Today is the first of the autumn internationals, when the Scottish rugby team takes on a trio of southern hemisphere sides at Murrayfield and, 30 points down at half time, realises why the games are sometimes also called tests.
But increasingly it's also the time of year when the occasionally substandard performance of the boys in blue is leavened by their taking to the field wearing outlandish and often comical facial hair. It's November, you see, and many men are growing moustaches this month under the Movember banner to raise money for men's health charities - and, commendably, professional rugby players are among them.
Of course if you're built like a Hummer and you play sport for a living, there's no problem - even if it looks awful, nobody's going to tell you so to your face. If you're built more like a Ford Focus, wear glasses, have bad hair and gobby kids - I am in this category - the moustache becomes more problematic. Of course that's the point of Movember: it's about facing up to ridicule, which is why most men go for the stupid-but-not-too-stupid Zapata moustache, probably the coolest 'tache in the canon.
I intended to participate this year. It's at this point that the gobby kids come into the story: I feel they should be warned that the familiar beard is going to be replaced by a moustache, and tell them so over breakfast. Bad move.
Me: Kids, I'm going to grow a moustache. Don't be scared.
Son: I don't want you to have a moustache. Your hair doesn't suit it.
Me: What sort of hair would suit a moustache then?
Son: Curly?
Daughter: Marmalade.
He's eight and has curly hair, she's six and likes marmalade, which might explain that surreal verbal curveball. Once we get the conversation back on track the missus whips out her iPhone and finds a picture of Donald Sutherland in Don't Look Now. Son shakes his head. "You don't want to grow a moustache," he continues. "I don't think it would look good with your glasses. I haven't seen many people with moustaches and glasses."
I don't know if the boy is going to become a lawyer - I hope not - but that was a killer point.
"He's right," I tell the missus afterwards. "I'd look like a 1980s NASA guy, the one in the command centre with the slide rule in the pocket of his short-sleeved white shirt. Or Eddie The Eagle."
In the end we decide I should just make a donation this year. I see that luxuriantly moustachioed Glasgow Warriors stand-off and Movember champion Ruaridh Jackson is in the Scotland squad for today's game against Japan: maybe he's the guy to drop a tenner on and assuage my Movember guilt.
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