40 by Forty

The challenge Spend a night in one of Renae's dresses in public. The problem This bit of the blog is normally where I explain any additional rules of the challenge, dodgy interpretations of the challenge itself or reasons why I'm doing it. This entry is going to be a bit different. I'm going to be talking about morals. Feel free to stop reading now. Still here?  OK.  Buckle up for some self-indulgent navel gazing, we're going in! Ever since accepting this challenge on to the list, I've had a distinctly hinky feeling about it.  I wasn't sure it was entirely cool.  As the year has gone on, I've had time to think about it properly and I've managed to narrow down my issues with it.  Basically, it just seems a bit transphobic.  Why?  Well, it seems there's two ways to go with the challenge.  One is the playing-it-for-laughs-don't-I-look-silly approach.  While the lazy writer in me sees the appeal of that, the thrust of that...

This challenge is courtesy of… Lindsay Law The challenge Learn to tango. This is one of the few challenges that really requires someone else to be involved. I suppose I could have found and paid for dancing lessons on my own but that would have seemed rather anti-social when I have a wife who loves to dance. As a consequence, this one has lingered on the list for longer than expected, waiting for Renae and I to both make time for it. There's not a lot of specificity in this challenge and there's a lot of variation in what one might define as a tango, so for this one Renae and I decided to learn the basic tango eight step. As with all good things, this was to be done by the power of the Internet. It turns out there's a lot of video tutorials that pop up when you enter “learn the tango” into YouTube. Some are good. Some are… Less so. We opted for the one embedded below, partly because it was labelled “absolute beginners” but mostly for the hilarious...

Before we begin, a quick diversion down bonus challenge lane. I was going to travel 100m by pogo stick yesterday. I got the toddlers ready to go the park (where there's a tarmac running track to bounce around), got myself ready and then got out the big kids’ pogo stick. That was when the problem arose…  My healthy eating isn't going THAT well! Turns out there's a good reason for that max limit. Let's just say that it was less bouncy than needed. So an alternative challenge needed attempted for this week. Enter the guitar… This challenge is courtesy of… Andrew Leask. The challenge Learn a song on the guitar. I don't really do is music. I'll often joke that I don't understand “this Earth thing called music”, and it's only a slight exaggeration. While I do sort of see the idea behind it, I don't really “get” it. If you asked me to sacrifice some pleasurable activity that I would never be able to do again, listening to...

We now return to our normal, challenging programming. This challenge is courtesy of... Andy Law.   The challenge Invest £40 and try to make a profit. OK, full disclosure, I think the challenge as originally suggested was "invest £40 in stocks and shares and try to make a profit" but the version that made it onto the list was "invest £40 and try to make a profit", so that's the version we're going with. One ground rule.  As the challenge got a little garbled in the listing, I could, technically, just put £40 into an ISA and wait for the interest payment. Obviously, that's not in the spirit of the thing.  So any profit has to be uncertain for this to count. My first thought was to try my hand at app based day trading, as favoured by Donna. However, pretty much the first thing you see is a giant warning that states "80% of retail investors lose money trading on these instruments", which is... not encouraging. I don...