Birding by ear, alone

The "alone" part in my entry title is for two reasons: First, Kat left yesterday and is now in Europe at a conference, and Em left last week to visit Kat's parents, so I'm all alone in the old Marsh House. *sniffle!* Second is the meat of this blog entry. Please read on, and forgive the lack of photos; Kat took it to take pics in Europe.

I've talked a few times about going birding with Roana and Nan from the State College birding club, and how phenomenal they are at birding by ear -- listening, hearing, and identifying all sorts of birds just by their songs and/or calls. Tonight, on my way home, I decided to take the scenic route home and go through some of the routes in one of Roana's atlas blocks. As it was about 8pm and getting dark fast, I had to use my ears instead of my eyes most of the time. Here's what I was able to hear; I couldn't always ID it, but these are my best-effort transcriptions of what I heard:

1. preet preet peer peer reet-reet-reet-reet-reet-reet That last "reet-reet" part is a long, slow trilling, almost like a swamp sparrow does. The call was always the same, always these three distinct sounds, in this complete pattern, uttered fairly quickly but certainly slowly enough for me to hear note. At the time, I was next to a grassy area but could see no birds. I was in open and fairly flat valley grasslands and farmland.

2. dut-tweedully-tweedully-tzee-tzay That first part isn't shown very well, but it was a fast twittering with a sequence of a hard first note, then two quick triplets, then the see-say of the Savannah sparrow. Here again, I was still in the open grassland/farmland area. The only reason I even recognized this one is that Hillel at work called me the other day and asked me to come outside to the parking lot to hear one of these, but when I got out there, the bird had gone already. But that's how I recognized the call: his rendering of the twittering and then the see-say. A lot of the texts say that first part is more like zut-zut-zut, but my guy sounded like what I have written here. Who knows why.

3. witchety-witchety-witchety-witch This one, I know well: common yellowthroat. By now, I'd started going into the woodsier areas, where there were some fields and some large woodlots dividing them. I've yet to actually see a yellowthroat, but I think there's one nesting either in the yew tree outside my bedroom window or in Neighbor Ed's huge maple tree. He sounds like he's in the yew, though; he's LOUD. I want to see him, though; I think these birds are beautiful.

3. teakettle-teakettle-teakettle Now I was next to a densely wooded area, and for once I heard this song and the witchety song, one near the other. There was a distinct difference in the two songs, and I'm pretty sure this one was the Carolina wren's teakettle song. Either that or this yellowthroat was British and uppity.

4. pee-oh-wee An easy one: Eastern wood pewee. I like this song; it echoed out of the dense woods.

5. the crazy twittering and tweaking and mewing of a catbird; I had help on this one: he landed in the tree right next to the road at eye level, just next to a wheat field. Love that dashing little black cap! Of course, let's not forget I once had a close encounter with one of these guys, so I'm still a little shy around them.

I did actually see (but didn't hear) two birds I couldn't ID. The first was sparrow-like, flying away from me into a cornfield, and his tail was medium-length, broadly spread, and was brown with black edges. Anyone care to venture a guess on this one? It's a pretty meager clue to work with, but it's all I got. The second one looked like the ugliest robin I'd ever seen; no red on the chest, just splotchy brown and gray, two wing bars on dusky gray wings, gray back; otherwise, his body and shape seemed like those of a robin. Perhaps it was a slow-developing immature of some sort? I don't know, but I felt bad for this bird; if it's a male, he'd better forget about getting any action this year!

The rest of the birds I saw were pretty easy to ID: a lot of tree and barn swallows, some red-winged blackbirds, mourning doves, robins, grackles, etc. I was hoping to see an Eastern meadowlark but had no luck with that.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable 45 minutes spent birding by ear, alone.

OH--P.S. While googling things like "see-say" to make sure I remembered "Savannah sparrow" correctly, or "teakettle teakettle" is a Carolina sparrow, I found two great things:
1. A hilarious google response to witchety-witchety:
I'm throwing out all your shit, and changing the locks! Scrubbly grubbly scribbly wiggly witchety man! Witchety witchety man! ... www.outpostnine.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-5723.html - 6k - Supplemental Result -
I still haven't followed that link yet. I think it's perfect exactly the way it is, without finding out the rest of whatever this person said to this "scrubbly grubbly wiggly witchety man!"
and
2. a fantastic list of common mnemonics for bird songs! http://www.stanford.edu/~kendric/birds/birdsong.html Check it out!

Katya Kalling

"So," said the mysterious stranger. "I'm South African. I'm 5ft7. I work out three times a week. And I have an HUGE nine inch long cock."
There was a few seconds of placid silence as he let this information sink in. I was stunned. I tried to think of something to say back. Only one thought sprung to mind.
"I'm actually taller than you."
There was another few moments of silence, punctuated only by the slow drip-drip-drip of rain against the window. A young boy cycled along the road outside. He was wearing a hat.
The hat was blue.
"Cool," said the mysterious stranger. "Want to have sex?"

* * *

Well, that is exciting. There's a cliffhanger for you. Another exciting example of the zany situations I get myself into. And I bet, having read that, you are now full of questions. What was I doing talking to a mysterious but well-endowed South African stranger? Why did he want to have sex with me? Did I consent? How did I get myself out of THAT situation? I am not going to tell you! Yet. You will just have to wait and see. But bear in mind - there is a twist in the tale. Let's see if you can figure it out. But I warn you - it's pretty cryptic. SOLVE MY RIDDLE.

I have spent some time this week on internet chatrooms, pretending to be a girl (oh, shit). Now you may think that this is a pretty sad thing to be doing with my time, but if you bear in mind that the other option was revising critical approaches to gothic literature (everything reflects contemporary anxieties, I get it already Kelly Hurley) I think that you will agree that the whole transgender thing was a much better way to pass the time. In fact, while you were all revising your surds and relative fractions, I was having the time of my life on teenflirt, so actually I'm pretty sure that that makes ME the cool one here. ALSO don't think that I was doing this off my own back; like I got up one day and thought "I know I will go onto an internet chatroom and pretend to be a girl,". Oh no, I was actually double teaming with my newbestfriend Emily. THAT'S RIGHT, A REAL GIRL.

I think I should briefly mention Emily for a bit as a large part of this story relies on understanding Emily's mentality. Which I don't. Of course, I don't really understand any girls at all, but I really REALLY don't get Emily. She is a mental person. She has piercings on her face and a pet hedgehog and she sends people mysterious letters with slogans like 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life' written in blood. I like her because she is interesting. Every single one of her stories or anecdotes end with some sort of weird twist, like 'Then he went off with my lesbian friend' or 'Then I got molested' or 'Time to purge!'. So it was no suprise really that when I started talking to her on msn her first words were along the lines of 'HEY TOM I AM BAITING PERVERTS ON THE INTERNET'. Of course, my ears pricked up at the words 'perverts', 'internet' and 'Tom'. We all know of my interest in internet perverts - after the Perverted Justice excitement of last year and the paedophile post way back in 2005 I have pretty much made my bed visavis the paedophile/pervert issue.

So after about a ten second consideration, I quickly loaded up the 'teenflirt' chatroom and set about getting myself some virtual cock. While it was loading on the computer Emily set out the groundrules. I should give myself a kind of slutty name - I wanted to go with Mildred but that was turned down so I settled with Katya, after everyone's favourite spoon-faced Neighbours character. Secondly, I should tell everyone that I was a virgin as apparently this turns on men. Thirdly, when somebody says 'asl' to me, I should not say '18, male, London' as apparently this blows the whole thing wide open and spoils the fun.

So with no further ado I entered the chatroom. It was jolly exciting, there were lots of bright colours and flashing lights. In the main forum bit, a chatter called like, 'Lady Japan' or something was talking about kimono dresses. I was like wtf is this WHERE ARE ALL THE PERVERTS THAT EMILY PROMISED ME. But then I realised that the kimono conversation was sandwiched in between about eighteen thousand pleas for cybersex. So it was like:

Lady Japan: I like kimono rags
Bob: ANY 15YO GIRLS WANNA CHAT
big_meaty_gregory: yo girls any 18yo girls wanna do some chattin
Lady Japan: But it's really hard to tie the knots on the back of them
IRVING: any hairy girls into pee and poo please talk
blackman: who wants to go on msn i have a webcam
Lady Japan: I like things

It went on like that. So I typed 'lol my names Katya' into the box. Did you see my clever use of 'lol' to blend in? Usually I would not write 'lol' ever as I consider 'lol' to be pretty much the most retarded acronym on the face of the planet. I HAVE SERIOUS RESERVATIONS AS TO WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE ACTUALLY LAUGHING OUT LOUD you fucken dipshits. However in this context I figured, what the hell, might as well go mad and say lol and elide the possessive apostrophe in 'names'. I tell you I was like a man possessed, it was fucking scary how non-standard my grammatical formations were.

About three quarters of a second later, about four requests for private chats popped up. I was like woo I have never BEEN so popular. I decided to only answer three of them as I felt like turning somebody down for no reason just to slightly make him question his own sense of superiority. Plus, Katya is no slag who talks with four men at once. She is a LADY. An internet lady.

The three guys I had conversations with were vinnie_bruklyns_most_wanted, sexy_guy_hot4u and jamesuk. I chose vinnie_bruklyns_most_wanted because - seriously - how often do you get to chat to the most wanted guy in Brooklyn on the teenchat message boards? Hardly EVER and I wasn't going to let that opportunity just pass me by. I went with sexy_guy_hot4u because I figured that his name, rather like Polonius's "comedy pastoral religious" comment in 'Hamlet' was a satiric poke at the naming traditions of contemporary theatre genres, was like an ironic pastiche, a satire - if you will - on the common naming traditions of internet chatrooms. Turns out it wasn't. Finally, I decided to chat with jamesuk because I liked the cut of his gib. His name was James. And he comes from the UK. Simple, effective, gets the job done. I approved.

Well about ten seconds in I realised that these chaps were not interested in making small talk. I mean, I TRIED, I TRIED to engage them in conversation. I talked to jamesuk about Hamlet - asked him if he thought that the wordless submission of Ophelia and - to an extent - Gertrude was indicitive of the lack of sexual equality in Elizibethan England. His response? "lol i dunno much about that i know a lot about sex tho". I don't see why he was lolling, Ophelia is no laughing matter. Seriously. She's like the least amusing Shakespearean character of all time. I'd rather spend time with CANNIBAL than Ophelia, and Cannibal is like some little pig monster dude. At least he dances and beats up those drunk guys. But I'm digressing; the beautiful soliloquies of Shakespeare are tangential to the point in hand.

sexy_guy_hot4u told me about his penis in his second message. We then had the conversation that you read at the beginning of this post. Do you like the subtle way that I like, depth charged him in my response? He expected me to be really impressed that he did did all this working out and stuff but I managed to beat all that with the whole 'I'm taller than you' thing. I bet it really bugs him that he isn't quite 6 ft fall. No matter how much weight he pumps or how big his penis is, he's just a little short guy.

Although, talking of penises, it appears that nine inches isn't actually that impressive. If I was to believe what I was being told, in the three conversations I was dealing with a whole twenty seven inches of penal matter. Seems that nine inches is the new standard. Things have certainly changed since my day and I have to tell you, it did kind of make me feel a little ashamed of my paltry two and half. But then I realised - they all believed me when I said I had 16DD boobs ("What are they like?" "Well, my dad likes them")... maybe, just maybe... THEY WEREN'T TELLING THE TRUTH.

LIARS? ON THE INTERNET? I DON'T BELIEVE IT.

So maybe vinnie_bruklyns_most_wanted wasn't actually the most wanted man in Brooklyn. I mean I kept asking him what his crimes were and he was just like 'not tellin u lol u sound like da police'. And maybe sexy_guy_hot4u didn't really like eating cats (well, that's what I thought he said). Once this horrible realisation crushed down upon me - that the people I was talking to weren't nubile young bodybuilders - to be honest I couldn't get into the cybersex. I mean, they tried. sexy_guy_hot4u informed me that his 'cock was wet'. vinnie_bruklyns_most_wanted told me all about his huge balls. And as for jamesuk, the things he wanted to do to me *blushes and fans self*.

But really, I just couldn't get into it because I kept imagining that they were a bunch of bespectacled thirteen year old virgins with braces and really skinny chests who wanted to be strong so they borrowed their father's weights set and did bench presses with 7.5kg on each side and then drank that bodybuilder protein mix and then flexed in front of the mirror for about twenty minutes every day before squeezing their spots and wiping the pus on the shaving mirror and then going to their rooms to download jerky jpgs of Gwen Stephani and cruise teenchat for pussy before going totally mental and playing three or four hours of Halo online under the username of 'darth sauron' and then getting really mad when their mums come in and tell them to go outside and then they go outside really moodily and they kick over a flowerpot then their mums shout at them so they go to their rooms and check eBay to see if they're still top bidder of that signed picture of Courtney Love and then going back on teenchat in the vain hope that somebody will agree to have phone sex but nobody's on so its back to the Gwen Stephani jpg search before going to bed at 9.30 because they have nothing else to fill their lives.

It's not as sexy when you think of it like that. But some of them are SO CONVINCING; like, I asked jamesuk if he had ever kissed a girl and he was like 'Yeah loads lol' so I asked him what the hell he was doing on teenchat at 340 in the afternoon and he was just like 'i'm bored of the girls i Know so i wanna meet nu ones'. That's pretty convincing and I found myself getting sucked back into the web of lies, so I made a picture which I have pinned to my wall to remind me NEVER TO TRUST PEOPLE I MEET ON THE INTERNET. I think that it sums up the issue pretty well:



Anyway. After a bit I got bored of them trying to persuade me to a: talk about my boobs, b: give them my phone number or c: stop talking about Chaucer's use of extended irony, so I told all of them that I was eight and closed the private chat windows. Back in the main room, Lady Japan was still talking about kimodos to herself. Emily - or shall I call her by her chatroom name, Kirsten - was also there, so we decided to pretend to be lesbians and talk about our boobs IN THE MAIN ROOM. I got kicked out literally five seconds later for saying 'My right boob has swelled up to about eight times its usual size, you really shouldn't have injected it with all that bacon grease' (it made sense). Apparently such behaviour isn't tolerated in the teenchat main forum. I GOT KICKED OUT OF TEENCHAT FOR BEING TOO SEXUALLY EXPLICIT.

That's how rock and roll I am, man.

I should have gone back in and talked to that pee and poo guy. I bet he'd have some interesting tales to tell.

Random Girl's Party (15th June 2007)

"So," I said, nervously eyeing the cleavage of the fat girl. "Am I actually legally allowed to be here? There must be some kind of law against this."

????

That's your hook. There you go. There are your unanswered questions. You have NO IDEA where I was, what I was doing looking at a fat girl's cleavage, and/or if it was illegal or not. Am I going to answer those questions now? NO. Not yet. You are now going to have to read the rest of this blog to find out. EXCITEMENT.

* * *

I should really be revising right now. I have an exam tomorrow at 9 and I won't lie, I do not know enough about Metternich. Or Bismarck. Or, indeed, the Schleswig-Holstein Affair or the Hohenzollen Candidature crisis. I should have worked harder today. I shouldn't have played Trauma Centre for about an hour and a half this morning. Those damn tumours refused to just heal. But oh well. I refuse to work any more. I'm done with dat shit innit. This is because I'm pretty sure that all the information is already in my brain and I'll just be able to unpick it somehow. I hope. It is also because, well, I'm such a young ambitious teenage rebel.

I think we all agree that I am pretty damn rebellious. I mean, I consider it to almost be my job to skate on the very edge of what is 'acceptable' and 'expected' of me as a cool young teenager. I mean, some may be happy to settle for mediocracy and average and niceness and vague dragging senses of melancholy, but not me. NOT ME MOTHERFUCKER. See I just used a swear word for no reason other than the fact that I could. Free speech is bloody great, isn't it?
Anyway, what with me being such a rebel and a new-wave supremo master of every teenage subculture, I realised that in the past week I have experienced - pretty much - the whole sex, drugs and rock'n'roll scene in one magnificent whirlwind of emotion and hot firey magic. Let's make a list:
Sex. Well, what more can I say other than I turned on the TV the other day and what did I see? Two people HAVING SEX. It was a documentary about the pornography film 'Deep Throat' and it cut away before any unpleasantness was revealed, but I definitely saw a decent 70-80 per cent side-boob and I reckon if I had freeze-framed, there might have been a brief frame of urethra in shot. And then it cut to a woman speaking and she totally had a good few inches of cleavage on display! It was wicked. Admittedly, most of the people featured in the porn are likely to be dead/wrinkly by now, but it still got me very hot and bothered. So that's sex covered.
Drugs? Well, the other day I had a headache from revising too hard so I took some neurofens. But I didn't take them with water - HELL NO - I dry-swallowed those badass mofos. Then to show how much contempt I had for the 'rules', I didn't even bother to put the little silver tab thing back in the box properly OH NO I JUST THREW THEM INTO THE DRAWER AND LOUCHELY SLAMMED IT WITH A CONTEMPTUOUS FLICK OF THE WRIST. And THEN did I go back and do some more German Nationalism revision? Did I fuck. So crazed was I on my ibruphrophen binge, I fucking went and played Resident Evil 4 for about forty-five minutes, going a whole QUARTER OF AN HOUR past the end of my scheduled break.
And as for rock 'n roll... well, I'm not as rockin' as my wicked-cool friend Steve who is going to see both THE STREETS and MUSE (yes, BOTH OF THEM) and will probably be so overcome by emotion (and cheap ecstacy bought from Scotsmen) that she just STARTS CRYING FOR NO REASON. BUT I'M STILL STRAIGHT UP HARDCORE ROCK AND ROLL INNIT BLUD. I mean, I have that guitar that I bought off eBay for £44 (plus p&p), and I'm totally going to start learning chords when my exams are over. And on Thursday I listened to "Smells Like Team Spirit" on my iPod and I worked out what one of the words in the middle verse bit was (it was 'mulatto').

So that's sex, drugs, and rock n roll covered. I have found those barriers, and I have pushed them. And I have stretched them. And I have broken them. And this naturally brings me to last Friday, when I GATECRASHED A PARTY.

That's right. There was a guestlist. There were bouncers. Was I on that guestlist? No I was not. Did the bouncers - one of them was seriously a hefty motherfucker - know who the hell I was? No they did not. But did I end up in the party? YES I DID.

I'll just give you a few seconds to let that settle in.

And now. I will set the scene.

Basically, I was at a mini gathering at Abby's house. Now the majority of the readers of this blog don't know who Abby and and to be honest it doesn't really matter, she isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. In fact, the only reason I am mentioning her at all is because she recently discovered this blog (come on, where has she BEEN for the past three years? The literary wastelands, I'd say) and was like "TOM CAN YOU MENTION ME PLEASE". And I'm far too nice to turn down the request of a lady. For the same reason, I will also now say that the following people were also there: Kersh (girl), Irving (girl), Snaithy (boy), Stocker (boy), Alex (boy), and my little brother. Yes I was at a gathering with my little brother. And in fact he was invited before I was, as Abby - who is my age - has a fetish for 15 year old boys. SHE SHOULD BE FUCKING LOCKED UP. But anyway, we were all sitting in Abby's garden eating burgers that my little brother had cooked on her barbequeue. Well, I say 'Eating', I mean, 'Not eating' as they were disgusting and some idiot (me) had decided to make them into delicious cheeseburgers by ripping apart a Babybel and seeing if it would melt if placed on the burgers.

Fun fact: it didn't.

We were trying to have a civilised conversation. I was attempting to wow people by playing 'Baby Elephant Walk' on my phone ringtone and doing a comedy dance routine in which all my movements were in synch to the bomp bomp sound effects. But it just wasn't happening. This was because of what was going on next door. Yes. That's right. A PARTY. And not just ANY party. A GARDEN PARTY. With lots of girls in skimpy bikinis! I knew this because Abby had a trampoline and if you jumped on it and launched yourself sideways you got a good second's viewing over the fence and there was definitely a girl in a bikini. I did it about eight times. It was jolly exciting.

The only bad thing about the party was the fact that they were playing music really loudly. And it wasn't like it was good music, it was, like, GWEN STEPHANI and THE KILLERS and the problem was that the guy who was meant to be DJing (aka the owner of the iPod) kept either skipping songs at random, or playing the same one over and over again. After a bit I came to the realisation that 'Pump It' by those Black Eyed Peas is not that great a song and that if I wanted to enjoy the rest of the evening I would have to totally go over there and sort it out. So I pretty much kicked down the fence, beat up all the bouncers and then picked up a passing guitar and played "Leaving on a Jetplane" (It only needs three chords!) for the rest of the evening until everyone shut up. Then I played "Baby Elephant Walk" on my phone really loudly and did my comedy dance routine and everyone applauded me and carried me aloft on their backs chanting my name.

Alright that didn't happen. Basically my little brother and Stocker and Alex decided that the time was ripe to break into the party. So they started fiddling with the fence until it turned out that all the panels were totally loose and thus it was possible to simply SLIDE THEM UP, Star-Trek-Stylee, and casually stroll in. This was an exciting development and after a bit we all kind of rolled in behind a bush, ninja style, and nonchalently wandered through the oblivious crowd of 15 year olds.

Yes that's right, FIFTEEN YEAR OLDS. Turns out it wasn't quite the hip-hoppin' rave that I thought it would be. It was a SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY. I was so unimpressed. And also confused - as an eighteen year old, was it legal or illegal for me to sneak a cheeky peek at the huge amounts of boobage on display? I decided to just keep my eyes to myself and press in closer between Kersh and Irving as we moved steadily through the crush, ignoring the cries of 'Who are you?' 'Who the fuck are they?' and 'I'm underage look at my boobs!' (I wasn't falling for THAT old trick, though) that came from all sides. Eventually we reached my brother and co, who were being chatted up by some girl who looked a bit like a broom with a wig. I was like dude wtf is it even legal for me to be here and he was like chillax bro have a beer and I was like omg stfu you n00b I'm driving home innit and he was like whatevs trevs.

A boy wearing a beady necklace walked past, glaring at me. I wanted to glare back but really I was too ashamed of myself. I started to re-evaluate my life. Here I was, an eighteen year old, at a birthday party for somebody I didn't know who wasn't even in the same year as me, watching my inebriated little brother being seduced by some broomwoman and another girl who had too much lip-flesh. 'Man', I though morosely. 'My life sucks. I am totally pathetic. I should be shot. Oh well, at least I'm not dead. Or Will Ferrier.' This thought cheered me up a bit. But suddenly, me and Alex were headlocked by some drunk fat fifteen year old who overflowed in all directions.
"I DON'T KNOW YOU BUT LET'S HAVE A PHOTO!" she gushed. I politely stabbed her in the chest with a wooden stake, cut off her head and filled her mouth with garlic but she didn't let go. So I tried to engage her in conversation instead.
"I don't know you either."
"WHY NOT!'
"I am not a fifteen year old and I wasn't invited to this party."
"OH!"
"So I don't know you."
"YESH!"
"I don't even like you that much. You look and smell weird. Leave me alone."
She laughed. It wasn't a joke.

About ten minutes later I had been involved in about ten photographs with various passing groups of girls. I don't think it was because I was particularly attractive or anything - although it has been scientifically proven that girls DIG my pale yellow self-sprayed Mickey Mouse tshirt - but more the fact that I was taller than them and not moving around. I was kind of like a landmark. Like a red phonebox in London. Something for them to cling onto. I like the idea that the next day, Facebook was filled with photographs of a load of happy smiling drunkards all clutched around a tall 18 year old with a yellow Mickey Mouse tshirt and a really angry frowny expression on his face. And all the guys will be like WHO THE FUCK IS THAT NEEGROW and I'll just be like not even tagged. It'll rule.

However, hardcore gatecrashing of parties is not all it is cracked up to be. Especially if you are an uninvited girl. Uninvited girls are generally hated. Like Irving was. Irving is blonde and she was sternly told off by a drunk girl. And as we all know, there is no sterner justice than angry-telling-off-by-a-drunk-teenage-girl justice. They just know how to cut into your soul with their 'I'm not angry, just disappointed' tone of voice and slightly doubled piercing gaze. Anyway, drunk girl rolled up to Irving and burbled scornfully: "Listen yeah? I don't know you but yet HERE YOU ARE drinking her parent's alcohol that like they probably paid a lot of money for and so yeah why don't you just leave yeah? Just go away nobody wants you. Innit."
Apparently, after being given this stern tongue-lashing, Irving turned to the girl next to her - thinking that it was Kersh - and said "Shall I fuck her up?" ironically. After she realised that it was just another random young'un, and at this point half the party was terrified of us/angry, we decided that it was time to go.

The important thing to do when leaving a party that you have gatecrashed is to look really confident. So, en masse, we bounced in time to the music back to the loose fence panel, shaking hands and patting people on the back. Then, slowly rocking back and forth in time to the music, I nonchalently slid up the fence panel and allowed the ladies to go first. This was not because I am a chivalrous person, but because I saw a huge snail on the fence and I wanted to stick it on Kershaw's back when she was bending to get under the fence. Which is what I did. She screamed and ran up the lawn hysterically. I laughed heartily. This is because I am, at heart, a three year old.

There was a flash of drama when I rolled under the fence. Firstly because I rolled into a patch of stinging nettles. Secondly because the fence panel fell on my leg and trapped it. I was like argh. Suddenly, I realised that in fact I wasn't leaving a PARTY but in fact a CANNIBAL ISLAND and as I lay there trapped there was a ravaging horde of angry cannibals running up the lawn trying to eat my face. Luckily I got my leg free just in time and ran away.

And THAT is the story of how I gatecrashed a 16 Year Old's Birthday party, in which the gatecrashing was done by somebody else and all of the exciting stuff pretty much happened to other people. The only thing that happened to me was that I got my photograph taken.

What an exciting life I lead.

Just call me Jimy Hendricks

I have wanted an electric guitar for about four years now. I don't know why. It isn't like I have a single musical bone in my body. Although, thinking about it I DID play the recorder for two years. Got to Grade 2 thankyouverymuch. There wasn't a finer player of 'Au Claire De La Lune' in all of Twickehnam. And then I played the clarinet for a bit... but we don't talk about that particular stage of my life. Let's just say, I was going through some dark times, it was generally a low patch, I turned to the clarinet for comfort and... well... things happened.

I don't even know what I'm talking about now. In recent posts I have been blogging like I have Alzheimers. Every two paragraphs I have to mentally climb out of my head, put on some big clompy boots, then kick myself in the back of my skull - thus re-BOOT-ing my brain (oh, ha-ha) and getting myself back on track. And in this case, the track is the hardcore chord track that I be layin' down with my new electric guitar.

Whoops, I skipped ahead a bit there. Basically - yes - I have wanted an electric guitar for a while. It's just something that appeals to me, like being able to bodypop or growing a moustache. Well, after certain events in my Lower 6th (fucking Asians with their powdered glass and their mocking laughter), the bodypopping is out of the question. For now. And if you have met me you will be well aware that I am simply incapable of growing proper facial hair. I have like two long black hairs on my chin and a load of blonde hairs that are invisible to the naked eye. Blonde hairs do not an impressive moustache make and so I have pretty much had to cross those two dreams off of the list of things to achieve. Luckily, though, getting an electric guitar does not require any particular level of dance skill or testosterone, and so that was definitely ON the list.

So I decided to myself 'I am definitely getting a guitar, and hell to all who oppose me'. This basically consisted of two people. The first was Rose, my little Jimmeny Cricket, who's dad MAKES guitars and who was basically 'Do you know anything thing about guitars, why you want one, or even the first thing of how to play it?'
My answer was a resounding snort of derision. Do I know anything about guitars? Do *I* know anything about guitars? Me, Thomas Phipps, with my two years of recorder training and all the practise I've had on my baby cousin's brightly coloured plastic guitar that has all the buttons that you press and it makes farmyard noises? The way she asked me implied that she thought my knowledge of chord progressions, seventh barre scales, chops, licks, hammering, harmonics, tuning, strings, tremolo bars, artificial dead string or arpeggios was somewhat lacking. To answer her question, I simply laughed heartily and clapped her on the back. Metaphorically.
"Oh Rose, you do make me laugh! And as far as I can tell, it's all pretty simple... you just plug it into the amplification bellows, put your 50p into the slot, then you press one of the sound-strings and to the best of my knowledge that makes it play the solo of Sweet Child of Mine. Or a sheep."
That shut HER up.
The other person who was offended at my attempts to enter the musical spectrum was my good friend Steve. Don't let the name fool you - Steve is not a boy. She's a girl. I think. Well, biologically she is, but you wouldn't know by looking at her. I swear she has more facial hair than me. And the boobs are about comprable. Anyway, Steve is quite the new romantic arteest. I would describe everything about her as either post-ironic or quasi. She goes to the beach and watches the sunset and writes bad poetry about it. She likes to go raving and take ecstasy and then cry on the train home just because life is so... damn... beautiful. She then goes on the Stanley Kubrick group on Facebook and types clever messages like "The man was an innovative genius". Her interests include "pursuing the absolute heart of the poem of life". She once read a poem by Ginsberg. I think that she thinks that anybody who cannot flawlessly quote reams of poetry is a philistine. She also plays the guitar so I made the mistake of asking her for advice - "Which type of guitar is better, red or black?"
She was actually offended that I'd decided to get a guitar. I think her exact words were "YOU ARE JUST LIKE ANOTHER NU-COOL WANNABE WHO ONLY WANTS A GUITAR TO PULL THE BRAINLESS BIMBOS THAT YOU GET INTO YOUR BEDROOM!"
That kind of offended me. Firstly, because... nu-cool wannabe? From somebody who lists "psy-rock" and "psy-trance" amongst their favourite music genres? Secondly... if there's any brainless bimbos in my bedroom, I won't be needin' no guitar to be pullin' them. They don't call me 'Fifteen Second Phipps' for nothing.

NB: The 'fifteen second' is the time between me meeting the girl and me getting off with her. It does not refer to anything else.
NB: Nobody has ever called me that.
NB: It's not a nickname that really sums me up, to be honest.
NB: Hey guys, everyone's calling me 'Fifteen Second Phipps' from now on! Pass it on.

Thirdly, I feel that somebody who is meant to be such a free spirit should not be trying to cut down my talent in the prime of its life. Imagine if someone had told the young Leonardo Da Vinci "That's rubbish, that"; do you think he ever would have achieved greatness? NO. THAT IS THE ANSWER. So, in mocking my burgeoning talent, Steve is essentially breaking the young Leonardo Da Vinci's paintbrushes and stealing Richard Ashford's lunch money that he was saving up to buy a guitar and not letting Lassie go to rescue-dog school. But did that thought deter Steve? No it did not. She then proceeded to confirm that I know nothing about music. She asked me if I knew who Bob Dylan was. I said 'Who?' She said, had I heard of Jimmy Hendrix or Bob Marley. I thought that they were the same person. I actually did. Well, to be honest how many Jamaican singers do we NEED? Seems like we're doubling up on a lot of them. I bet they were pretty samey. She then confidently told me that I'd get bored of it in a week. Yeah well. I GOT BORED OF HER FACE IN A WEEK.

Anyway so I then thought of what guitar I was going to buy. There were so many options, there were Les Pauls and Fenders and Stratocastsers, basses and electrics and classicals and multiple pickups and nylon and steel and second hand and autographed and jazz and blues. After a lot of deliberation, I finally decided on the model I wanted: Cheap. I'd already figured that the height of my guitar career was likely to be me sitting on a mattress on the floor twanging it to the beat of a hippy playing one drum. I certainly wasn't blowing 300 of my hard-woogas on some twanger. I figured fuck it and bought a cheapo one off eBay. This was pretty exciting as it was my first eBay purchase ever. It became even more exciting when I realised that I had bid on a guitar with only twenty minutes left on the clock, and I hadn't bothered to set up PayPal or even find my credit card yet, so there was a mad panic when I thought that I'd be jailed for bidding on an eBay guitar with no financial backup. Fortunately my total lack of knowledge didn't appear to matter, as what did my feedback for the sale say? "Quick response and fast payment. Perfect! THANKS!!" Check it out, "pemburytrading" digs me. I got TWO count em TWO exclamation marks. WHOOP. I especially like the way that the feedbacker yelled the word THANKS. Like it was only at that point that he had realised just what a GREAT ebayer I was and just had to shout about it to the entire world.
After a long and nail-biting wait, my guitar arrived. It came in a box packaged with an amp. The box had a picture of some flames and a guy playing the guitar and shooting waves of pure concentrated cool onto an audience. I was like woah so I excitedly got it out of the box.

There were lots of things attached, including wires and springs. I plugged it in, then searched vainly for the slot in which to insert the money, or - indeed - the cranking lever at the back to wind up the bellows. There was nothing. There wasn't even an activation switch. I was somewhat annoyed as this meant that either my understanding of how a guitar worked was severely flawed, or they had simply not come included. Fortunately I looked it up on the internet and it turns out that this particular make of guitar was neither steam nor kinetic powered, so that was a relief.

After about a day of casually twanging wires at random, singing a song that I'd made up called 'Look At Me I'm Playing the Guitar and Twanging the Strings Oh Yeah (acoustic mix)', I decided to learn how actually to play it. I allocated an hour, after which I was going to put my name in NME and book myself into a tour of Europe with my new band, 'Just Thomas'. It's like Just Jack, except in this case, the name is more literal. There was some stuff about tuning it at the beginning. I couldn't find a 'tune' button on the bodywork so I just figured - hey, it's making a sound, I'm musically deaf, who cares if its tuned or not - then turned to page one of the internet site. "Playing Scales". Scales? Scales are for girls who play the clarinet, not wicked hard awesome legends like me. I laugh at your scales! So I thought fuck this then skipped at random to about lesson seven. This is the sight that greeted my eyes:



I was like wtf. Guitar sucks.

After some more excitement, I read another lesson. After a bit of practise, I have now learnt some chords. For those not possessing the same musical talent as me, chords are like small groups of notes that when played together buzz and go mute. The chords I know are G Major, C Major and D Major. Interestingly, every time I play them they sound different. I also am unable to switch from one chord to another without stopping, looking up the chord in the book, slowly changing fingers one by one, then twanging again. This makes me playing "Leaving on a Jetplane" a long and tbh arduous affair. It basically sounds like I am anally raping John Denver's mushy corpse. After about a week of this I figured that the noises I get basically sounds a bit like a guitar, so I can get away with just playing G major over and over again and singing tunefully over the top. So for about five minutes the other day I sang Wonderwall in G Major, just strumming in time. What's good is the fact that my fingers aren't exactly adept at staying in place so every time I strum it sounds a bit different. It didn't sound GREAT tbh. But then I reckon that Leonardo's first stick figures were a bit shit.

However, I persevered and every day I learn a new and exciting skill on the guitar. For example, today I figured out how to attach the strap. Then, as my mother had gone out, I wandered around the house in just my underwear and my Hampton Boat Club hat chasing my dog and madly playing C Major over and over again. The dog got so stressed that she ran into a door.

My mother was out buying my little brother - who is 16 - his birthday present. It was a skateboard. I am so totally gonna steal it so then I can continue my mission of annexing, lameifying and belittling every single teenage sub-culture that I have missed out on during my formative years. I have already ruined rave music, spray-painting, hoodies and the guitar for my siblings. I'm working on clubbing: "IT'S JOLLY LOUD IN HERE, AND WHY ARE THESE GIRLS RUBBING THEMSELVES AGAINST ME? THIS SUCKS." I reckon that pretty soon I'll move onto piercings, drugs, and 'rap music'.

ROCK AND RAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWL *Does rock and roll fingers*

I reckon that there are probably really good guitarists out there who are reading this post and getting actually angry about the fact that I own a guitar. Me owning any sort of musical instrument is giving a hungry korean guy a new puppy. They're most likely thinking 'There's probably a nice Mexican boy out there who would really LOVE a new electric guitar and who would really put some effort into learning it and getting good, while here you are just not even bothering and frankly taking the piss.' NOT TRUE. If I was taking the piss, would I have thrown a stapler at my little brother when he tried to pick it up and made a little dent below one of the pickups? I'm not taking the piss. I'm just uncaring.

Ben's Party (2nd June 2006)

This is not a post about the party that my Ben threw for his birthday - THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT TO THIS STORY. In fact forget about it. Things happened. Some hearts were broken, some allegiances formed, some tears shed, family albums were looked at and tiny penises admired, some conversations had, some gastric juices expunged and some awkward flirting done. That is all taken for granted. It's all you need to know. What is important in this case is the state I was in at about ten past midnight; everyone else was leaving in their taxis and cars or feet. The music was being turned down. A cat was asleep on the floor. I was swaying unsteadily, pretty much rat-arsed, staring with bloodshot unfocussed eyes on the two wheeled contraption that sat in front of me.

"Oh, you knob," I said, rocking quietly from side to side to the baseline of Ben's remix of Bound 2 Da Reload/Sandstorm. I looked about, then gave my bike a little kick just to make sure that it still worked. It fell over. I sighed. Then I did that little drunk dance that you do when you think that nobody is watching - you know, the one when you kind of bob from foot to foot on semi-tiptoes with your arms in a little spazmoidy flipper mode, weaving a bit and trying not to spill your beer down your leg again. Yeah, that dance. Eventually I figured that there was no way that I was going to get out of this, so I unsteadily picked up the bike, swung one leg over the saddle, then overbalanced and tipped sideways onto a wall. Fortunately, I didn't fall all the way over as the wall was in the way so for a few seconds I perched there, both feet on the pedals, my head pressed against the wall at a 45 degree angle, staring intently ahead. I looked like a lean-to. It was a pretty religious experience. A blonde girl walked past me. She looked at me. I looked back. She nodded. I nodded back and fell the rest of the way over. Ohhh dear, I thought. That was certainly not intentional. I quickly got back up - although to be honest there is no smooth way to do that - but the girl Had Gone.

I sighed. Then I realised that I was in no real state to cycle home in the dark. I then realised that I had not turned on either of the lights on the bike. I switched on the front one. It was out of batteries. I switched on the back one. It was out of batteries. Oh, that's a shame, I thought. I put on my helmet. Well, I say 'put on my helmet', I actually meant 'Scratched my head and wondered why I hadn't brought a helmet, working bike lights, or even bright coloured clothes'. However. To cut a long story short about five minutes later I was pedalling down the road from Ben's house as fast as my fat little legs could carry me. This is the story about some things that happened to me on my ride home.

Night cycling. Is anyone getting a sense of deja vu? Oh yeah. I know that I have blogged about this before, but, well, life is circular. The more you spin it, the quicker you get back to where you started. Kind of like the wheel... of a bicycle (that is a good link that would probably get me a few points in my synoptic literature exam). But all of the great masters had to repeat work. Cezanne painted the same apple every five years. Damien Hirst is back to slicing animals in two. Even the musical group 'The Automatic' have released the same basic song three times in a row under different names. Now I am not trying to compare myself to 'The Automatic'; heaven forbid. However I still feel that there is an untapped reserve of material to discuss when talking about cycling home in the dark from a party.

Especially as this time I was drunk! That's the key difference here.

Is cycling drunk illegal? I hope not or else I broke the law. Actually at the party I asked this of some guy who had been in my yeargroup for the past five years but who I had not spoken to ever. His response was "Yes. It is illegal. And if you crash into a car you get turned jewish." At the time he was drinking two beers and a bottle of wine so I do not know how accurate this information was, but wouldn't it be excellent if it was true! Just like some really obscure by-law from Disraeli's Ministry (1874-1880, fact fans THAT'S RIGHT I'VE BEEN REVISING HISTORY). Kind of like that law in that town in Scotland that says it's ok to shoot a Welshman, as long as it it is done on the third Monday of the month with a bow and arrow from the town clocktower. I would love to get pulled over by a policeman who breathalises me, then reads out from his little book "Any man found pedalling a bicycle drunk shall henceforth be converted to Judaism... sorry, sonny, I'm gonna have to take that foreskin".

SORRY this isn't relevent to the story in hand which was what I did when I was drunk cycling home.

It is fascinating the ideas that come to you when you are drunk. For example, making a mixture of biscuits and wine called wiscuitbine (not delicious). Or telling the scary mother of my friend that her sweater looked "Like vomit... seriously, I don't want to be rude, but VOMIT... sick..." [apparently]. Or wearing a top hat and thinking that it looks good. One girl at this party told me that the previous night she and her friend had gotten wasted and then decided to have a three-legged race, and then they'd fallen over and she had nearly broken her nose. At the time, I am sure that it made perfect sense. That's the kind of gold I'm talking about here. So the situation while cycling was that I was obviously wasted, wearing no safety gear, on a bike which was missing a pedal and couldn't switch gears and had questionable braking skills, on a road with very little lighting and lots of drivers who were probably as drunk as I was.

So basically I decided to phone my friend Rose. Now this may not sound crazy, but consider the fact that I'm not great on the phone at the best of times and it basically requires my total concentration to stay on top of the conversation. Also consider the fact that it meant that I lost an all-important hand. Thirdly, consider the fact that I have never ever phoned up anybody out of the blue ever. EVAR. So basically the conversation went along these lines.

ME: HI ROSE.
Rose: What.
ME: I'M CYCLING DRUNK
ROSE: Good.
ME: HOW ARE YOU? WHAT'S GOING ON WITH ROSE?
ROSE: Revising.
ME: HEY CHECK IT OUT NO HA-
ROSE: ??
ME: NO HANDS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA
ROSE: Oh. Well.
ME: HOLY SHIT A LORRY!!!
ROSE: :o

It continued like that. I think I was quite an irritating person to have a phone conversation with. Especially as my phone arms kept getting tired so every two minutes I'd have to put the phone in my mouth and then swap. I also gave a running commentary on every random thing that happened, including bumps in the road, the lack of light, and the license plates of most cars that drove past. It was pretty good. For me. I mean, Rose was not sleeping to hear this shit so I guess that she didn't enjoy it much. But I have been pretty much abusing Rose for the past five months and I see no reason to stop now.
I think I phoned Rose because I was a lonely bean and so wanted someone to talk to on the way back; I mean I was fully expecting my cycle back home in the dark to be a solitary persuit. However, I was amazed to find myself joined by a FELLOW NIGHT CYCLIST on the way back. He suddenly pulled out into the road while I was cycling along and kind of weaved back and forth madly. "Ding-dong," I thought, "Here comes trouble."
It was an indian-looking man wearing overalls. I am just describing what he looked like. He was on a bike. However he did not have a turban on. If he had, I would have been able to break out the joke that I made up the other day. Fuck it I am saying it anyway it's been built up enough. Right.

What do you call a guy with a turban on a bike?
A SIKH - LIST!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!1!!!!!!

!!!!

The other biker was annoyingly cycling along at such a pace as was not fast enough to move away from me, but not slow enough that I could overtake his ass and speed my way home. To be honest it felt like he was listening in on my phone call. He wouldn't have gotten much out of it.

My side: "Tell me a joke... A physics joke? OK!... I don't know, please tell me the answer... What's an elepton?.... Well if you knew I didn't do physics and was unlikely to get the reference WHY DID YOU TELL ME THAT JOKE?"

Eventually I got bored of him and so quickly did a smooth little overtake and sped away, still talking on the phone. However, about a minute later I was surprised to see him overtake me back. He didn't look at me or talk to me or even make any reference of having seen me at all, but good God that gauntlet was down and I was in no mood (AKA sober enough) to resist a drag racing challenge set by some little indian fellow. So I overtook him, still chatting blithely to Rose. He overtook me again. Then, he TOOK OUT HIS MOBILE PHONE, and HELD IT TO HIS EAR as though PRETENDING to have a conversation with somebody. He didn't say anything, he just kept the handset lit up so that it was obvious that I could see. He kept making surreptitious little glances behind his back to make sure that I could see. I swapped ears. He swapped ears. I started laughing, he turned round and pedalled away.

I overtook him again but he wasn't having any of it and so finally we reached the t-junction. He went left, I went right. Never were we two to meet again, but maybe... I hope to see him again, some darkened night, with the wind whistling through my hair and the thrill of the cold night racing through my veins, for another race, a race to end all races, a true proclamation of our right to be alive, to be free, to cycle with no lights through darkened streets, to tame the devil and ride him all the way to pandemonium and back, to couple hell, stiffen up the limbs, proclaim the aspect of the tiger and let our thoughts be bloody or nothing worth!

When I arrived at my house I hit the brakes too hard and I fell off and smooshed my goolies on the crossbar.

Blogging, eh?

I am an impotent blogger. I can no longer blog properly. I mean, I never thought this would happen to me. It has happened every now and again and it does happen to every guy and I know that it really isn't a big deal, but my god I feel emasculated. I can no longer get the blogging boner like I used to.
It used to be that I'd be constantly up for a bit of blog love. Day or night, 24/7, the computer would whisper so sweetly to me. "Tom, come and let us make sweet blogging love." And I'd be right in there, blogging away about things that have happened in my life or what I thought about stuff or weird little rants or anything that came into my head.

And now I am gone. The cupboard is bare. The bunker is abandoned and the violinists have gone home. This is a sad sad day as I still have SO MUCH TO OFFER THE WORLD. And I do still have amusing thoughts about things. And I still have as many zany adventures as I always have had. For example, the other day, I decided to make myself some scrambled eggs as I had learnt to do so the previous day and was basically looking for any excuse to eat some eggs. However, WE HAD RUN OUT OF EGGS so I went to the shop to buy some. I paid the money but only on the way back opened the carton and THREE OF THE EGGS WERE BROKEN IN THE PACKAGING. Disaster! I had half a mind to turn back and write a letter of complaint to the indian fellow who sold them to me but at that point I was halfway home and I had walked to the shop wearing pyjama bottoms and slippers. I probably deserved it. But then I still had enough to make scrambled eggs. The secret is to put little cubes of butter inside the egg mixture. So that was a pretty hardcore day. What else have I been up to? OH I KNOW. I got told off at school! That's a pretty exciting story which oughta fill a few inches of blog column until its time for me to go home.

My school ended last Friday. FOR GOOD. That's right. FOR GOOD. I am no longer a schoolboy. I am a school... man. It's true, you know. I have grown a few hairs on my chin and have purchased a wifebeater. I still however have no hair on my upper thighs. Smooth. I like the eunuch look, though. I'll give me an advantage the next time that my fellow schoolchums and I have to swim across a muddy crocodile infested river to get to a watering-hole. Remember, you don't have to be the fastest to escape the crocodiles, you just have to be faster than the slowest. Who I reckon will be a fat hairy kid.

So, what are my reactions to my days at school ending? Am I distressed? Angry? Hurt? Nostalgic? Any of these things? To be honest... no. Not even in the slightest. I have no opinion whatsoever for or against my school. I went, I made literally no impact, it made very little impact on me, I finished, I'm leaving. I can barely remember the middle two years and I spent pretty much the entire 6th Form being apathetic. Language. Meh. Literature. Meh. History. Mehmehmeh. Meh is the word. I have been pretty much itching to get out of this place for the last year and a half.

So the end of school really isn't that much of a big deal for me. However, I have found it pretty interesting on an anthropological basis, as like a microcosmic example of what would happen to society if suddenly there was a zombie plague or apocalypse or something that caused all systems of rules or regulations to break down. A really SMALL microcosm, to be fair. But still a microcosm.

Microcosm microcosm microcosm.

Because, in the past few weeks, the entire Upper 6th form has realised that the system of rules and regulations that previously held us so rigorously within the boundaries of 'acceptable behaviour' will soon simply cease to exist. THE TIES ARE BROKEN. We are being cut loose! We see that the walls are crumbling. And thus a slow process of boring them down has begun. First of all, standards of dress slipped - regulation jackets were abandoned, ties were fogotten or replaced with funky brown 'East Berlin Rationer' models, and pretty soon people just started showing up in tshirts with hastily added jackets. That was if they showed up at all. Those glorious days of whole classes showing up to lessons or teachers even giving a shit are long gone.
It's now a case of "So, only two people today? Where's John?"
*John walks past the open door to the classroom, blithely looks in, then scurries off*
"Bye John!"
And in those lessons in which people are present, everything has been taught. Education has ground to a humiliating halt. It has degenerated into either an angry question and answer between pupil or teacher, or a 'Oh, fuck it, let's talk about the football/fitness of the new RS Assistant/the class Asian who can't really understand English that well' kind of thing. For the past fortnight, one class has simply been the teacher insulting our educational potential and actively mocking us.
"Sir, I'm not quite getting the syllabus for 2704... do you have to include lexis?"
"Seriously, where have you been for the past year? Fucking retard."
As for work... nah. Work stopped. People just starting to point blank refuse to do it. Teachers would ask for essays for homework and it would just be a case of "... nah, didn't do it." I quite like the way that we started to decide what work would be useful for us to do or not. We have finally taken our destinies into our own hands. This is worrying, however, as we have all decided that we are already perfect and thus need to do no more. I pretty much figured "I'll do it in revision time". Hasn't happened. Has. Not. Happened. I have not picked up a book to start revision yet. Or done a piece of homework for a week and a half. I kind of wish we'd just been on study leave like EVERY OTHER SCHOOL IN LONDON. At least then I would have done some work. But as it is... nah.

The majority of the teachers get it. They get that things are breaking down. They get that we are now above the law. They get this, and so they make concessions. They don't bother us with petty crap like doing up top buttons or tucking in shirts. It is just pointless, we have like ten minutes left in the school and then we fuck off on revision leave. They don't try to force us to work, they just feed us cake and play Articulate and bitch about their fellow co-workers. It is a good system. It keeps us from being rowdy. There's a delicate balance, but we just manage to keep things in check.

However, there are still some teachers who don't get that things have ended. There are those who still try to cling to those outmoded and outdated systems of law and order, the particularists who try to preserve their ancient powers of control and deception. They are like traffic wardens giving parking tickets in Hiroshima. They are rearranging the cutlery on the Titanic. They are ordering shiny shoes in Vietnam. They can't see that the Empire is crumbling. The classroms are standing tenantless and the sheeted pupils are squeaking and gibbering in the school corridors. They can't see that it's all coming down and the best they can try to do is ride the wave and survive for another year.

These teachers are knobs.

You know I said that I didn't really like my school? I don't. I have been trying to bring it down from the inside for about three years now. I have waged a war of resistance against 'them' - you know - the man and authority and the system and all that. However, when it comes to Edu-Terrorism, I am pretty pathetic. I don't even really want to be a nuisance. And so my resistance has personified itself in a series of pointless and insignificant and petty rebellions that even in the small picture mean nothing. For example. Last year I made loads of little men out of wire and scattered them liberally around the school. There was a week when you couldn't go anywhere without seeing a cheeky little wire man perched on a window-sill or sitting in a flowerpot or waving merrily out of one of the wanky pieces of sculpture that the Upper-6th artists had produced. What was especially fun was when I saw a wire man peeking out of a place that I hadn't originally left it. Unfortunately, the art department ran out of sculptor's wire (possibly because of my massive production line of wire men) and so THAT little covert resistance had to end. I wonder if there are still any wire men hangin' about in school now? That would be an interesting experiment, to check and see.

... actually, on second thought, it wouldn't.

My latest cunning scheme is just to switch off all of the lights I come across. There are so many lights left pointlessly on in our school; lights that do nothing and make no difference to the ambient light levels. It's my opinion, if you can see well enough with the lights off, then turn them fucking off.
I would like to say that this is some drive towards ecology and retention of electricity, but to be honest I do not give a flying fuck about the environment. Our school prides itself on being Carbon Neutral but seriously, don't get me started on that. What a wank idea.

So anyway there's this lightbulb on the landing below the English staircase and it is literally the most pointless shit ever. It is next to a window and thus the entire corridor is always lit up. However even if it wasn't, it lights up a corner section of the corridor. It is between two corridors that DO need to be properly lit up and so are. It is a three metre square hunk of barren landscape. There is NOTHING to trip up on. Only a total fucking retard would injure himself in this area of carpet and to be honest if you need a lightbulb to teach you not to trip over your own feet, should you really be allowed in our school without a team of small indian boys carrying you about? Or a leash?

So yes. I have been busily breaking down the system and turning off that light every time I pass it, which is about three times a day. And every time I return, somebody has been switching it back on again. It is like my nemesis, some shadowy (or the opposite, as the case may be) figure who sits in the background and constantly foils my attempts to have the corridor below the English offices half a shade darker.

Well. On Wednesday, we met. I was heading to the common room and I just did the usual thing of turnin' down the beatz, and as I was walking away, relishing the thrill of my crime, I heard a voice.

COME BACK HERE is what the voice said. So I naturally turned and for the first time faced my foe. And in that instant, everything made sense. He was some fucking Twat DT Teacher. Let's not get into my opinons of Design Technology as a subject (it isn't one). At best, it's a hobby for virgins. And I could tell, just by looking at this guy's super-lame tie and his too-tight trousers and his instantly forgettable glasses and his dumb shiny shoes that he was the very definition of an angry little virgin. Oh dear mate, no girls like you? THAT'S BECAUSE YOU ARE A KNOB DT TEACHER. Get a proper job. Teach a proper subject. Even economics would do. I was like grr wtf so I strolled up and gave him a look of such whithering contempt that I bet he probably thought to himself "Oh shit, this guy appears to be an English Student... all I know about is LEDs and wood. I'm out of my depth here... WHAT HAPPENS IF HE ASKS ME A QUESTION THAT CAN'T BE ANSWERED WITH A CIRCUIT DIAGRAM?"

However, I think he then realised the flipside of the equasion, which was "Well, I'm wearing a tie and shiny shoes and I am still technically a teacher so I can be as officious as I like."

"Turn on the light and explain why you switched it off," he said firmly. I turned on the light. The ambient light levels in the corridor were raised about half a degree. A moth that was flying by moved half an inch towards the ceiling then quietly said 'Fuck this' and flapped morosely away.
"I don't think it needs to be switched on."
This sort of flustered him. He mumbled something, then concluded his speech with "... and if anybody injures themselves in here because the light is switched off and I know that it's you whose done it, I'll have you."
I swear he must have been about an inch off of doing that thing when you point to your eyes then point back at the person. I think he was aiming for a kind of John Wayne "I'm the law around these parts, sonny" dangerous cool, but to be honest the effect was kind of debased by the fact that he was talking SWITCHING OFF THE WORLD'S MOST POINTLESS LIGHTBULB.

I kind of shrugged in an ice cool 'Do I give a damn' kind of way then I walked off. Suddenly there was a cracking sound behind me. I span and saw an electric cable come loose from the wall. It sparked and fizzed and then I realised that a small child was about to STEP ON IT. Fortunately, with the illumination from the light which the teacher had switched back on, the child saw it and managed to leap over it. 'Oh thank you Sir' said the boy 'You turned on that light and saved my life from the cable which was absolutely invisible to the naked eye in the daylight streaming through this window! You are a true hero!'
'Don't thank me', said the teacher 'Thank THE LIGHT'. And then a gang of 11 year olds carried him cheering down the corridor. He got a promotion and a medal and was regaled as a hero in the press. And then a week later, he finally had his first kiss.

No, wait, sorry, none of that happened. BECAUSE THE LIGHT DID NOT NEED TO BE TURNED ON. Knobhead.

Two days later I saw him skulking, lizardlike, along the art corridor - a place where HE HAD NO RIGHT TO BE - switching on all the lights. Seriously. Maybe lightbulbs are his thing. Other teachers concentrate on tucking in shirts or doing up top buttons or, you know, teaching pupils useful subjects in an inspiring way that will help them further on in their lives. But ol'Mr Twat DT likes to make sure that we're getting our money's worth from the school's lightbulb budget.

I am so glad that I don't go to that school any more.