” Other members of Health Club will reassure him. “Oh god,” they’ll say, “I had that for three months. Took
antibiotics, they did nothing. Eventually it just went away by itself – don’t worry about it.” Obviously Health Club provides no professional diagnosis, and the subtext is that you should always go and see the doctor. But the mind often rules the body; even the most cynical scientists acknowledge the healing power of positive thinking, and hypochondriac men have a fantastic bedside manner. They know what each other are going through, and they’re keen to offer words of encouragement – because that’s what they want, too. Since the formation of Health Club, a group of a dozen of us now talk about our livers, stomachs, cocks and balls in a way that would have seemed preposterous a year ago. And that’s got to be a good thing. We haven’t yet started undressing and pointing at things, though. Some things should remain under wraps. Particularly in a pub.
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HOW TO...get some January can be a tough month. The festivities are over, the weather’s shit and you’ve got a long month to get through before payday. With some of us having to wait 6 weeks between pay cheques, here are some tips on how to get stuff for free to get us through the worst!
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It’s raining, it’s cold and it’s dark 80% of the day, so what better thign to do than getting under your duvet and watching some telly! Netflix, Amazon Prime and LoveFilm all offer 30 day free trials, so sign up on Jan 1st and you’ve got a whole month of movies and TV at your disposal for nada. Don’t forget to cancel your trial by day 30, however, or it’ll cost you!
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Watched the entire 5 seasons of Breaking Bad back to back, and can’t face any more House Of Cards? Why not kick it old skool and read a book. Loads of places offer free book swaps, where you bring a book and take a new one for ZERO pence, so keep an eye out in local cafes. Or why go all out retro and join your local library (if you’re lucky enough to still have one, of course). Alternatively, you can get lots of free books online, with the Kindle App offering public domain books for nowt, so go get your Dickens on, people!
The phenomenon of Freecycle has swept the nation in recent years, where hundreds of people give away everything, from furniture to fridges, all for the bargain price of nuthin’. All you have to do is register online with your local group, offer to give away something for free, and you’re good to go. So maybe now is the time to finally give part with that lifesize cardboard cut out of Hulk Hogan and swap it for something useful. Sign up at freecycle.org
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ething for nothing P
There are hundreds of websites dedicated to getting something for nothing, mostly through coupons and special offers. Some of it’s rubbish, some of it’s pretty useful plus there’s always a chance you might stumble upon a voucher for a free Wispa bar, or a coleslaw at Nandos, so it’s not all bad. Check out magicfreebiesuk.co.uk or freeinuk.co.uk
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There has been a recent rise in the number of groups across the country dedicated to foraging for food, both in the wild and in urban environments. Followers of the Freegan movement, borne out of a desire to live free of consumerism and unethical multinational corporations, can be found ‘dumpster diving’, reclaiming perfectly good products discarded by retailers who are more concerned about their profit margin than wastefulness. Urban Foraging can turn up clothes, furniture and even food, although there have been some issues with foragers being arrested for handling stolen goods when picking up discarded, yet perfectly edible, food from supermarkets, so be careful! They are also all over growing their own food, and finding edible goodies in the wild. Find out more about Freegans and urban foragers here: www.comescavenge.wordpress.com or www.freegan.info
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Thankfully, most of the finest museums and galleries in the UK offer free entry, so give your grey matter a gift and get down to your nearest museum. You may just learn something new about your local area. Or dinosaurs. Or space. Or paintings of ladies with no clothes on. Whatever floats your boat, it’s a free day out! Check out visitbritain.com for a list of free places to visit.
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Spending time with your mates is pretty damn crucial way to get through the winter months, but you don’t have to spend tons of money doing it. How about a kick about in the local park on a Saturday? Or invite them round to binge watch every episode of Star Wars back to back on a Sunday? Use your free mobile minutes to call your buddies. It costs nothing and can make a shite day better. thecalmzone.net - CALMzone Helpline London: 0808 8025858 Outside london: 0800 58 58 58
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INNER LIFE
Depression, Autism and Me
Johnny Dean, front man of Brit Poppers Menswear, talks about his life long struggle with depression and being diagnosed with autism… I had a chat with the lovely people at CALM. I told them I’d write something about depression. Off I went with good intentions and attempted to write the words. It wasn’t easy. I was trying to find an ‘angle’. ‘Make it light hearted? Don’t turn people off with gloom,’ I thought. I was kidding myself. The only angle that made sense was to be honest. Please stick with me, even if you don’t suffer from depression. If you do, this probably won’t make you better, but it might make you feel less alone. As far back as I can remember I have been visited by bouts of depression. Not off days, feeling a bit sad, but weeks and months of being smothered by sensations of total helplessness, abject misery, confusion and self-doubt. Still here? Well done. When I reached adolescence these episodes manifested themselves physically and I began to selfharm. Secretly. Never in view of others. At first just scratches. Barely drawing blood. But soon I graduated to cutting. Not for attention, I was a master at hiding my wounds. I never wore a t-shirt outside. It was a private thing. An unforgiving, spiteful discourse between me and my body. Why? Well, in hindsight I think I know the answer. Shame. Frustration. Ashamed that I was depressed and frustrated that I couldn’t tell anyone. I was disgusted with myself. I grew up in a landscape where depression was viewed as a weakness. Mental health issues were something people whispered about or laughed at. So I cut myself. I felt like I deserved it.
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Into my late teens this abuse found other ways of expressing itself. I took drugs. An attempt at self-medication. Drugs were a way to lose myself, escape my problems, or hide from them for a while. They did not help. My mental health declined steadily, chemicals just exacerbated the slide into darkness. Outwardly I must have presented well, because no-one ever brought me up on it. Just another moody teenager? Truth be told, I would probably have shrugged any concerns away. I couldn’t // admit there was something SICK PEOPLE ARE wrong with me. I was ‘mental’. PUT ON THE COVERS Weak. OF MAGAZINES, GLAMORISED. DEAD Inevitably, this abuse, twinned NOW BUT FOREVER with a stiff upper lip, led me to BEAUTIFUL. a bottle of pain killers, alcohol // and a trip to Southend Hospital A&E. The suicide attempt. At twenty years of age. I was lucky. Someone found the bottle, noticed I was catatonic, an ambulance was called and my stomach was pumped. Strange, but when you try to kill yourself hospital staff are not too accommodating. And why should they be? They have people who have been hurt through no fault of their own to deal with. Why care about someone trying to rub themselves out? It’s an attitude I have experienced many times whilst sailing the good ship ‘Mental Health’, and it distresses me to the back of beyond. It is an attitude that still seems to prevail throughout health care. It is an attitude that has no right to be there. It doesn’t help. The brain is an organ. A fairly important one. If it is broken it deserves attention. No one at the hospital cared very much
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PHOTOS: HANNAH GOODWIN
when I discharged myself and hobbled home in a daze without seeing the resident psychiatrist. I pissed blood for months from liver damage. This failed attempt at escaping my mortal confines was a clusterfuck. I was ashamed that I had upset my family. Nobody talked about it. If they did it was in an accusatory fashion. I don’t blame them. It’s very much how things are. But it’s not how things have to be. If someone is ill with any sort of ailment, compassion is needed. Unfortunately mental health is invisible and comes with massive social stigma. So I trundled along, trying to avoid the ‘black dog’. Trying to avoid everyone, if truth be told. I thought being in a successful band would sort all of this out. Wrong. The music business is tough. It eats the mentally fragile for breakfast, spits them out, and then laments them because it sells; creates legends. ‘Self-medication’ is rife. Anguish is a muse that writes tunes to keeps things rolling. Sick people are put on the covers of magazines, glamorised. Dead now but forever beautiful. The list is long. It’s shameful. I’m not going to criticise those around me at the time, this is not the place, but my mental health, which was patently in a bad place, was often ignored. I was a frontman, the show must go on. Again, I don’t blame them. Again, it’s very much how things are. But it’s not how things have to be… More visits to accident and emergency wards in hospitals all over North London followed. Feeling like
shit, often being made to feel like shit. A ‘mental’, a ‘nutter’. Self-abuse became a pattern. Hiding from my problems because I didn’t want to be a problem, which in turn made me a problem. One of the biggest regrets I have is the time I’ve lost to mental illness. I won’t get that time back. It feels like such an awful waste. If you’re still reading this, you probably deserve a holiday named after you. But as I said, depression is a serious business. A killer. It kills more young men than cancer. Think about that for a minute. Let that piece of info trickle through. It’s astonishing. Eventually I was admitted to a psych ward. I don’t want to be critical of the NHS, they do a wonderful job for little thanks and with restricted resources, but psychiatric wards feel like the last place you should be if you are ill. Inside me something clicked. Enough was enough. I had to face up to this illness. For a few years I had begun to harbour suspicions that my depression was a by-product of a neurological disorder. I was in my thirties, and had begun to develop a better sense of self awareness. Turns out I was right. After a couple of years of pestering doctors, making a concerted effort to be heard, I was finally diagnosed as having a form of autism.
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// I THOUGHT BEING IN A SUCCESSFUL BAND WOULD SORT ALL OF THIS OUT. WRONG. // It’s never over. I’ve been taught coping skills, tools to bring myself out of negative moods. I’m kinder to myself. I take everything as it comes and if things get too much I put my hands up and admit it. But I still get days, moments, when the dark stuff creeps in. Ultimately, though, I’m responsible for my mental health. Sure, there are people out there who can, and should, help. But the buck stops with me. I’m the guy steering the ship. It isn’t easy. Sometimes it feels like the effort required is too much. Sometimes I need help. And bad things happen, they’re unavoidable. The trick for me is to retain a little perspective. Look for positives. If you’ve read this, and you don’t have mental health issues, remember people who do don’t have them to annoy you. They don’t want to be ill. The brain is a complex bit of kit. Sometimes the slightest thing can break it. Depression is a pernicious disease. It doesn’t care who you are, what your background is, where you come from, the colour of your skin, the amount of money you have in your bank account. I guarantee at some point in your life you will be affected by it. Through a friend, a relative, someone you care about, or even you. And it is merciless. It can kill. So have a heart. Don’t be ignorant. Just a few kind words can help someone, and it costs you nothing. Sometimes depressed people can seem selfish or ungrateful, but that is part of the condition. Telling someone to ‘man up’ isn’t helpful. Where
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does that get anyone? Be nice. You’ll feel good. If you’ve read this and you are depressed, and you haven’t sought help, and feel that nobody cares, well, start talking. You have to make the effort. It’s a struggle, but you’ll reap the benefits if you keep at it. Like anything else. Be persistent. Talk. Talk. TALK! Tell your doctor. If that doesn’t work, get another doctor. You’re allowed. Keep talking. Don’t stop. Listen to those around you who know the drill. Get well. It’s worth it. You’re worth it. Don’t listen to idiots. If you’re a minor, and your parents don’t listen, talk to a relative you trust, or a teacher who seems sussed. Just don’t give up. Fight for your mental health, noone else will do it for you. This illness knocks the stuffing out of you, but if you really want to, you can get better. My heart goes out to you, and there are people out there who do care. You just have to find them. You know, the craziest thing about mental health is that we don’t talk about it. Tomorrow I might wear a t-shirt, I’m not embarrassed about those scars…
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Man Up Man Down by Peter Raynard One only ever got As at school Two got expelled yet was nobody’s fool Three fell out with his virtual world Four fell out with his only girl Five fought too long on foreign sand Six couldn’t keep paying with cash in hand Seven kept house, kept kids, kept calm Eight cut a hundred lines on his arm Nine had a lifelong wife that died Ten was a man that never cried Eleven was a man who everyone loved Twelve was a man who’d had enough It is fine to rhyme and be poetic But twelve men down a day is tragic
As bequiffed host of comedy panel show Sweat the Small Stuff (Wednesdays, BBC3, 10pm), Radio 1 breakfast show host Nick Grimshaw riffs on the minor irritations of modern life with regulars Melvin O’Doom and Rochelle Humes plus celebrity guests. CALM caught up with a slightly tired-looking Grimmy – fresh from briefly breaking the world twerking record on that morning’s show - to talk turning 30, coping with early starts and the scandal of the south’s grave gravy shortage... You turned 30 in the summer. How was that for you? “I feel like maybe years ago it was a big deal, but nowadays 30 really is the new 20. You can mess around a lot more in your twenties today, whereas it used to be all about getting a job. I feel quite positive about it. My friend was 30 six months before me, and she was like: ‘It’s a good thing; it’s a decade to focus on yourself.’” Are you where you wanted to be when you hit the big 3-0? “All I wanted to do as a kid was present the Radio 1 breakfast show. Now I need to think of a new ambition.” What’s the worst thing about hosting the breakfast show? “You have to blow dry your hair at 5.45am – which is annoying for the neighbours, I imagine. It’s really bad now that everything on the radio is filmed. I used to go in looking like shit in my pyjamas or tracksuit bottoms, and now people have hair and make-up done for the radio. Also when I wake up all I want to eat is a cooked breakfast or a pastry.
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CALM INTEVIEW
Nick Grimshaw By Ian MacEwan
You don’t want to have porridge or a green juice or something at that time in the morning, but also you don’t want to work out after the show because when you get to the afternoon, it’s nap time.” Do you mind being recognised in public? “Only when people say: ‘Where do I know you from?’ And you then have to sell yourself. It’s not as if you’ve gone out saying: ‘Recognise me!’ I don’t mind if anyone asks to take their picture with me. Is it still a selfie if there’s someone else in it? Maybe it should be called an ‘ussie’?” So tell us about your attempt at the twerking World Record… “I did an hour of twerking and Greg James did an hour and five minutes to piss me off. I’ll have to do an hour and six. Oh my god it will never end.” You broadcast to a young audience. Is it tough being in your teens and twenties? “It’s a really tough age. The worst thing is that there’s a lot of pressure to know what you want to do. I always found it hard to care about my studies because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Then I found it hard to revise for maths and business studies when I decided wanted to be on the radio.”
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What’s the hardest thing about being a northerner living down south? “The lack of gravy at the chippie. You don’t want just dry chips – why don’t they have it? It’s delicious! I might start a campaign – get a load of northerners on a bus…” Is social media a mixed blessing? “The downside is that you know what your friends have done before you speak to them. Also I hate that sometimes I’ll take a picture of something to share on social media rather than just enjoying the moment. People who film gigs are often doing it just to show off. I hate it when people show me stuff like videos of cats on YouTube when I’m out. I don’t care!” How hard is it keeping up with the latest sounds? “If you’re off Radio 1 for a fortnight, you come back and you don’t know what the hell’s going on in music. But all my friends are into music or make music or DJ, so we share a lot of stuff. I used to listen to John Peel for new stuff, but it’s so easy to listen to new music now. I also used to collect the NME – I’ve still got them all, and my copies of The Face.” Would you consider hosting a TV show about fashion? “I did a fashion TV show a few years ago called Style the Nation. People think people in the fashion industry are really stuck up, but in fact it’s great fun. I think there are more dickheads in the music industry. People make more of an effort now with the way they dress – especially up north. My niece and nephew are always pristine. Scousers always make such an effort, whereas down here in the south everyone likes to dress like tramps, don’t they?” 16
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I have been drawing ever since I burst forth, urgent and confused, from a municipal bed in England. Initially I doodled as a way of alleviating childhood angst; now I do it as a way of alleviating angst that’s all grown up and running around with scissors. Working in a variety of media, I parody mass culture by exaggerating formal aspects inherent in our society. I make work that sometimes appears idiosyncratic and quirky; at other times a by-product of Western hyper-consumption; yet more, humorously indecent. My work is ultimately saturated with obviousness, mental inertia, clichés and bad jokes and, in the end, I just like drawing pictures. Please enjoy my inane scribblings… Check out more here: www.thefinsburyparkdeltics.com email: info@thefinsburyparkdeltics.com Facebook: facebook.com/The-Finsbury-ParkDeltics Twitter: @tFPDs
Night Terrors
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Despite The Overt Trappings Of Wealth The Feeling Of Despair Is Absolute
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It’s Only Words
Don’t Go Out
Turned Out Mild
Plucking Cliches from the Sky
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Jog on, January! CALM ambassador, Jack Rooke, shares some pearls of wisdom on how to shake the blues away at the crappiest time of the year.
“Christmas has come and gone like an unwanted case of the clap. The distressing burning sensation is over and you have serious New Year shit to get on with. Like binning Christmas wrapping paper that you’ve stuffed behind the sofa, and taking down the pathetic four Christmas cards you got. When the January blues turn up at your door, it brings as its plus one everybody’s Facebook-boasting resolutions to become “less fat, more successful, better looking” and false promises of “eating healthier, quitting smoking, earning more, being in love, being happier, being fabulous, being a glowing Adonis of pride for all those around me”. Yawn. Whilst they indulge their delusions you’re sat there contemplating the shittiest month of the year, getting fatter, feeling poorer, becoming the anti-Adonis, and noticing a grey hair that you didn’t see before Christmas.
“I’m twenty years old. Why do I have greys!?”
Sound familiar? January can be a pretty bleak affair for many chaps, especially when there’s a heightened sense of motivation and ambition for the fabled few. But, ‘tis not the season to get trollied and isolate yourself in a mid-winter cave of bills and microwave meals. It’s a common phenomenon, getting the blues almost instantly once Christmas is over. It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that a combination of over-spending, over-eating and over-exposure to loved ones we can’t stand to be around for longer than a Christmas episode of Doctor Who, can trigger a crap mood.
So here are my top tips on how to take January on and kick it squarely in it’s dreary nuts… 20
Delete those dating apps! One can easily fall into the Jan trap of spending too much time on your phone, trying to find a date on Tinder in time for the mid-Feb Valentine’s day of doom. This January, find that mate who you always plan to meet up with but end up forgetting they exist until you stalk their Facebook photos. Arrange that “yeah lets hang out after Christmas” meet-up for February 14th, and plan to do something that involves about as much money as the production budget for a N-Dubz video circa 2006. *That’s about £7.50 for anyone unfamiliar with the artistry of N-Dubz.
Hang out with your mates,
even if it’s minus 10 and sleeting outside. It’s amazing how easily you forget how soul affirming it is chewing the fat with your buds, and when you do why not check in with them ‘properly’, before you get stuck into the football scores. Ask if they’re okay, and let them know if you’re not. Everyone finds the winter tough, so your mantra for this year is BROS NOT WOES, got that? We’ve got to look out for each other, bruv.
Go to that place on the tube line that you’ve always seen and wanted to explore. The place where you don’t even know if it’s North, East, South, West or in a remote part of Essex. If you choose the DLR (and sit at the front of the carriage obviously), you can get off at the station called Cyprus – Zone 3, so you feel like you’re having a taste of Ayia Napa in the borough of Newham. (Just ignore the Sewage Treatment centre opposite.)
Ultimately, though, remember that if you are feeling shit and can’t shake the January blues, talk to someone. It could be a mate, or a family member or you can talk to the friendly folks on the CALM helpline about anything you like – open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year 0800 585858.
Learn how to cook like a Don. Those times when you’re sat on your arse, you can’t find the remote and out of sheer laziness you find yourself watching some smug telly chef making an authentic curry with fancy rice moulded into a Pilau dome on a square plate. You may start pondering your own culinary abilities and promise yourself one day you will make this slap up meal (sans the square plate). Then you realise the remote is stuck up your arse and, realistically, you can't even fry an egg without setting the smoke alarm off. Let January be the year you stop doing the Tesco 'Two for £10' deal and eating it for one. Get some cheap ingredients, make a slap up meal and Instagram the hell out of it, so that your mates know that this year you’re becoming a real adult who looks sexy in a novelty nude statue apron! 21
Cambridge University student, James McMullan, wrote the following article for his student newspaper. It was so spot on, we wanted to share it…
Mas a redun
‘You don’t have to waste years trying to figure out how to be a “man” because the whole concept is horseshit.’ In this one sentence, Robert Webb gives us permission to stop grappling to reach a pinnacle of existence that doesn’t exist. The enforced doctrine of ‘being a man’, starts before we can even understand that we’re being forced into a suffocating gender binary. It is a doctrine that has relentlessly controlled me all the way into my adult life. As a young boy, when I told my father that I had been called names in the playground, he told me to ‘take it on the chin.’ I remember playing football with my friends. Someone tripped me up, and I fell flat on my face. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. Instead, I had to ‘stop being a pussy’ and ‘grow a pair’. As isolated incidents these could be dismissed as poorly-chosen words, but they are symptomatic of an all-pervasive attitude that forces boys to idolise the mute and muscly action men we’re forced to play with. As a sufferer of clinical depression, my last year of secondary school was one of the darkest moments in my life. And, being at an all-boys school – full of testosterone and ‘manliness’ - I never told my friends that I went home after school and cried because I hated myself. I never told them that I had planned my own suicide because I woke up every day and wished I had died in my sleep. I couldn’t tell anyone because showing any weakness would make me less of a man. Anyway, men don’t talk about their feelings: they drink beer, grow beards, eat steak and don’t wash. The stock phrase ‘man-up’ has slowly wormed its way into everyday conversation. We unthinkingly use it as a reply to anyone who we feel is not really trying. But what it really means is: don’t be weak, don’t show emotion, be stronger – be a man. So now, as a man, I have been told that when I want to cry – when I am having a horrendous day and feel emotion eating me from the inside out – I have to be a man, ‘strap on a pair’ and ‘get on with it’. Because if I don’t, then I wouldn’t be a man, and what else can I be? My silence was an emotional weight I could not carry, and as a result, I cracked. I nearly killed myself, I nearly left everything behind because I didn’t want to be seen as less of a man. I was sad, yet strangely comforted, to discover that this was not a problem only affecting me. In 2012, 4,590 men died by suicide in the UK: that’s one man every two hours. Although rarely talked about, suicide is the single biggest killer of men under 45 in England & Wales, eclipsing road traffic accidents, violent crime and HIV/AIDS combined. This is a statistic that is rarely knocked about,
sculinity: ndant weapon
because men don’t feel they speak up for themselves: fearful their manhood will be called into question. Thankfully, it seems as though an increasing number of people are realising a conversation about men’s mental wellbeing is one we desperately need to be having. Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), is a men’s suicide prevention charity. Jane Powell, CEO of CALM, says: “CALM’s key ambition is to reduce male suicide by providing support to men and to create a space in which they can feel more comfortable discussing their problems”. As part of their campaign, CALM are asking men on Facebook and Twitter to help them compile a ‘Man Dictionary’. Using the hashtag #mandictionary, men are encouraged to redefine themselves on their own terms. @TIMWILD tweeted: Mangry: To be inexplicably furious about something trivial because the real problem’s too hard to talk about’. It’s a simple idea, but an extremely effective one. To effect change, all we need to do is create a space for honest conversation – and maybe this is doing just that. Cambridge University prides itself as being an intellectual leviathan. However, because of this, we normalise serious mental health issues, passing them off as ‘an essay crises’, ‘week 5 blues’ or just a necessary consequence of being at this institution. We cannot continue to fail ourselves, and the people around us, in this way. Although a problem for any gender, women are more likely to be treated for a mental health problem than men. It is largely accepted that this is because women are more likely to report symptoms of common mental health problems. It’s time we all realised that our archaic notions of manliness silence men who need help.
This article was first published in The Cambridge Student newspaper
CALM MEETS:
Chris Packham By Ian MacEwan
A close encounter with the lesser spotted Chris Packham, the TV naturalist with an encyclopaedic knowledge of wildlife who’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers…
side Michaela Strachan and Martin HughesGames, the team reported on how anti-depressants entering the food chain via human waste had affected the behaviour of certain species. So is it possible that animals, like humans, could actually suffer from depression? According to Chris, it’s unlikely – even if
Chris Packham is not a wildlife broadcaster of either the cute and cuddly or common or garden variety. The slightly geeky, hugely well-informed co-presenter of the BBC’s seasonal Autumn, Spring and Winterwatch likes to drop little surprises into his broadcasts – such as sneaking the names of his favourite songs or films into his onscreen chat - and occasionally bares his fangs to speak out on emotive issues affecting the animal kingdom – such as whether we should put so many resources into saving the panda. When CALM met up with Chris recently in one of his many natural habitats – the BBC’s Media Village in West London – his latest beef was the ongoing ill treatment of animals in the name of entertainment in ITV’s hit reality show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. ‘I hate that programme,’ says Chris, who presumably will not be seen skydiving into the Australian bush any time soon. ‘The way they treat animals – I say it every year and I write to ITV every year. They reinforce stereotypes in terms of the animals and it appalls me. I’ve nothing against the programme; just don’t use the animals in that way – eating them alive.’ In this year’s Autumnwatch, the popular seasonal snapshot of British wildlife presented by Chris along-
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they are already unwittingly ingesting Prozac. ‘Depression has to be associated with conscious awareness of self, and we know that very few animals have that,’ says Chris. ‘We know, for instance, that dolphins and chimpanzees and a small group of other animals know themselves as individuals. So a chimp will go to a mirror and clean its teeth, rather than thinking it’s seeing another chimp.’ But what about pet dogs that whine when their owners leave them? ‘I would like to say my dogs get depressed – but do they?’ asks Chris. ‘They suffer separation anxiety when I leave them – they howl. But you’ve got to break that down
into behaviour. We live together as a group and they are pack animals. If one of the members of the group leaves… I’m the food provider, so there are all sorts of reasons why they’d be upset at my departure. I don’t think we can interpret that as depression, as we see it. ‘However the idea that elephants grieve their dead is becoming a reality,’ he continues. ‘We know that they demonstrate empathy toward one another and there may be a purpose for that empathy, as there may always be in our own species. And if a fight takes place between chimpanzees, one chimp will console another – but which chimp consoles which is governed by their social hierarchy.’ What is known for sure is that human contact with the natural world is very good for our mental health, especially given our increasingly hectic lifestyles. ‘We know that being in green spaces improves our mental and physical health,’ Chris explains. ‘And that rates of recovery from major surgery improve in a green environment. We forget we are organisms existing in an ecosystem. The vast majority of people are more comfortable in green open spaces than, for example, forests because they’re unable to see predators. Although we’ve rapidly evolved and changed ourselves as a species, a lot of the fabric of us as a basic organism remains intact.’ In particular, contact with pets can have hugely beneficial effects on someone’s mood. ‘The relationship people have with dogs is immensely rewarding and obviously beneficial,’ says Chris, who is a dog owner himself. ‘We’ve been living with
if one moved into my garden, it would give me a real management issue, because I’m trying to feed the birds and they are brilliant predators. But you simply have to accept a new dynamic.’
dogs for thousands of years, and we’ve co-evolved with them. We have a genetic pre-disposition to understand dogs and vice versa. Not everyone likes them but everyone understands them and every culture in the world has its dogs.
Fans of Chris will know that he is a keen music fan who likes to slip in references to his favourite bands while presenting Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch. On the week when he meets CALM, the youngat-heart 53-year-old has quite a few gigs in his diary.
‘I’ve become depressed having lost animals,’ he adds. ‘I remember someone saying: “Well, it doesn’t really matter, it was only a dog.” That shows a conspicuous lack of understanding. It doesn’t matter what the organism is, it’s how much you’ve invested in it and how much you’ve got in return. I have a stepdaughter and I love her dearly, but my poodles are [up] there with her and they all play very important roles in my life.’ Chris has been an outspoken critic of the tendency to champion endangered animals that are perceived as cute and cuddly – notably the panda, symbol of the WWF – at the expense of supposedly less attractive species. So are there any critters that he would be tempted to get rid of if they made a home in his house or garden? ‘No,’ he says flatly. ‘I’ve had hornets all year. I’ve got rats. I don’t want them in the house and the dogs do their best to keep the population down, but you don’t want a dog or a cat for that matter fighting with a big rat. I tolerate them. ‘I wouldn’t like a feral cat,’ he admits. ‘They can be immensely damaging and,
‘I’m seeing Against Me – a US pop punk band, the Jesus and Mary Chain playing the whole of Psychocandy and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine’s last ever gig at Brixton Academy in south London,’ he says with a satisfied grin. As for classical and jazz music, the genres favoured by co-presenter Martin, Chris says they’re just not his bag.
‘I’m very visually orientated, which probably explains my taste in music,’ he smiles. ‘I need repetitive lyrics that have a flow to them so I can remember them like poetry. That excludes me from anything free form, like jazz or classical. If I can’t understand how the music’s been made, I have a problem with it. I need to know what the components are. If it’s four blokes with a drum kit I can live with that.’ Presumably anything by the Arctic Monkeys, Seal, Foals, Guillemots or Fleet Foxes would be more his cup of tea…
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And
wha t by O do yo ud hS tan o? dfa st
And what do you do? I am an internationally acclaimed professor of sport I work for the Royal Mail, I sort. I am an optician specialising in those with eyesight that is short. In the nineteen nineties I taught… media. I am a cheerleader An infamous arts dealer A west highland terrier dog breeder I am the owner of a pop up coffee shop in Brighton called ‘Quadrocaffeinia’? I am on a gap year. I am still on a gap year. I am freelance chiropodist A struck off dentist I am a classical pop funk fusion Cellist I work in a florist… on Sunday.
I am training to be an astronaut and I hope to orbit the Earth one day. You know the star signs in the back of papers, I draw those little pictures. See those kitchen cabinets, I mould the fixtures. I am a dustbin lorry driver An ex Special Forces deep sea diver I live off royalties from back when I penned the U2 hit ‘Desire’. I am an inherent liar. But that’s enough about me. And what do you do?
PROPAMANDA NOUN. / THE CATALOGUE OF STEREOTYPES AIMED AT MAKING YOU A MANLY MAN, PROPER BLOKE, TOP LAD.
#MANDICTIONARY
KEEPING MEN ALIVE BY TALKING www.thecalmzone.net CALM is a registered charity in England & Wales no 1110621 & Scotland no SC044347
NEXT ISSUE OUT
APRIL‘15
Everyman by chris sav
CALMZINE
NEEDS YOU
r Would you like to write for CALMzine? Do you have a photographic eye? We want great writers, interviewers, bloggers, tweeters, artists and photographers for CALMzine and the CALM website. r What’s your obsession, your passion? Music, sports, arts, gadgets, fashion, comedy, gaming – or something further out of the box? Can you write about it, picture it, tweet it? Can you conduct a gripping interview? r We’d love to hear from you, and in no time your work could be on our website and in these very pages.
Get in touch with Rachel at: editor@thecalmzone.net
SELF ASSESSMENT
By Ben Tallon When you look in the mirror enough times, you see a wide spectrum of yourself. For me, it’s been a little circular mirror on the bathroom wall for the last five years. Shuffling across my bedroom office into the bathroom is a scheduled and functional event designed to provide routine in a day without structure. For most people, their average morning mirror time is a few seconds run of the comb through the mega-hold gel or a disposable glance during a rushed brushing of the teeth before leaving for work.
as opposed to another twelve-hour shift in the same room in which you sleep.
When you’re self employed, or ‘self-unemployed’ as an electrician friend likes to call it, you get to spend a bit longer trying to decode that guy in the reflection. After all, he’s the manager in this establishment so there’ll be no conclusive disciplinary action for dwelling longer than you should. I’m a freelance illustrator and Art Director. This means I draw and paint images that are used in magazines, on record sleeves, TV, in advertising, film and sport, usually working from a remote location and generally alone. It’s not always a negative, just painfully so on some days.
After six years, I’ve managed to build quite an impressive CV with dream jobs that some people have said they’d ‘give anything to have’. I used to get angry about that, but the way we window dress the best bits for the untrained eye can give a skewed, romantic view of it all. Freelance photographers, illustrators, artists and writers are all essentially selling something that doesn’t exist in one of the most competitive markets out there. It’s about putting the right bait in your portfolio and hoping someone who can afford to pay you to do something similar will swim by and bite. Sometimes, there’ll be several bites in a day and then it’s your round down the pub. Other times, it’s as if the sea of opportunity is empty. It’s at those times that I tend to peer into that bathroom mirror, skint and staying in all night as well as all day.
I’ve always wanted to tell people I’m a creative mercenary, but I’ve never quite mustered the balls required to say it, so I stick with Illustrator. I’d probably look silly if I said mercenary when the mental image of that word is so much more dynamic than the routine walks around the neighbourhood in trackie bottoms, in order to ‘get some air,’ ‘clear my head’ or ‘stretch my legs.’ It’s hardly Jason Bourne, is it? I mean, he has a few longing looks into the mirror, but they’re inevitably sandwiched between HD fist-fights and high-speed car chases,
OK, that sounds bleak when there are huge positives, but I try to document this side of freelancing, because the plentiful ‘how to’ books could never prepare anyone for the very real and often unspoken element of the lifestyle. After all, loneliness, overthinking and stress are a trio that often descends upon creative folk.
Overdraft, tax returns, water bills, religion, cosmology, meteor showers, afterlife; just a few of the monumental, real and silly worries that start to gain speed and ferocity on the carousel that spins behind those eyes staring back at me during the quiet spells. Sometimes the phone rings, it’s a nice new
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commission that they need for tomorrow, so the next twelve hours are exciting, well paid and with no time to visit the bathroom other than out of necessity. Post it online with a self-deprecating one liner and everything is cool, you’ve really got it together again, the heavyweight champion of your enviable world. It’s a love hate profession and the art of riding out the good times and the bad is one that has to be accepted and perfected in order sustain a freelance lifestyle. I started writing about freelancing in 2011 during a six-week stretch without work in which I lost four of my six regular clients through no fault of my own – a combination of budget cuts and style shifts following two successful years. To say I felt bitter was an understatement, so I started a blog to let out tirades of anger, lashing out at the creative industries and bemoaning all the things I missed about my old life of nine-to-five. I told anyone who would listen exactly how deep I was into my overdraft, when my last job was and how many times I’d walked to Tesco Metro to see if anything else had been reduced. Some laughed, others ignored, a few shared and one guy messaged me directly to ask if I was OK. I’ve since become friends with him and we occasionally collaborate. I had something to say and although it’s embarrassing to look back at how angry my words were, it was cathartic to write this stuff down. Every mishap, every visit to the mirror suddenly had artistic worth. I hadn’t written, aside from as a hobby, since GSCE English back in 1999, but one girl told me I had a natural literary style and I kept doing it thanks to such encouraging words and others relating to my
struggles. I eventually toned down the venom and my persistence paid off. Next spring I have a book being published about the freelance lifestyle. Who knew that anyone would want to read about one man’s isolation, confidence dips, shaving sessions in that mirror and efforts to start up a business? What I know well is that, during the shitty days, the knowledge that there are others in your shoes can be a huge help. Writing and drawing my thousands of thoughts on paper became my way of reaching out to these people all over the world, going through the same shit. These days, I’m getting better at managing the one constant - the bi-polar nature of life as a freelance creative - and although the highs and lows will always be there, I now have a network of people who not only help me see the positives where I used to see few, but they are not afraid to show me the people staring back at them through their own mirrors, and to the isolated man that is essential. Champagne and Wax Crayons: Riding the Madness Of The Creative Industries’ is out spring 2015 Check out more from Ben: www.bentallon.com
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THE RANT By Chris Owen
Apparently, because my favourite cheeses are – in no real order – Edam, Babybel, and some weird smoked Austrian stuff that comes in circles, I am to the cheese fraternity what Stephen Hawking is to the hurdling one. My lack of enjoying ‘proper’ cheese and instead focusing all my care and attention on manufactured, synthetic shit would appear to make me unworthy of the finest houses, and someone it’s awkward to sit next to at dinner parties. Well, youse can all piss off. Cheese is fucked up. There, I said it – it’s bloody weird. I don’t get why people get so sniffy (pun intended) about it. Think about it, firstly you’re nipple crippling a cow (or goat, or – christ alive – a sheep), then keeping what comes out. Then, you put it in a big vat and leave it there until it starts to curdle and go lumpy, and then you scrape these lumpy bits out. (Now, look, I’ve created such lumpy stuff myself in the fridge when I’ve forgotten to throw the milk out, yet when I do it’s disgusting and lazy. When a master cheesemaker does it, however, it’s artisan and acceptable. Even lauded. Double standards, people). These lumpy bits are then put in a mould and left to sit on a shelf for, like, eighteen months or whatever (because what’s weird about that?), and then once we’ve decided that a year and a half is quite enough to leave something to fester, we wrap it up – sometimes in nettles, wtf? – then sling it out to a cheesemonger who sells it to posh people for eighteen quid a kilo. FOR MANKY MILK. What’s worse, we seem to have to ENJOY the revolting smell these lumps of cowtitjuice give off – as if smelling like the inside of Michael Portillo’s pants after one of his train journeys is supposed to be a sign of decadence. Yeah, smelling like an armpit might have been de rigeur during the French Revolution, but we’ve moved on thanks. I think I’ll stick with something that doesn’t make me do a little sick in my mouth. And yet it’s me – with my happy, jolly little Babybel – it’s me who is the weirdo for not liking it. Jesus, Babybel even gives you free wax to piss around with after you’ve played with your food. Can’t do THAT with nettles, can you?
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Do you have something you want to rant about? Send 300 words to editor@thecalmzone.net thecalmzone.net - CALMzone Helpline London: 0808 8025858 Outside london: 0800 58 58 58
ATENCIÓN! Marcus, Chris and the Nelson’s Tour de Test Valley team –you did it again!! A remarkable achievement and an awesome day. Allez Allez! Here’s to 2015!
Graham Goddard, you bloody legend. Taking on the might of the Mayor of London AND bothering commuters at Waterloo. You never fail to amaze…
Freshers crew: Dorian, Chris, Robyn, Ian, Rai, Katie, Hanna, Kerim and Bami for all your relentless energy; awesome job!
Michael, Freddie, Jan, Sam, Evan, Emily, Simon, Annie, Helen and Kathryn what we do without you at CALM HQ!
Massive shout out to Lucy and Louise for organising a week of Topshop staff fundraising fun for CALM in their flagship Oxford Street Store! Huge thanks to Rai, Ian, Chris and Patrick for heading down and representing!
Capco, Stuart Muir, Jack Hardy, The Stringer family, Becky Tapp and all our supporters for doing incredible things to support and raise cash for CALM.
Matt Briggs, for helping us get our foot in the parliamentary door, literally…!
HUGE shout out to Jamie Ramsay, wherever you are, who is currently running solo from Vancouver to Buenos Aires to raise awareness and cash for CALM. YOU’RE A SUPERSTAR! Hip hop duo Ceiling Demons for releasing a ‘Follow The Lights’ in aid of CALM. Our ‘coolo-meter’ just went through the roof.
Our entirely unprofessional agony uncle offers his entirely unprofessional advice… Q: I want to audition for The X-Factor because friends tell me that when I sing it makes them beyond happy, and that maybe being a popstar is my true calling. However I don’t have a dead grandmother and I’m a pretty privileged chap from the home counties. What should I do to stand out in the crowd without a sob story? Jake, Watford A: Dude, check your privilege. Lol jk. No, I think you should be yourself. Really. On X- Factor you’ll be rarer than an Indian samurai by virtue of being able to speak proper (I’m assuming you can and/or pull off an accent?) That’s worth a thousand sob stories, yo. Q: So occasionally - well kinda frequently - I like to wear my girlfriend’s floral pyjama bottoms. They’re extremely silky and soft and they feel good in all the right places. Is this something I should be concerned about? She doesn’t seem to mind… Marcus, Clapham South A: No. I wear my wife’s socks sometimes. By mistake. For a minute or two. Sometimes a day if I’m not taught. I’m never caught. Josh, I heard you’re in two bands. I’m also in two bands - kinda three if you count the one I made when I was 12 with my ex-neighbour who now lives in Bulgaria. Anyway, I think I wanna just pursue one project and I don’t know how to let the other one down. Any tips on how to quit something whilst not pissing people off? Danny, Holloway A: That’s easy.1. Be extremely nice to everyone outside rehearsal/performance. Be super supportive and encouraging when music isn’t mentioned. 2. During rehearsals/performance: argue with everyone, be finicky about unnecessary shit. Pick fights. Give terrible musical ideas. They’ll kick you out in a month tops AND feel bad about it enough too still be your friend. Yes. I am this evil. 3. Or you can tell them the truth. I know, lol right? Q: My girlfriend left me right at the end of summer, after I had paid for us to go on holiday twice, bought her an iPad, and took her to three different festivals (which are now more expensive than most iPads). I think she should give me the tablet back! Am I being unreasonable? Peter, Herne Hill A: You are being unreasonable. Get over it. You don’t want the iPad. You want to get one over her. That’s you ‘the boy’ speaking. Be you the man and let that boo boo slide, dude. Learn from this. It’s just an iPad. Get on with thy life. Trust.
Do you have a question for JOSH Email us on editor@thecalmzone.net NOTE: Josh is not a qualified expert. He’s just a joker. However if you do want to know some more about him, go to www.poejazzi.com
If you need professional advice, call the London CALMzone helpline on 0808 802 5858. Outside London call: 0800 585858
thecalmzone.net - CALMzone Helpline London: 0808 8025858 Outside london: 0800 58 58 58
thecalmzone.net - CALMzone Helpline London: 0808 8025858 Outside london: 0800 58 58 58
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