So far, the flock for the First Birder Blogging Conference at the Cape May, NJ, Autumn Weekend (October 26-27-28, 2007) includes:
Mary at Mary's View
Lynne at Hasty Brook
Laura at Somewhere in New Jersey
Susan at Susan Gets Native
Birdchick at Birdchick.com
and me!
This will be my second birding festival, and I'm totally pumped! Join us!
For more info, click here!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The younger me was a weird kid
While randomly going through old files on my computer, I found a load of short (very short) stories that I wrote when I was about 15. They tickled me so much that I decided AGAINST writing the long complicated blog that I definitely would have written, and have instead decided to copy/paste some of these stories instead. Enjoy.
Dinner at La Madame
Frederick wiped his lips delicately with a napkin and glanced out of the window for the fifth time that evening.
“I’m going to help him,” he said resolutely, and took another sip of wine. (Chateu De Gauche ’49, an excellent year). Franz, sitting at the other side of the table, sighed and dipped a piece of bread into his stew.
“Fabian, stop being such a saint! Why bother? There are plenty of homeless people on the street. There’s lots of stew, old boy, just settle down and have another ladleful. Fabian! Another portion for Mr Hopkins here!”
The waiter sidled up and heaped another serving of stew onto Frederick’s plate. That was all that La Madame served; the stew. But what a stew it was! Although, at €1499 a pot, it was certainly pricy. Worth it, though. It was probably the only joint in Paris that served stew of this quality.
Frederick looked out the window again at the tramp sitting in the snow. Covered in newspapers, freezing, shivering, he was a pitiful sight. His heart bled for him.
“I’m sure that somebody should go and get him,” he murmured. “It doesn’t seem right to just leave him to die in the road. It’s… a waste.” He stood up, smoothed his designer trousers, put on his designer hat, picked up his designer cane, and slipped into his designer jacket. “I’m going to get him, bring him in.” He picked up a glass of wine as he got up. And some bread.
“Don’t bother!” sighed Franz whistfully, although he knew it was a lost cause. Frederick was always picking people up from the street; bums, the unemployed, lost children, and taking them home for dinner. It was probably why he enjoyed La Madame so much; it catered only for the rich, the charitable, those who could afford to look after the poor for a few months, feed them, put some meat on their bones. Very exclusive.
Frederick pushed open the heavy iron door of the restaurant, to the amusement of the other two diners, and wandered out into the dark, freezing, abandoned street. Franz watched idly, chewing on a lump of meat, as he crossed the road over to where the man was lying. He reached him, talked to him, gave him some wine. The bread. A little money. A cigarette. A crack on the head with his cane.
The tramp slumped over without a fight. There was a little applause from the diners, and waiter sprinted across the road to help Frederick carry him back into the restaurant. Carefully, like you would with a big piece of meat.
“Phew! A bit smelly, isn’t it?” said Franz jokingly.
“It will be deliceuse with a petite vin rouge, Monsieur!” called the waiter as they carried him into the kitchen.
A few seconds later, Frederick re-appeared, wiping his hands with a napkin.
“Well, that’s dinner for tomorrow sorted, then,” he said, and ate another forkful of stew.
The End
Over the years I must have written about 4 stories about cannibalistic restaurants. They always amuse me.
The Rat
“Honey, I’m home!” called George in his 1950’s American sitcommy way. Silence. The house was dark. Empty. Frowning, he put down his briefcase, hung up his hat, and strolled down the hall.
“Honey?”
Silence.
“Where’s my dinner?” George was a modern man; he allowed his wife independence, just so long as his steak was on the table when he got home. He sauntered past the thick wooden pantry door, and into the kitchen. If Mary were anywhere, she’d be in here.
She was. And she was crying; her mascara was running down her face. She ran to him with a cry.
“Oh, George!” He put his manly arms around her and sniffed.
“Honey, what’s wrong? I don’t smell anything cooking. What’s for dinner?”
“George!”
“What?”
“I can’t… I can’t get into the pantry. I locked it in there.”
“What?”
“The RAT! There was a rat! It was huge!”
George laughed in his manly way. Women! Can’t live with ‘em, can’t eat without ‘em.
“Deary me. A rat, eh?”
“A huge one!” Mary burst into tears. “I came back from the market, and it was in the pantry! I saw it and I locked the door before it could escape. Now I’m too scared to go in.”
“Why? It’s just a little rat.” He disentangled himself and walked over to the pantry door. He reached for the handle. Mary threw herself in front of him.
“No! George! It wasn’t a little rat! It was huge! I swear it nearly battered down the door! It’ll kill you!” She screamed hysterically.
George slapped her. She stopped.
“Don’t be stupid, woman. It’s a rat. I’m bigger than any rat, and I’m hungry. So I’m going to go in there and kill it.”
He thought for a moment.
“Fetch my gun.”
Meekly, Mary obeyed. George stroked the barrel lovingly.
"Now, don’t be afraid if you hear any loud noises. It will probably be the gun going off. I’m going to shoot that mean old rat and you can make me my dinner. Alright?”
“Yes, George. Be careful. It’s huge!”
“Mary, don’t be silly. Go upstairs and darn my socks, or something. The nightmare will be over soon.”
“It’s huge!”
“Mary.”
She obediently went. Right, now for the rat.
Bravely, he kicked open the door and ran in, waving his weapon. The door swung shut behind him. The rat was sitting on a stool, eating a potato. Mary had been right. It was HUGE! In fact, it was nine feet tall, looked to weigh about fifteen stone, heavily muscular, wearing an eye patch, and smoking a cigar. It fixed George with its one beady eye and growled menacingly.
Panting with fear, George raised his gun. He fumbled with the safety catch. The rat slowly reached forward and plucked it out of his hand with one scabrous paw. George squealed and ran for the door.
Mary heard the gunshot. She smiled. George was so brave! How silly she was, being scared of a rat! Although, it HAD been rather big…
The End
Beats me.
The Park
The paeophile and the child stared at the corpse of the mother. She was as dead as a doorbell – but you couldn’t tell. She could have been sleeping. The child looked at the corpse with emotionless eyes. The paedophile at the child and licked his lips. It was a good job he didn’t know what had just happened; the truth would have scared him off.
“So,” whispered the paedophile, “That your mummy?”
The child stared at him. Nothing. The paedophile coughed out a lump of brown phlegm and withdrew a bag from his anorak pocket.
“D’ya want some sweeties? I’ve more sweeties in my car if you wanna follow me.” He was anxious to get out of here. His mind flashed to the newspaper headlines. CANNIBAL MURDERS IN LONDON – MADMAN ON THE LOOSE. With all those grisly child murders in the area, the police were extra vigilant. Wouldn’t do to have a copper wandering past and looking too carefully at what was going on. The park was abandoned (nobody went out with kids with a cannibal-murderer on the loose), but you never knew.
The child took a sweet and popped it into his mouth. Chewed. Spat it out and tugged slowly at the corpse on the bench. Hurredly, the paedophile pulled his hand away, enclosed it in his own.
“Heh-heh,” he muttered in his paedophilic way, “Let’s not… wake… mummy, shall we? Let’s go for a walk.”
The child looked at the mother on the bench longingly, but was pulled away.
“Lets go to my car. I have nice sweets there.”
The child followed silently, unwillingly. He hadn’t seen (he was in the playground at the time) the sudden, brutal attack. The woman hadn’t had time to scream, to call for help, to warn. Nobody had seen what’d happened. Well, he had to forfill his urges, didn't he? The paedophile scratched at his acne-covered skin and glanced around. Why was he so nervous this time? This kid wasn’t the first and probably wouldn’t be the last. Anyway, he’d already gone way too far, he couldn’t go back. The mother wasn’t gonna be getting up from that bench any time soon. Still, leaving her there… seemed a little risky.
A newspaper blew past. He just caught the headline out the corner of his eye and shivered. He looked around again (STILL NO POLICE!), and led the child to his car, a maroon piece of rust that was filled with candy-wrappers and toy teletubbies.
“Here we are. What’s your name?” he said lustfully, drooling at the touch of the boy’s soft skin, his beautiful hair. The child looked up at him and grinned, revealing a mouth of razor sharp teeth. Suddenly, he didn’t look quite so attractive.
“That is not important, Earthman,” boomed the child in a baritone drawl, and bit off his face.
The End.
HAHAHAHAHA. That is called 'misdirection'.
I amuse myself far more than is appropriate.
Dinner at La Madame
Frederick wiped his lips delicately with a napkin and glanced out of the window for the fifth time that evening.
“I’m going to help him,” he said resolutely, and took another sip of wine. (Chateu De Gauche ’49, an excellent year). Franz, sitting at the other side of the table, sighed and dipped a piece of bread into his stew.
“Fabian, stop being such a saint! Why bother? There are plenty of homeless people on the street. There’s lots of stew, old boy, just settle down and have another ladleful. Fabian! Another portion for Mr Hopkins here!”
The waiter sidled up and heaped another serving of stew onto Frederick’s plate. That was all that La Madame served; the stew. But what a stew it was! Although, at €1499 a pot, it was certainly pricy. Worth it, though. It was probably the only joint in Paris that served stew of this quality.
Frederick looked out the window again at the tramp sitting in the snow. Covered in newspapers, freezing, shivering, he was a pitiful sight. His heart bled for him.
“I’m sure that somebody should go and get him,” he murmured. “It doesn’t seem right to just leave him to die in the road. It’s… a waste.” He stood up, smoothed his designer trousers, put on his designer hat, picked up his designer cane, and slipped into his designer jacket. “I’m going to get him, bring him in.” He picked up a glass of wine as he got up. And some bread.
“Don’t bother!” sighed Franz whistfully, although he knew it was a lost cause. Frederick was always picking people up from the street; bums, the unemployed, lost children, and taking them home for dinner. It was probably why he enjoyed La Madame so much; it catered only for the rich, the charitable, those who could afford to look after the poor for a few months, feed them, put some meat on their bones. Very exclusive.
Frederick pushed open the heavy iron door of the restaurant, to the amusement of the other two diners, and wandered out into the dark, freezing, abandoned street. Franz watched idly, chewing on a lump of meat, as he crossed the road over to where the man was lying. He reached him, talked to him, gave him some wine. The bread. A little money. A cigarette. A crack on the head with his cane.
The tramp slumped over without a fight. There was a little applause from the diners, and waiter sprinted across the road to help Frederick carry him back into the restaurant. Carefully, like you would with a big piece of meat.
“Phew! A bit smelly, isn’t it?” said Franz jokingly.
“It will be deliceuse with a petite vin rouge, Monsieur!” called the waiter as they carried him into the kitchen.
A few seconds later, Frederick re-appeared, wiping his hands with a napkin.
“Well, that’s dinner for tomorrow sorted, then,” he said, and ate another forkful of stew.
The End
Over the years I must have written about 4 stories about cannibalistic restaurants. They always amuse me.
The Rat
“Honey, I’m home!” called George in his 1950’s American sitcommy way. Silence. The house was dark. Empty. Frowning, he put down his briefcase, hung up his hat, and strolled down the hall.
“Honey?”
Silence.
“Where’s my dinner?” George was a modern man; he allowed his wife independence, just so long as his steak was on the table when he got home. He sauntered past the thick wooden pantry door, and into the kitchen. If Mary were anywhere, she’d be in here.
She was. And she was crying; her mascara was running down her face. She ran to him with a cry.
“Oh, George!” He put his manly arms around her and sniffed.
“Honey, what’s wrong? I don’t smell anything cooking. What’s for dinner?”
“George!”
“What?”
“I can’t… I can’t get into the pantry. I locked it in there.”
“What?”
“The RAT! There was a rat! It was huge!”
George laughed in his manly way. Women! Can’t live with ‘em, can’t eat without ‘em.
“Deary me. A rat, eh?”
“A huge one!” Mary burst into tears. “I came back from the market, and it was in the pantry! I saw it and I locked the door before it could escape. Now I’m too scared to go in.”
“Why? It’s just a little rat.” He disentangled himself and walked over to the pantry door. He reached for the handle. Mary threw herself in front of him.
“No! George! It wasn’t a little rat! It was huge! I swear it nearly battered down the door! It’ll kill you!” She screamed hysterically.
George slapped her. She stopped.
“Don’t be stupid, woman. It’s a rat. I’m bigger than any rat, and I’m hungry. So I’m going to go in there and kill it.”
He thought for a moment.
“Fetch my gun.”
Meekly, Mary obeyed. George stroked the barrel lovingly.
"Now, don’t be afraid if you hear any loud noises. It will probably be the gun going off. I’m going to shoot that mean old rat and you can make me my dinner. Alright?”
“Yes, George. Be careful. It’s huge!”
“Mary, don’t be silly. Go upstairs and darn my socks, or something. The nightmare will be over soon.”
“It’s huge!”
“Mary.”
She obediently went. Right, now for the rat.
Bravely, he kicked open the door and ran in, waving his weapon. The door swung shut behind him. The rat was sitting on a stool, eating a potato. Mary had been right. It was HUGE! In fact, it was nine feet tall, looked to weigh about fifteen stone, heavily muscular, wearing an eye patch, and smoking a cigar. It fixed George with its one beady eye and growled menacingly.
Panting with fear, George raised his gun. He fumbled with the safety catch. The rat slowly reached forward and plucked it out of his hand with one scabrous paw. George squealed and ran for the door.
Mary heard the gunshot. She smiled. George was so brave! How silly she was, being scared of a rat! Although, it HAD been rather big…
The End
Beats me.
The Park
The paeophile and the child stared at the corpse of the mother. She was as dead as a doorbell – but you couldn’t tell. She could have been sleeping. The child looked at the corpse with emotionless eyes. The paedophile at the child and licked his lips. It was a good job he didn’t know what had just happened; the truth would have scared him off.
“So,” whispered the paedophile, “That your mummy?”
The child stared at him. Nothing. The paedophile coughed out a lump of brown phlegm and withdrew a bag from his anorak pocket.
“D’ya want some sweeties? I’ve more sweeties in my car if you wanna follow me.” He was anxious to get out of here. His mind flashed to the newspaper headlines. CANNIBAL MURDERS IN LONDON – MADMAN ON THE LOOSE. With all those grisly child murders in the area, the police were extra vigilant. Wouldn’t do to have a copper wandering past and looking too carefully at what was going on. The park was abandoned (nobody went out with kids with a cannibal-murderer on the loose), but you never knew.
The child took a sweet and popped it into his mouth. Chewed. Spat it out and tugged slowly at the corpse on the bench. Hurredly, the paedophile pulled his hand away, enclosed it in his own.
“Heh-heh,” he muttered in his paedophilic way, “Let’s not… wake… mummy, shall we? Let’s go for a walk.”
The child looked at the mother on the bench longingly, but was pulled away.
“Lets go to my car. I have nice sweets there.”
The child followed silently, unwillingly. He hadn’t seen (he was in the playground at the time) the sudden, brutal attack. The woman hadn’t had time to scream, to call for help, to warn. Nobody had seen what’d happened. Well, he had to forfill his urges, didn't he? The paedophile scratched at his acne-covered skin and glanced around. Why was he so nervous this time? This kid wasn’t the first and probably wouldn’t be the last. Anyway, he’d already gone way too far, he couldn’t go back. The mother wasn’t gonna be getting up from that bench any time soon. Still, leaving her there… seemed a little risky.
A newspaper blew past. He just caught the headline out the corner of his eye and shivered. He looked around again (STILL NO POLICE!), and led the child to his car, a maroon piece of rust that was filled with candy-wrappers and toy teletubbies.
“Here we are. What’s your name?” he said lustfully, drooling at the touch of the boy’s soft skin, his beautiful hair. The child looked up at him and grinned, revealing a mouth of razor sharp teeth. Suddenly, he didn’t look quite so attractive.
“That is not important, Earthman,” boomed the child in a baritone drawl, and bit off his face.
The End.
HAHAHAHAHA. That is called 'misdirection'.
I amuse myself far more than is appropriate.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Still alive and kicking
It seems like weeks since I posted on my blog, but the absence wasn't intentional. I've just been really busy with the new job and some house projects. I've also been enjoying our relatively mild summer, drinking in the early morning fogs and the bright sunny days. Here are two pics I took of the marsh one recent morning:
9:03 am
9:24 am
The biggest changes have involved our home office situations. Kat's office is now in the crazy uncle house, and mine is now upstairs in what used to be her office. If you remember the crazy uncle house, which was once a chicken coop then was converted (by previous owners) into a two-room "cottage" (imagine putting up drywall in a barn, adding some plywood for subfloor, then covering that subfloor with linoleum from circa 1963). We'd worked on beautifying the outside, and now we've started on the inside. Here's a Before:
That's Em's friend Sarah, wondering what the hell we're thinking, converting this glorious space (painting by Em, stamp-painting by Em and Sarah) into a staid old office. I would show you the After but it's still in progress. I'll only say that you will not believe it! Give me another week or so; Kat and I are working as fast as we can!
This afternoon I looked at the garden and thought, "they've got to see this jungle!" So here are some photos of what the veggie garden looks like now. I won't bore you with the usual pics of little green peppers or yellow baby squash; instead, I'll show you how a little neglect can--er--pile up:
The morning glories and moonflowers, which we planted in the hopes that they'd act as a fence cover, have completely taken over! I don't even know if you can open the gate anymore; it was pretty tough last week, and I've watered since then, so I'm guessing I might need a machete.
A lettuce tree, about four feet tall.
The giant sunflowers. I'm taking this from my eye level; I'm about 5'1". Giant is right!
Somewhere up there in the upper atmosphere, I believe we're getting some flowers! I could hire out a helicopter and do a flyover to make sure, or I could just use the zoom:
I think Em is afraid to even go out there. I saw a zucchini the size of a man's leg out there earlier.
Meanwhile, the tomatoes are doing well, though I'm anxious to eat some of the other varieties besides 'Early Cascade' and the 'Sweet Million' cherry toms. The 'Cascade' are rather small, though they do indeed grow in cascading bunches; their flavor is decent, but I wouldn't choose them again. The 'Beefsteak' and 'First Lady' have a lot of medium to large green fruits on them, and those are the ones I'm dying to sink my teeth into. If I had to live with only one veggie for the rest of my life, I'm sure I'd pick tomatoes--right off the vine.
Photo contest! Can anyone guess what plant this is?
Your hint is that I planted it last year; it's a leftover now. The prize will be the satisfaction of knowing you guessed right.
Birding-wise, not much has happened lately other than the usual yardbirds and stuff. Now that the atlas safe dates are mostly past, Roana and I aren't going birding anymore, and I've been working so hard on the house that I've just been too tired to go out in the evenings, much less super-early on the weekends. Still, I've enjoyed seeing the babies growing up around here, testing their wings and their independence. I'm now starting to anticipate the fall migration and winter's bounty of feeder birds, though I'll admit I'm not quite ready to shovel snow yet....
I had a mama robin who had laid an egg in what might've been a second brood, but the egg--and Mama--disappeared. I hate it when that happens. She had woven some rather long cord into her nest; I'd chopped some smaller pieces for her, but she took the small ones and the long ones:
I began to suspect that her egg had been taken, though, when she didn't come back for a couple of days. Sure enough:
Such a nice sturdy nest, and nothing to show for it. It's not like robins are endangered or anything, but I felt sad for Mama Robin. You know I don't deal well with that whole "circle of life" thing.
9:03 am
9:24 am
The biggest changes have involved our home office situations. Kat's office is now in the crazy uncle house, and mine is now upstairs in what used to be her office. If you remember the crazy uncle house, which was once a chicken coop then was converted (by previous owners) into a two-room "cottage" (imagine putting up drywall in a barn, adding some plywood for subfloor, then covering that subfloor with linoleum from circa 1963). We'd worked on beautifying the outside, and now we've started on the inside. Here's a Before:
That's Em's friend Sarah, wondering what the hell we're thinking, converting this glorious space (painting by Em, stamp-painting by Em and Sarah) into a staid old office. I would show you the After but it's still in progress. I'll only say that you will not believe it! Give me another week or so; Kat and I are working as fast as we can!
This afternoon I looked at the garden and thought, "they've got to see this jungle!" So here are some photos of what the veggie garden looks like now. I won't bore you with the usual pics of little green peppers or yellow baby squash; instead, I'll show you how a little neglect can--er--pile up:
The morning glories and moonflowers, which we planted in the hopes that they'd act as a fence cover, have completely taken over! I don't even know if you can open the gate anymore; it was pretty tough last week, and I've watered since then, so I'm guessing I might need a machete.
A lettuce tree, about four feet tall.
The giant sunflowers. I'm taking this from my eye level; I'm about 5'1". Giant is right!
Somewhere up there in the upper atmosphere, I believe we're getting some flowers! I could hire out a helicopter and do a flyover to make sure, or I could just use the zoom:
I think Em is afraid to even go out there. I saw a zucchini the size of a man's leg out there earlier.
Meanwhile, the tomatoes are doing well, though I'm anxious to eat some of the other varieties besides 'Early Cascade' and the 'Sweet Million' cherry toms. The 'Cascade' are rather small, though they do indeed grow in cascading bunches; their flavor is decent, but I wouldn't choose them again. The 'Beefsteak' and 'First Lady' have a lot of medium to large green fruits on them, and those are the ones I'm dying to sink my teeth into. If I had to live with only one veggie for the rest of my life, I'm sure I'd pick tomatoes--right off the vine.
Photo contest! Can anyone guess what plant this is?
Your hint is that I planted it last year; it's a leftover now. The prize will be the satisfaction of knowing you guessed right.
Birding-wise, not much has happened lately other than the usual yardbirds and stuff. Now that the atlas safe dates are mostly past, Roana and I aren't going birding anymore, and I've been working so hard on the house that I've just been too tired to go out in the evenings, much less super-early on the weekends. Still, I've enjoyed seeing the babies growing up around here, testing their wings and their independence. I'm now starting to anticipate the fall migration and winter's bounty of feeder birds, though I'll admit I'm not quite ready to shovel snow yet....
I had a mama robin who had laid an egg in what might've been a second brood, but the egg--and Mama--disappeared. I hate it when that happens. She had woven some rather long cord into her nest; I'd chopped some smaller pieces for her, but she took the small ones and the long ones:
I began to suspect that her egg had been taken, though, when she didn't come back for a couple of days. Sure enough:
Such a nice sturdy nest, and nothing to show for it. It's not like robins are endangered or anything, but I felt sad for Mama Robin. You know I don't deal well with that whole "circle of life" thing.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Job Applications [and cocaine] [and Harry Potter]
Yes. I'm back to looking for a job again.
And yes, I am coming against the same seemingly unsurmountable obstacle: I don't really want a job. I just want the money. So basically my job search involves wandering up and down the street, seeing a 'Staff Wanted Sign', deciding that I don't really have what it takes to work in Monsoon, and then continuing to walk on. Occasionally I will say to myself "Thomas, you need the money, so bite the bullet, be a man, and ask for an application form to work in Mothercare." Then I walk in and give them my CV and pick up - sometimes - a little form offering employment possibilities. I never ever fill in the form. I add it to the little drawer in my desk that is filled with chocolate, love letters, and photographs of my own head, taken from various angles. This is the final resting place of any application form I am given. As for CVs... I feel that they occupy the bin. Although thinking about it the other day a guy had a long look at my CV and said "Wow, you have a string of As and A stars here, chum."
He called me chum! I was like yessssssssss. Then he said he'd call me. He never did. I SAT UP THE WHOLE NIGHT WAITING FOR HIS CALL. I cried.
Thinking about it, this is like a repeat of what happened last year. At least this time I am being a bit proactive and have started my own stencilled tshirt company. So far I've spent about 70 quid on fancy paint, shirts, envelopes etc. I have only taken in £40. This means that I'm LOSING money, despite the fact that I am charging extortionate (if you are a potential customer, read the word 'extortionate' as 'low low low') prices. However hopefully more money will come in when I get PayPal to work. I hope. Dear God I hope. By the way if anybody wants a tshirt please get in touch and I will sell you one for a reduced price.
So while I slowly but surely corner the tshirt market, I'm meanwhile on a search for more gainful and easy employment. This means that I have a fucken STACK of job application forms. It's great. I like the wording on all of them. I mean, here are some frontrunners:
Sainsbury's Checkout Assistant:
You’ll make sure customers receive a great service at the checkout. You’ll do this by:
- ensuring goods are scanned, packed and paid for without delay
- being friendly to customers
- helping out store colleagues
How will I do a great job?
Providing an outstanding service at the checkout is one of the most important roles in the store because there’s nothing that irritates customers more than a long queue. Working on a checkout means dealing with shoppers all day, so telling the difference between people who want to chat and people who would rather not is a handy skill. There are set break times, so you’ll have to be happy sitting down for extended periods.
I like this because it tell me how I'll do a GREAT job. I looked but there wasn't a section on how to do an acceptable job, a slightly substandard job, or even a plain shoddy job. And I DID look. "You'll be rude to customers, molest their children and spit in their soufflet when they aren't looking". I don't think that this job would suit me. Firstly, because I find it difficult to tell the difference between people who want to chat and those who would rather not. This is a major problem with me and one that is almost running my life at the moment. I mean, I'm ALWAYS trying to pick a conversation with people at the pub and stuff and frankly it gets pretty wearing. As people go I wouldn't rank myself as being top of the list for 'tact' and 'noticing that other people don't want to chat and just want their shopping packed'. I once tried to get a deaf and dumb boy to play snap and frankly he was RUBBISH so I span him in circles and moved all the furniture in his house around. That was the worst birthday party ever.
My best friend Sarah K used to work as a checkout girl for Sainsbury's. She didn't like it very much. However I cheered her up by visiting her now and again and I tell you, the look on her little face when she saw me every day was worth the 59p I spent on the chocolate reighndeer.
Starbuck's 'Barista'
I do not know what the FUCK a barista is. According to the websites, all baristas are asians who are having a hell of a time playing with shiny coffee machines.
ASIAN
ASIAN
SLAVE
I am not asian so I don't think that the job is for me. Equally, I would not consider myself to be an "adaptable, self-motivated, passionate, creative team player". I'm more akin to one of those old cars that won't move until you get out the front and wind it up with a crank, and then when it does move it goes at about ten miles an hour and the steering wheel goes about four degrees to either left or right and it won't stop or change speed once you've set it going and it ends up crashing into a barn and breaking the metaphor. My other best best friend Stephanie is a barista. She makes coffee (when she isn't too busy snorting cocaine off of the floor of the shop). I think that she only got the job because she saw the letters 'co' on the menu and her drug-addled brain thought that all they sold was cocaine. They gave her the job because she has big cheekbones and so looks a bit like an elderly asian man:
... and she keeps it now because it funds her habit and means that she doesn't have to turn so many tricks under the table during the school prom to get her next fix; and anyway the FOOLS at Starbucks HQ mistake her being monged off her crank-noggin for being a self-motivated and passionate team player. Little do they know that she is actually just completely buzzed like 24-7. Has anyone ever seen Scarface? You know that bit at the end when Steph (sorry I mean Tony Montana) has just a huge pile of cocaine on his desk and is snorting it by burying his head in it? That's like an average night out for Steph. Actually fuck it that is like an average night IN for Steph. Seriously. When she sneezes, white stuff comes out of her nose. I guess that explains why she professes a love of 'intelligent rap' in her Facebook profile; her brain is nothing but a mushy apple core of wasted dreams and broken neural connectors. I mean I phoned her the other day and I was like "Hey Steph do you wanna go out for a bike ride?" because it's been a while since me and Steph went for a bike ride and visited the orchid where we spent our childhood together, but she was just like "NARGH TOM I'M TOO BUSY DOING LOTS OF COCAINE AND BEING HIGH" and I was just like :-o
You know what? This isn't even a blog any more. It's a motherfucking INTERVENTION. Steve. Please, put down the dirty syringe and the spoon. All of your friends love you and want you to GET HELP. I mean, we've all been in your situation - many times I have looked in the mirror and said to myself "Tom, your choice of poetry and music is woefully and purposefully esoteric and elitist; time to take some drugs" BUT DO I? NO I DON'T. I quietly sit in my room and colour something in. Sometimes I do a dot-to-dot or, indeed, a word search. Why don't you just do the same? You have too many beautiful dreams to let it all end like this, in a tidalwave of vomit and bad cheekbones! We can help you! What would Koyaansiquatsi say if he saw you today? He would feel let down, Stephanie. YES HE WOULD. PUT DOWN THE SPOON.
Maybe I should just get hooked on drugs instead of getting a job. That would be an interesting life-affirming experience.
[Maybe for legal reasons I should say that for legal reasons, Steph's drug addiction is only a rumour and definitely not based in any way on truth. Wink]
Or I guess I could just work for Oxfam. I saw a sign on an Oxfam shop in Kingston that said "Are you honest, reliable or hardworking? Volunteer for Oxfam!"
I like the word 'or' in there. It implies that I could be honest and reliable, but lazy as fuck. Or I could work hard, and be constantly relied upon to lie to customers and steal stuff. Or I could be really honest and work hard. When I show up. Which is like a 50/50 chance from day to day. Man that'd rule I should totally work for Oxfam. I could steal all the good stuff for myself and eat all the Aid parcels and stuff. Mmm, nourishing. Then I'd take photographs of myself eating the food and include it so when the Africans open their parcels on Christmas day it's just photos of me enjoying all of their food.
I think I'm going to lose interest in the whole job search idea soon.
* * *
It's that time of year again, so here is my prediction for the last few paragraphs of Harry Potter 7:
"So you're telling me," said Harry disbelievingly, "That you have all been taking the piss for the past seven years?"
"Yeah!" said Ron, sniggering. "I can't BELIEVE you fell for it."
"So I'm not really a wizard?"
"No chance!" said Hermione, taking off her wig and revealing herself to actually be a heavily made-up man in drag. "Wizards don't even EXIST, you tit."
"My parents?"
"Oh, they're alive," said Dumbledore, walking past smoking a rollup and clutching a greasy back issue of FHM. "They've been watching the whole thing on CCTV with me and having a right laugh."
"But... HOGWARTS?"
"Made of polystyrene. Everyone's an actor. We've all existed for the past seven years to make you look stupid."
"WHY?" said Harry, whose bottom lip was quivering unstoppably.
"I dunno. Bill Gates fancied a laugh I guess. He's the one who paid for it."
Suddenly, inspiration struck Harry. "Wait a second! I don't believe you! I have seen so many wonderful creatures and monsters, things that can't POSSIBLY have been real! Like Dobby the house-elf! I remember his weird bulbous head and shiny brown skin and stubby little legs! He can't have possibly been anything OTHER than a goblin."
Dumbledore rolled his eyes and took a deep drag of his ciggie. "Harry. Do you know what a 'black person' is?"
Harry stared blankly at him.
Dumbedore sighed, then pulled a photograph out of his pocket. "Here's Dobby pre-makeup."
Harry fell to his knees. "This doesn't make any sense!"
"No Harry," spat Ron balefully. "I'll tell you what doesn't make sense! In book two of the Harry Potter series the Chamber of Secrets is accessed through an opening hidden inside a sink, however on page 500 it also clearly states that the chamber was built by Salazar Slytherin around 990 AD, many centuries BEFORE the introduction of indoor piped plumbing! Eh? DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE! THAT'S ANACHORNISTIC! BUT DID YOU SEE ME COMPLAINING AT THE TIME? NO! Now fuck off."
Scar.
The End.
Now let's all wait and see for when the book comes out to see if I'm correct.
And yes, I am coming against the same seemingly unsurmountable obstacle: I don't really want a job. I just want the money. So basically my job search involves wandering up and down the street, seeing a 'Staff Wanted Sign', deciding that I don't really have what it takes to work in Monsoon, and then continuing to walk on. Occasionally I will say to myself "Thomas, you need the money, so bite the bullet, be a man, and ask for an application form to work in Mothercare." Then I walk in and give them my CV and pick up - sometimes - a little form offering employment possibilities. I never ever fill in the form. I add it to the little drawer in my desk that is filled with chocolate, love letters, and photographs of my own head, taken from various angles. This is the final resting place of any application form I am given. As for CVs... I feel that they occupy the bin. Although thinking about it the other day a guy had a long look at my CV and said "Wow, you have a string of As and A stars here, chum."
He called me chum! I was like yessssssssss. Then he said he'd call me. He never did. I SAT UP THE WHOLE NIGHT WAITING FOR HIS CALL. I cried.
Thinking about it, this is like a repeat of what happened last year. At least this time I am being a bit proactive and have started my own stencilled tshirt company. So far I've spent about 70 quid on fancy paint, shirts, envelopes etc. I have only taken in £40. This means that I'm LOSING money, despite the fact that I am charging extortionate (if you are a potential customer, read the word 'extortionate' as 'low low low') prices. However hopefully more money will come in when I get PayPal to work. I hope. Dear God I hope. By the way if anybody wants a tshirt please get in touch and I will sell you one for a reduced price.
So while I slowly but surely corner the tshirt market, I'm meanwhile on a search for more gainful and easy employment. This means that I have a fucken STACK of job application forms. It's great. I like the wording on all of them. I mean, here are some frontrunners:
Sainsbury's Checkout Assistant:
You’ll make sure customers receive a great service at the checkout. You’ll do this by:
- ensuring goods are scanned, packed and paid for without delay
- being friendly to customers
- helping out store colleagues
How will I do a great job?
Providing an outstanding service at the checkout is one of the most important roles in the store because there’s nothing that irritates customers more than a long queue. Working on a checkout means dealing with shoppers all day, so telling the difference between people who want to chat and people who would rather not is a handy skill. There are set break times, so you’ll have to be happy sitting down for extended periods.
I like this because it tell me how I'll do a GREAT job. I looked but there wasn't a section on how to do an acceptable job, a slightly substandard job, or even a plain shoddy job. And I DID look. "You'll be rude to customers, molest their children and spit in their soufflet when they aren't looking". I don't think that this job would suit me. Firstly, because I find it difficult to tell the difference between people who want to chat and those who would rather not. This is a major problem with me and one that is almost running my life at the moment. I mean, I'm ALWAYS trying to pick a conversation with people at the pub and stuff and frankly it gets pretty wearing. As people go I wouldn't rank myself as being top of the list for 'tact' and 'noticing that other people don't want to chat and just want their shopping packed'. I once tried to get a deaf and dumb boy to play snap and frankly he was RUBBISH so I span him in circles and moved all the furniture in his house around. That was the worst birthday party ever.
My best friend Sarah K used to work as a checkout girl for Sainsbury's. She didn't like it very much. However I cheered her up by visiting her now and again and I tell you, the look on her little face when she saw me every day was worth the 59p I spent on the chocolate reighndeer.
Starbuck's 'Barista'
I do not know what the FUCK a barista is. According to the websites, all baristas are asians who are having a hell of a time playing with shiny coffee machines.
ASIAN
ASIAN
SLAVE
I am not asian so I don't think that the job is for me. Equally, I would not consider myself to be an "adaptable, self-motivated, passionate, creative team player". I'm more akin to one of those old cars that won't move until you get out the front and wind it up with a crank, and then when it does move it goes at about ten miles an hour and the steering wheel goes about four degrees to either left or right and it won't stop or change speed once you've set it going and it ends up crashing into a barn and breaking the metaphor. My other best best friend Stephanie is a barista. She makes coffee (when she isn't too busy snorting cocaine off of the floor of the shop). I think that she only got the job because she saw the letters 'co' on the menu and her drug-addled brain thought that all they sold was cocaine. They gave her the job because she has big cheekbones and so looks a bit like an elderly asian man:
... and she keeps it now because it funds her habit and means that she doesn't have to turn so many tricks under the table during the school prom to get her next fix; and anyway the FOOLS at Starbucks HQ mistake her being monged off her crank-noggin for being a self-motivated and passionate team player. Little do they know that she is actually just completely buzzed like 24-7. Has anyone ever seen Scarface? You know that bit at the end when Steph (sorry I mean Tony Montana) has just a huge pile of cocaine on his desk and is snorting it by burying his head in it? That's like an average night out for Steph. Actually fuck it that is like an average night IN for Steph. Seriously. When she sneezes, white stuff comes out of her nose. I guess that explains why she professes a love of 'intelligent rap' in her Facebook profile; her brain is nothing but a mushy apple core of wasted dreams and broken neural connectors. I mean I phoned her the other day and I was like "Hey Steph do you wanna go out for a bike ride?" because it's been a while since me and Steph went for a bike ride and visited the orchid where we spent our childhood together, but she was just like "NARGH TOM I'M TOO BUSY DOING LOTS OF COCAINE AND BEING HIGH" and I was just like :-o
You know what? This isn't even a blog any more. It's a motherfucking INTERVENTION. Steve. Please, put down the dirty syringe and the spoon. All of your friends love you and want you to GET HELP. I mean, we've all been in your situation - many times I have looked in the mirror and said to myself "Tom, your choice of poetry and music is woefully and purposefully esoteric and elitist; time to take some drugs" BUT DO I? NO I DON'T. I quietly sit in my room and colour something in. Sometimes I do a dot-to-dot or, indeed, a word search. Why don't you just do the same? You have too many beautiful dreams to let it all end like this, in a tidalwave of vomit and bad cheekbones! We can help you! What would Koyaansiquatsi say if he saw you today? He would feel let down, Stephanie. YES HE WOULD. PUT DOWN THE SPOON.
Maybe I should just get hooked on drugs instead of getting a job. That would be an interesting life-affirming experience.
[Maybe for legal reasons I should say that for legal reasons, Steph's drug addiction is only a rumour and definitely not based in any way on truth. Wink]
Or I guess I could just work for Oxfam. I saw a sign on an Oxfam shop in Kingston that said "Are you honest, reliable or hardworking? Volunteer for Oxfam!"
I like the word 'or' in there. It implies that I could be honest and reliable, but lazy as fuck. Or I could work hard, and be constantly relied upon to lie to customers and steal stuff. Or I could be really honest and work hard. When I show up. Which is like a 50/50 chance from day to day. Man that'd rule I should totally work for Oxfam. I could steal all the good stuff for myself and eat all the Aid parcels and stuff. Mmm, nourishing. Then I'd take photographs of myself eating the food and include it so when the Africans open their parcels on Christmas day it's just photos of me enjoying all of their food.
I think I'm going to lose interest in the whole job search idea soon.
* * *
It's that time of year again, so here is my prediction for the last few paragraphs of Harry Potter 7:
"So you're telling me," said Harry disbelievingly, "That you have all been taking the piss for the past seven years?"
"Yeah!" said Ron, sniggering. "I can't BELIEVE you fell for it."
"So I'm not really a wizard?"
"No chance!" said Hermione, taking off her wig and revealing herself to actually be a heavily made-up man in drag. "Wizards don't even EXIST, you tit."
"My parents?"
"Oh, they're alive," said Dumbledore, walking past smoking a rollup and clutching a greasy back issue of FHM. "They've been watching the whole thing on CCTV with me and having a right laugh."
"But... HOGWARTS?"
"Made of polystyrene. Everyone's an actor. We've all existed for the past seven years to make you look stupid."
"WHY?" said Harry, whose bottom lip was quivering unstoppably.
"I dunno. Bill Gates fancied a laugh I guess. He's the one who paid for it."
Suddenly, inspiration struck Harry. "Wait a second! I don't believe you! I have seen so many wonderful creatures and monsters, things that can't POSSIBLY have been real! Like Dobby the house-elf! I remember his weird bulbous head and shiny brown skin and stubby little legs! He can't have possibly been anything OTHER than a goblin."
Dumbledore rolled his eyes and took a deep drag of his ciggie. "Harry. Do you know what a 'black person' is?"
Harry stared blankly at him.
Dumbedore sighed, then pulled a photograph out of his pocket. "Here's Dobby pre-makeup."
Harry fell to his knees. "This doesn't make any sense!"
"No Harry," spat Ron balefully. "I'll tell you what doesn't make sense! In book two of the Harry Potter series the Chamber of Secrets is accessed through an opening hidden inside a sink, however on page 500 it also clearly states that the chamber was built by Salazar Slytherin around 990 AD, many centuries BEFORE the introduction of indoor piped plumbing! Eh? DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE! THAT'S ANACHORNISTIC! BUT DID YOU SEE ME COMPLAINING AT THE TIME? NO! Now fuck off."
Scar.
The End.
Now let's all wait and see for when the book comes out to see if I'm correct.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Why, why, why, Delia?
At least once every day, I find myself asking questions—to myself, or to anyone who’ll listen—in my unquenchable thirst for learning. And I don’t even mean big, weighty questions (at least not most of the time); I’m talking silly questions about little things. This morning, as I asked myself yet another little question, I thought I’d ask everyone to send me some of your questions, and maybe even some of your answers. Let’s ask some questions of the universe and see what replies we get!
1. Why does Scotch tape tear so easily down its length, but to cut a piece requires a sharp edge (or your teeth)?
2. Why do cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, totally ignoring their responsibility for the next generation?
3. Why do dishonest, corrupt, or otherwise bad people get so much money and power, while kind, intelligent, and good people usually toil in obscurity, never getting the opportunity to share their goodness and intelligence with the wider world? (although blogging has helped a lot of these people reach a wider audience)
Your turn. Send me some questions and/or answers, and let’s see what new things we can learn.
Oh--P.S.--why do so many people see my name and pronounce it "Delilah"? There is only 1 L in there. I know it's not a common name, but still....
1. Why does Scotch tape tear so easily down its length, but to cut a piece requires a sharp edge (or your teeth)?
2. Why do cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, totally ignoring their responsibility for the next generation?
3. Why do dishonest, corrupt, or otherwise bad people get so much money and power, while kind, intelligent, and good people usually toil in obscurity, never getting the opportunity to share their goodness and intelligence with the wider world? (although blogging has helped a lot of these people reach a wider audience)
Your turn. Send me some questions and/or answers, and let’s see what new things we can learn.
Oh--P.S.--why do so many people see my name and pronounce it "Delilah"? There is only 1 L in there. I know it's not a common name, but still....
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
A-Z Henley 2007
I was at Henley for the past week, from Wednesday through to Saturday. It was fit. Here are 26 letters that vaguely correspond to things that happened at Henners this year.
Asahi Boat House Bar
Right. Sorry to start this list off with a negative but WHAT THE FUCK IS THE ASAHI BAR? Along the towpath (the long muddy stretch next to the river) there are a load of expensive-ass bars and pubs and places that sell overpriced fish and chips. The majority of these change each year; HOWEVER there are a few that are well known and have become landmarks in their own right. The Barn Bar, for example, near to the start, is possibly the most excellent of these; however close on its heels is the Bud Bar, which is right at the end. A good walk down the towpath involves visiting the Bud Bar, purchasing a beer, drinking it slowly while walking down the course and then finishing it in time for arrival at the Barn Bar at which point you trip over a picnic table and slash up your leg. Which I of course didn't do... However NOW the Bud Bar has GONE and been replaced by this Asahi Bar shit. And it's all japanesey and stuff and I was just like WOAH when I saw it. And that wasn't a happy amazed "Woah" of impressedness or a Keanu Reeves style 'Woah' of 'My mind has just been blown'. It was more of an angry confused WOAH, like "WOAH. Woah. Woah. Stop one second here. Re-re wind it, flip it, reverse it. WHERE IS THE BARN BAR?" I mean essentially it was exactly the same, except with a different sign. BUT IT WAS THE PRINCIPLE. Because now when I say 'Let's go to the Bud Bar', people would be like 'The Bud Bar?... don't you mean THE ASAHI BOAT HOUSE BAR?' And man, that would get annoying.
I tell you I was confused and I very nearly didn't buy any beer from there at all.
Becca off Hollyoaks
BECCA OFF HOLLYOAKS WAS IN THE BARN BAR ON SATURDAY NIGHT:
Becca off Hollyoaks
I tell you it was jolly exciting. I was star struck at seeing a demi-ex-celebrity drinking alcohol. It was pretty surprising actually as the last I saw her she was dead in a bed, having been bare stabbed up. It really shattered the whole illusion of reality created by the production designers of the Hollyoaks crew and for a few minutes I was unable to process what I saw. Eventually though I plucked up the courage (read: drank some more centurions) and kind of rolled up. I chose my best chat up line.
'BECCA!' I cried smoothly. 'I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!'
She was impressed by my new tshirt, I could see, and so she turned on her seduction rays. "Uh, no."
"BUT YOU WERE STABBED, BECCA!!!!!"
"It was just a flesh wound," she shot back. Man Becca off Hollyoaks is clever. I was taken aback. I was going to ask her if the rumours of her forcing all of her friends to refer to her as "Becca off Hollyoaks" was true but then her boyfriend showed up. I steeled my eyes at him and we were going to have a fight but then instead someone took a photo of me and Becca off Hollyoaks together.
BUT THAT'S NOT IT FOR MINOR CELEBRITIES. While I was walking down the street, some guy who used to be on Big Brother apparently walked across the road. I mean, I didn't recognise him because I'm too busy having a life (writing blogs about seeing minor celebrities) but the drunk girl in front of me did.
"ALEX OFF BIG BROTHER!" she screamed. He turned around and waved. "LOSER!" she responded. He looked really sad. I tell you, I loll'd.
Centurion
Centurion is this drinking game that I was taught at Henners. It is like the most fun thing ever. Essentially it boils down to having 100 shots of beer, one a minute, for 100 minutes. Me and Joe decided to play it on the Saturday night so we bought lots of ice to make my crate of beer really ice cold and then we sat next to the campfire where they were cooking sausages (which was being lit using gin, by the way) and played. We also decided to make a different toast for every shot. I tell you about 30 shots in we were running out of people to toast. I can't remember the exact number we got to but it was about 65 before we ran out of beer/money and at that point we were like "TOAST TO THE BRIDGE!" Man drinking is fun.
Dog
One of the women walking down the towpath had this cute dog.
Entrepreneurship
Basically I have started my own tshirt company, selling stencilled tshirts to members of the public (read: suckers). I brought five tshirts to Henners with the intention of selling them. DID I SELL THEM. Yes I did. I also charged £8 a pop when they are - to be honest - not worth that. Tasty profit to Thomas. Tshirt to my many adoring fans. Everyone's a winner!
First Eight
Our First Eight showed up at Henley and raced a bit. They lost.
Girls
OH MY GOD THERE WERE SO MANY HOT GIRLS AT HENLEY. I think it was because they were all rich. Thus upper class. Thus they had better genes. But every few steps along the course I was like :-o, :-o, :-o hot hot hot hot. It was bloody annoying because I had decided that I was going to avoid females of the female persuasion for the whole of Henley (it turns out that every time I kiss a girl and then don't immediately enter in a sham relationship, Lucia SOMEHOW finds out and gets annoyed and I can't be doing with it). BUT still, you don't have to go into the sty to admire the pigs and so frankly I spent the entire week saying WOAH. And in this case it was a good woah. There were also NO fat girls at all, which was a bonus, as the path was pretty narrow and I don't think the many wheelchair users at the regatta would have appreciated a lardy.
Henley
Is the place where I was at.
Injury
For some reason I spent this entire Henley getting injured. I am literally COVERED in cuts, bruises, bite marks and scrapes. On the Thursday I was sat in a pub and was frankly kind of gone with the absinthe fairies. Close to hand were a kitchen knife and a fork a spoon and I decided to pretend that my leg was a tasty steak (I was hungry) and so I busily started sawing at my shin. The knife was ACTUALLY SHARP and like sliced open my leg. I squealed and dropped the fork. At that point my friend Joe arrived and saw me slicing open my leg with a knife and so now everyone thinks that I am a self-harmer. This image was not improved by the fact that on the FRIDAY night I needed a wee so I went into the forest, tripped over a branch and landed in a patch of brambles and got two HUGE cuts up my leg. Added to the bruises on my thigh from the time I stabbed myself with the spoon from the pub (made sense at the time) and the cut on my shin from the Saturday morning, in which I got out of my tent, bought some yoghurt from Waitrose, walked to the Barn Bar, sat on the picnic table, fell backwards off the picnic table and caught my shin on a sticky out bolt, I LOOK LIKE AN ABUSE VICTIM. Facebook should show pictures of ME to get donations for the RSPCC. I also have some scratches on my back, which I have literally no concept of. I can't even understand how those got there. Oh man.
Johnson (Boris)
BORIS JOHNSON IS THE MP OF HENLEY. I didn't actually come into contact with him at the regatta but Curry did and said that he got into some really beaten up car with a fat girl who may have been his daughter. So that's good. But the thing is, me and Boz both go to the same Oxford College. And by that logic, if we say that Henley is a timeless regatta in which everybody has an equal share of History, which means that technically, I am the future MP of Henley and thus I already practically own the regatta. Morally. It's just that time hasn't caught up yet. Yeah. With logic like that I still don't see why they didn't let me into the Steward's Enclosure. I mean I TRIED, I explained it in detail and drew a little diagram of timelines and stuff but did they listen? NO. Bloody fascists.
Kebab
I HAD MY FIRST KEBAB EVER ON THE SATURDAY NIGHT. It was pretty nice. Although this was after the centurion so I think that anything would have been nice. As a bonus feature, while walking along we found an empty Pimm's jug on the floor. Steal.
Local Celebrity
The local celebrity in this case is me. Basically on Saturday I was walking along in my board shorts, surreptitiously stealing food from the parents' picnic when suddenly I had a tap on my shoulder. I looked round to see Thomas William Kempner's mother, a woman with whom I have had literally no contact in my entire life, except to see her picking him up from rowing and cheering at the bank, and the occasional 'Your mum' joke. She said something like "Tom, I would like to say 'Nice board shorts', but I think that would mean that I have read your blog!".
I was literally like WTF. Turns out that like half of the rowing mothers are avid readers of this blog. This is a worrying development, right. MOTHERS READ THIS BLOG. And not just MY mother, but random boat club mothers. Actually that's pretty annoying. Why do the hot teenage sisters/nieces/aunts not read the blog and come up to mollycoddle me? I would appreciate some mollycoddlage from hot teenage sisters. But no. All I get is the mothers. Sigh. I suppose we must work with the hand that God deals us.
Of course, I immediately scanned back to previous posts to see if I had said anything incriminating. The most recent one was about death and illness and buying board shorts. Fairly serious topic. Ok. That's good. The mothers think I am a deep thinker and interested in eternal issues of mortality and death etc. Not bad. What was the post before that? Oh yeah, that was the one in which I talked about going onto internet chatrooms and pretending to be a girl in order to get perverts to try to have cybersex with me.
Shit.
Oh well, in retaliation for mothers reading my blog, I am going to fill it with disgusting semi-pornographic references to their sons' sex lives. That ought to make for some amusing after dinner reading.
Midgets
So I walked into the toilet and saw Tom Kempner having sex with a midget. ONLY KIDDING. Sorry, Mrs Kempner. No. But for some reason, this regatta was filled to the brim with little short people of all shapes and sizes (assuming that the 'all sizes' means 'small'). There was a little umpire fella on a bike and another little man walking along the towpath then another little chap walking along in a snazzy suit. When I saw him I was like "If we both rush him at the same time I reckon we could take him" to Curry in my ironic way. Actually thinking about it, this year at Henley will be remembered in my mind for being filled with midgets, cripples and weirdoes. Like there was this old woman who just went up and down the towpath in a wheelchair. There's this one bit that is quite a steep bridge so she got this tonk rower to push her up the incline squealing DON'T LET GO DON'T LET GO. And then when he got to the top she was like LET GO LET GO and she whizzed all the way down the path at like 20mph, bowling people out of the way. I have to say that at that point I was like 'Woah, lucky bitch' as I had been walking for ages and my feet hurted.
I think I saw more disabled people this year than I did black people. How funny and indicative.
Naughty
I am a mischievous little scamp, I am. Oh I am IRREPRESSIBLE with my infectious sense of fun. Don't try and pin me down, I am just a whirlwind of naughtiness and wit.
Basically on the Saturday night Curry and I unpegged Kempner's tent while he was asleep in it. AND IT WASN'T JUST HIM. Annawood his girlfriend was in there too. We all know my thoughts about Annawood so lets not get into that here. But I was pretty sure that they were asleep, and not doing anything else, but you know how these teenagers are nowadays, eh Mrs K? Frankly I wouldn't trust them.
But anyway as me and Curry like, wandered into the campsite after all the centurions and Pimm's and kebab and fun, one of us was like 'HEY LET'S UNPEG KEMPNER'S TENT WHILE HE'S ASLEEP!' and then the other was like 'YEAH LET'S DO IT!' and then we did like one of those jumping chest bumps that you see fat kids doing at preview screenings of action films. Of course, to achieve this naughtiness we needed to be crafty.
"Ok Curry," I whispered conspiratorially, "We need to be silent, silent like two NINJA SNAKES!" To show off what I meant by this, I attempted to vanish into the darkness and tripped over a guy rope. It was bloody embarrassing, I'll tell you that for free. Boy was my face red. But anyway we unpegged the tent. To be honest neither of us were sure of what the intention of this exercise was. We more or less expected it to just, like, stay unpegged and be fine. But instead THE ENTIRE THING COLLAPSED with like a sad pofffffff sound. Curry and I were like wtf and ran away. Unfortunately Kempy and his little Gestapo squad tracked me down like the dog I was. Kempy then unpegged MY tent yelling "IS THIS FUNNY TOM? IS IT? I'M LAUGHING. HA HA! IS THIS SO FUNNY NOW?"
Frankly I was in no state to be fighting back so I was just like "Aww maaaaaaan don't do THAT don't take it out on the tent, that is NOT NECESSART unpeg me instead. Oh now it fell over, that's a shame."
It was bloody exciting.
Old Blades
The name of some garden where all of the parents rock up and have a big picnic. Basically when that happens all of the rowers descend, eat all of the food and steal the Pimm's and then fuck off again. It rules. That is what happened this year. HOWEVER later on that night, at about eight, I was walking up the towpath towards the Barn Bar by myself (after the 50 centurions), like completely drunk as a skunk, and I saw that there were still some parents there, tidying up. Being the kind fellow I am I kind of clambered over the fence and helped with the tidying operation. Then apparently I said something sexist to a mother, stole a load of chocolates, and fled the scene. I then gave the chocolates to handsome women that I saw along the riverbank. NO WOMAN CAN HATE YOU WHEN YOU GIVE HER CHOCOLATE.
Pimm's
Ah, Pimm's. Drink of Henley. I must have consumed about two bottles of the stuff on my own, probably because of my practise of mixing it in about a 40-60 ratio in pint glasses. I am now sick of it. But that's ok, I should be in the mood for Pimm's about this time next year!!! Yeah!!!!
Queen Mother Challenge Cup
This is an Open Men's category for Coxless Quads, which are sculling boats featuring four rowers, and no coxswain. Nobody cares about coxless quads. I don't think I watched a single quad race.
On the other hand, the Queen Mother Challenge Cup begins with a Q.
Rowing
The sport wot iz done at Henley. It is jolly exciting and I have lost count of the thrilling races I watched this year. Oh wait, I found count again. It was about 6.
Stewards
The special place where only la crème doo la crème of the rowing world can enter (read: those wearing a shirt or tie). Naturally I figured that nobody would want to go there so I rolled up wearing jeans and a bright green BARRY tshirt. Naturally in the first day everyone else IN BLOODY HENLEY was there for the racing. So I sat hunched by the river looking like quite the fool. I was literally like, the only man in the entire town not wearing eveningwear. I looked like hired help. I kind of wish I had some fat gloves and a spade so I could pretend to be digging a hole or whatever it is the working class does, and the rest of the posh totty would respect and fear me.
Tent
I STAYED IN A TENT. It was so good (except for the regrettable moment when it fell over due to THOMAS KEMPNER'S influence. Knobhead (Sorry Mrs K). I decided to pitch away from everyone else in case I scored (hah), and so that I could just run away and hide when I lost interest in speaking to other people. This worked PRETTY well. However unfortunately at about the same time as I arrived, these two girls in the pitch behind me also rolllled up. Now they were actually pretty hot so I was ding-dong. However THEY WERE LITERALLY THE MOST BORING BITCHES EVER. They both woke up at about, I dunno, 740am EVERY DAY and would just discuss absolutely NOTHING in loud piercing voices. Like, one morning they discussed the order in which they would pack their bags for TEN SOLID MINUTES. I was just not impressed so on the final night I whipped up a lynch mob and we burnt their tent to the ground: FACT.
Upper Thames Rowing Club
This is a club on the Henley course. It begins with U. It also has a really expensive fish and chips stand. BUT A FREE GIN AND TONIC ONE. So it evens out.
Violence
Henley is a violent place. However, the violence is of a 'Gentlemanly' slant. Even the pikeys are slightly sophisticated. Let me give you an example. I was walking back to the campsite by myself on the Friday evening. I was in a bit of a bad mood. Anyway as I crossed Henley bridge, this group of four or five 'pikeys' on the other side started yelling at me. It was rather obscene and I know that there are mothers reading this so I shall not repeat what was said (it was 'fuck'). Anyway I was in no mood for this, like I was in my bad-ass-mofo mode so I was just like LEAVE ME ALONE YOU INGRATES (in slightly coarser language). Naturally they were all like "wot? wot dyou say?" but I strolled off down the bridge without giving them a second thought or glance.
About a minute later I got a tap on the shoulder and I was presented with a load of pikeys surrounding me. They must have been so offended by my language that they stopped where they were going, climbed over two barriers, crossed the road and pushed past all the people on the bridge. The lead pikey was wearing gloves. He had some nice hair.
"Oi, why you swearing at us?" he enquired.
"Because you were swearing at ME," I responded.
"No we weren't."
What exactly do you say to that? It was a filthy lie and he knew it. Anyway what exactly else would they have been saying? "Wayhey!!! Did you see the racing today? Radley were bloody good weren't they!!!" NO THEY WOULDN'T.
So I was basically like "Yes you were."
I think he saw that he wasn't going to win this battle with reasoning as I was clearly far more intelligent than him. DAMN IT I just realised - if I'd told them that I'm gonna go to Oxford they would probably have like, apologised, admitted their mistake and gone on their way, realising that I was their better. Stupid Thomas why didn't you think of saying that? Anyway, I didn't say anything more, and so he settled for the tried and tested "Mate, if you swear at me again I'm gonna BITE YOUR FUCKING FACE OFF."
For about three seconds I just stared blankly at him trying to work out this threat. I am not sure of the practical possibility of this. I mean Curry when coxing occasionally breaks out a "YOU TRY TO UNDERTAKE ME AND I'LL BITE YOUR FUCKING NOSE OFF, SUNSHINE" which is a more realistic threat. But my FACE? I mean the guy had a big mouth but surely not that big. Unless he was going to bite it off in lots of smaller bites, which could work, I guess.
I mean I was in such a bad mood that I felt like getting really beaten up anyway. So I very nearly just reached over and poked him really hard in the centre of the chest. Unfortunately I was not QUITE that drunk yet so instead I was like "Well if you don't swear at me, I won't swear at you, then nobody's face gets bitten off."
He thought about this proposal. He repeated the face-biting jibe.
One of his friends obviously saw that I was HARD and probably armed to the teeth with Hamlet quotations so was like "Hey Quentin, leave it mate" (I couldn't remember the actual name).
"Look, I'll cut out my swearing if you cut out your biting," I said. Quentin narrowed his mongoloid eyes at me. Then he was like "Ok safe" and we shook hands on it.
Let me repeat that.
WE SHOOK HANDS ON IT.
This is how sophisticated and gentlemanly Henley is. Even the pikeys conclude their drunken scuffles in the street with a firm handshake and a mutual understanding. It was brilliant.
Water
Water. Like the water I dropped my mobile telephone into on the Friday. Basically me and Curry had made ourselves a little picnic by the bank of hummus and bread and tortilla chips and chicken and a whole chorizo sausage (the chorizo was a bad investment). Anyway, when we were finished one of the midgets ran past. I was like 'That's exciting' so I LEAPT to my feet to get a better look. With a milquetoast little sliding sound that was almost disappointed, my phone tumbled out of my pocket. It fell to the bank, bounced OH SO SLOWLY, and then plopped into the water. I sadly watched the Nokia sign disappear into the depths.
"Oh, that is a shame," I said solemnly, then STRIPPED OFF and dived into the water to fetch it (read: reached in and found it almost immediately). It did not seem to be doing that well. The screen was all washy and throbbing and every time I dialled a number it gave a really weird gurgling noise. Although tbh I don't know if that really made a noticeable difference in the functionality of the phone - the Nokia N73 is a piece of SHIT. You get a text, press 'Read text', then you might as well go downstairs and make a cup of tea while the fricking thing loads properly. It frequently freezes up, randomly stops working and pressing 'Answer message' will usually force the camera to load up. NOTA BENE: NEVER BUY A NOKIA N73. I don't even know why I bothered going into the water to rescue the damn thing.
Water? Like the water I fell into on Saturday while walking to the Barn Bar (this was after my visit to Old Blades, before meeting Becca off Hollyoaks)? I was trying to be sneaky and avoid the slow moving people traffic so I attempted to leap balletically over a hillock. Didn't work and I fell into the water, next to an old lady. She looked at me inquisitively and I gave a cheeky wink as I climbed out with a fish in my ear and a frog on my shoe. The frog was smoking a cigarette and playing the guitar really well. It looked very nice, but slightly dim.
Xylophone
"The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family which probably originated in Indonesia. It consists of wooden bars of various lengths that are struck by plastic, wooden, or rubber mallets. Each bar is tuned to a specific pitch of the musical scale. Xylophones are tuned to different scale systems depending on their origin, including pentatonic, heptatonic, diatonic, or chromatic." (Wikipedia)
Young people
Lots of young people about this year. Too young. No babies, though, which was a plus.
Zebra
No zebra to be seen this year. Which was a shame.
THAT WAS HENLEY. Now I have to find something else to fill my empty and pathetic life with. I KNOW. HEROIN.
Asahi Boat House Bar
Right. Sorry to start this list off with a negative but WHAT THE FUCK IS THE ASAHI BAR? Along the towpath (the long muddy stretch next to the river) there are a load of expensive-ass bars and pubs and places that sell overpriced fish and chips. The majority of these change each year; HOWEVER there are a few that are well known and have become landmarks in their own right. The Barn Bar, for example, near to the start, is possibly the most excellent of these; however close on its heels is the Bud Bar, which is right at the end. A good walk down the towpath involves visiting the Bud Bar, purchasing a beer, drinking it slowly while walking down the course and then finishing it in time for arrival at the Barn Bar at which point you trip over a picnic table and slash up your leg. Which I of course didn't do... However NOW the Bud Bar has GONE and been replaced by this Asahi Bar shit. And it's all japanesey and stuff and I was just like WOAH when I saw it. And that wasn't a happy amazed "Woah" of impressedness or a Keanu Reeves style 'Woah' of 'My mind has just been blown'. It was more of an angry confused WOAH, like "WOAH. Woah. Woah. Stop one second here. Re-re wind it, flip it, reverse it. WHERE IS THE BARN BAR?" I mean essentially it was exactly the same, except with a different sign. BUT IT WAS THE PRINCIPLE. Because now when I say 'Let's go to the Bud Bar', people would be like 'The Bud Bar?... don't you mean THE ASAHI BOAT HOUSE BAR?' And man, that would get annoying.
I tell you I was confused and I very nearly didn't buy any beer from there at all.
Becca off Hollyoaks
BECCA OFF HOLLYOAKS WAS IN THE BARN BAR ON SATURDAY NIGHT:
Becca off Hollyoaks
I tell you it was jolly exciting. I was star struck at seeing a demi-ex-celebrity drinking alcohol. It was pretty surprising actually as the last I saw her she was dead in a bed, having been bare stabbed up. It really shattered the whole illusion of reality created by the production designers of the Hollyoaks crew and for a few minutes I was unable to process what I saw. Eventually though I plucked up the courage (read: drank some more centurions) and kind of rolled up. I chose my best chat up line.
'BECCA!' I cried smoothly. 'I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!'
She was impressed by my new tshirt, I could see, and so she turned on her seduction rays. "Uh, no."
"BUT YOU WERE STABBED, BECCA!!!!!"
"It was just a flesh wound," she shot back. Man Becca off Hollyoaks is clever. I was taken aback. I was going to ask her if the rumours of her forcing all of her friends to refer to her as "Becca off Hollyoaks" was true but then her boyfriend showed up. I steeled my eyes at him and we were going to have a fight but then instead someone took a photo of me and Becca off Hollyoaks together.
BUT THAT'S NOT IT FOR MINOR CELEBRITIES. While I was walking down the street, some guy who used to be on Big Brother apparently walked across the road. I mean, I didn't recognise him because I'm too busy having a life (writing blogs about seeing minor celebrities) but the drunk girl in front of me did.
"ALEX OFF BIG BROTHER!" she screamed. He turned around and waved. "LOSER!" she responded. He looked really sad. I tell you, I loll'd.
Centurion
Centurion is this drinking game that I was taught at Henners. It is like the most fun thing ever. Essentially it boils down to having 100 shots of beer, one a minute, for 100 minutes. Me and Joe decided to play it on the Saturday night so we bought lots of ice to make my crate of beer really ice cold and then we sat next to the campfire where they were cooking sausages (which was being lit using gin, by the way) and played. We also decided to make a different toast for every shot. I tell you about 30 shots in we were running out of people to toast. I can't remember the exact number we got to but it was about 65 before we ran out of beer/money and at that point we were like "TOAST TO THE BRIDGE!" Man drinking is fun.
Dog
One of the women walking down the towpath had this cute dog.
Entrepreneurship
Basically I have started my own tshirt company, selling stencilled tshirts to members of the public (read: suckers). I brought five tshirts to Henners with the intention of selling them. DID I SELL THEM. Yes I did. I also charged £8 a pop when they are - to be honest - not worth that. Tasty profit to Thomas. Tshirt to my many adoring fans. Everyone's a winner!
First Eight
Our First Eight showed up at Henley and raced a bit. They lost.
Girls
OH MY GOD THERE WERE SO MANY HOT GIRLS AT HENLEY. I think it was because they were all rich. Thus upper class. Thus they had better genes. But every few steps along the course I was like :-o, :-o, :-o hot hot hot hot. It was bloody annoying because I had decided that I was going to avoid females of the female persuasion for the whole of Henley (it turns out that every time I kiss a girl and then don't immediately enter in a sham relationship, Lucia SOMEHOW finds out and gets annoyed and I can't be doing with it). BUT still, you don't have to go into the sty to admire the pigs and so frankly I spent the entire week saying WOAH. And in this case it was a good woah. There were also NO fat girls at all, which was a bonus, as the path was pretty narrow and I don't think the many wheelchair users at the regatta would have appreciated a lardy.
Henley
Is the place where I was at.
Injury
For some reason I spent this entire Henley getting injured. I am literally COVERED in cuts, bruises, bite marks and scrapes. On the Thursday I was sat in a pub and was frankly kind of gone with the absinthe fairies. Close to hand were a kitchen knife and a fork a spoon and I decided to pretend that my leg was a tasty steak (I was hungry) and so I busily started sawing at my shin. The knife was ACTUALLY SHARP and like sliced open my leg. I squealed and dropped the fork. At that point my friend Joe arrived and saw me slicing open my leg with a knife and so now everyone thinks that I am a self-harmer. This image was not improved by the fact that on the FRIDAY night I needed a wee so I went into the forest, tripped over a branch and landed in a patch of brambles and got two HUGE cuts up my leg. Added to the bruises on my thigh from the time I stabbed myself with the spoon from the pub (made sense at the time) and the cut on my shin from the Saturday morning, in which I got out of my tent, bought some yoghurt from Waitrose, walked to the Barn Bar, sat on the picnic table, fell backwards off the picnic table and caught my shin on a sticky out bolt, I LOOK LIKE AN ABUSE VICTIM. Facebook should show pictures of ME to get donations for the RSPCC. I also have some scratches on my back, which I have literally no concept of. I can't even understand how those got there. Oh man.
Johnson (Boris)
BORIS JOHNSON IS THE MP OF HENLEY. I didn't actually come into contact with him at the regatta but Curry did and said that he got into some really beaten up car with a fat girl who may have been his daughter. So that's good. But the thing is, me and Boz both go to the same Oxford College. And by that logic, if we say that Henley is a timeless regatta in which everybody has an equal share of History, which means that technically, I am the future MP of Henley and thus I already practically own the regatta. Morally. It's just that time hasn't caught up yet. Yeah. With logic like that I still don't see why they didn't let me into the Steward's Enclosure. I mean I TRIED, I explained it in detail and drew a little diagram of timelines and stuff but did they listen? NO. Bloody fascists.
Kebab
I HAD MY FIRST KEBAB EVER ON THE SATURDAY NIGHT. It was pretty nice. Although this was after the centurion so I think that anything would have been nice. As a bonus feature, while walking along we found an empty Pimm's jug on the floor. Steal.
Local Celebrity
The local celebrity in this case is me. Basically on Saturday I was walking along in my board shorts, surreptitiously stealing food from the parents' picnic when suddenly I had a tap on my shoulder. I looked round to see Thomas William Kempner's mother, a woman with whom I have had literally no contact in my entire life, except to see her picking him up from rowing and cheering at the bank, and the occasional 'Your mum' joke. She said something like "Tom, I would like to say 'Nice board shorts', but I think that would mean that I have read your blog!".
I was literally like WTF. Turns out that like half of the rowing mothers are avid readers of this blog. This is a worrying development, right. MOTHERS READ THIS BLOG. And not just MY mother, but random boat club mothers. Actually that's pretty annoying. Why do the hot teenage sisters/nieces/aunts not read the blog and come up to mollycoddle me? I would appreciate some mollycoddlage from hot teenage sisters. But no. All I get is the mothers. Sigh. I suppose we must work with the hand that God deals us.
Of course, I immediately scanned back to previous posts to see if I had said anything incriminating. The most recent one was about death and illness and buying board shorts. Fairly serious topic. Ok. That's good. The mothers think I am a deep thinker and interested in eternal issues of mortality and death etc. Not bad. What was the post before that? Oh yeah, that was the one in which I talked about going onto internet chatrooms and pretending to be a girl in order to get perverts to try to have cybersex with me.
Shit.
Oh well, in retaliation for mothers reading my blog, I am going to fill it with disgusting semi-pornographic references to their sons' sex lives. That ought to make for some amusing after dinner reading.
Midgets
So I walked into the toilet and saw Tom Kempner having sex with a midget. ONLY KIDDING. Sorry, Mrs Kempner. No. But for some reason, this regatta was filled to the brim with little short people of all shapes and sizes (assuming that the 'all sizes' means 'small'). There was a little umpire fella on a bike and another little man walking along the towpath then another little chap walking along in a snazzy suit. When I saw him I was like "If we both rush him at the same time I reckon we could take him" to Curry in my ironic way. Actually thinking about it, this year at Henley will be remembered in my mind for being filled with midgets, cripples and weirdoes. Like there was this old woman who just went up and down the towpath in a wheelchair. There's this one bit that is quite a steep bridge so she got this tonk rower to push her up the incline squealing DON'T LET GO DON'T LET GO. And then when he got to the top she was like LET GO LET GO and she whizzed all the way down the path at like 20mph, bowling people out of the way. I have to say that at that point I was like 'Woah, lucky bitch' as I had been walking for ages and my feet hurted.
I think I saw more disabled people this year than I did black people. How funny and indicative.
Naughty
I am a mischievous little scamp, I am. Oh I am IRREPRESSIBLE with my infectious sense of fun. Don't try and pin me down, I am just a whirlwind of naughtiness and wit.
Basically on the Saturday night Curry and I unpegged Kempner's tent while he was asleep in it. AND IT WASN'T JUST HIM. Annawood his girlfriend was in there too. We all know my thoughts about Annawood so lets not get into that here. But I was pretty sure that they were asleep, and not doing anything else, but you know how these teenagers are nowadays, eh Mrs K? Frankly I wouldn't trust them.
But anyway as me and Curry like, wandered into the campsite after all the centurions and Pimm's and kebab and fun, one of us was like 'HEY LET'S UNPEG KEMPNER'S TENT WHILE HE'S ASLEEP!' and then the other was like 'YEAH LET'S DO IT!' and then we did like one of those jumping chest bumps that you see fat kids doing at preview screenings of action films. Of course, to achieve this naughtiness we needed to be crafty.
"Ok Curry," I whispered conspiratorially, "We need to be silent, silent like two NINJA SNAKES!" To show off what I meant by this, I attempted to vanish into the darkness and tripped over a guy rope. It was bloody embarrassing, I'll tell you that for free. Boy was my face red. But anyway we unpegged the tent. To be honest neither of us were sure of what the intention of this exercise was. We more or less expected it to just, like, stay unpegged and be fine. But instead THE ENTIRE THING COLLAPSED with like a sad pofffffff sound. Curry and I were like wtf and ran away. Unfortunately Kempy and his little Gestapo squad tracked me down like the dog I was. Kempy then unpegged MY tent yelling "IS THIS FUNNY TOM? IS IT? I'M LAUGHING. HA HA! IS THIS SO FUNNY NOW?"
Frankly I was in no state to be fighting back so I was just like "Aww maaaaaaan don't do THAT don't take it out on the tent, that is NOT NECESSART unpeg me instead. Oh now it fell over, that's a shame."
It was bloody exciting.
Old Blades
The name of some garden where all of the parents rock up and have a big picnic. Basically when that happens all of the rowers descend, eat all of the food and steal the Pimm's and then fuck off again. It rules. That is what happened this year. HOWEVER later on that night, at about eight, I was walking up the towpath towards the Barn Bar by myself (after the 50 centurions), like completely drunk as a skunk, and I saw that there were still some parents there, tidying up. Being the kind fellow I am I kind of clambered over the fence and helped with the tidying operation. Then apparently I said something sexist to a mother, stole a load of chocolates, and fled the scene. I then gave the chocolates to handsome women that I saw along the riverbank. NO WOMAN CAN HATE YOU WHEN YOU GIVE HER CHOCOLATE.
Pimm's
Ah, Pimm's. Drink of Henley. I must have consumed about two bottles of the stuff on my own, probably because of my practise of mixing it in about a 40-60 ratio in pint glasses. I am now sick of it. But that's ok, I should be in the mood for Pimm's about this time next year!!! Yeah!!!!
Queen Mother Challenge Cup
This is an Open Men's category for Coxless Quads, which are sculling boats featuring four rowers, and no coxswain. Nobody cares about coxless quads. I don't think I watched a single quad race.
On the other hand, the Queen Mother Challenge Cup begins with a Q.
Rowing
The sport wot iz done at Henley. It is jolly exciting and I have lost count of the thrilling races I watched this year. Oh wait, I found count again. It was about 6.
Stewards
The special place where only la crème doo la crème of the rowing world can enter (read: those wearing a shirt or tie). Naturally I figured that nobody would want to go there so I rolled up wearing jeans and a bright green BARRY tshirt. Naturally in the first day everyone else IN BLOODY HENLEY was there for the racing. So I sat hunched by the river looking like quite the fool. I was literally like, the only man in the entire town not wearing eveningwear. I looked like hired help. I kind of wish I had some fat gloves and a spade so I could pretend to be digging a hole or whatever it is the working class does, and the rest of the posh totty would respect and fear me.
Tent
I STAYED IN A TENT. It was so good (except for the regrettable moment when it fell over due to THOMAS KEMPNER'S influence. Knobhead (Sorry Mrs K). I decided to pitch away from everyone else in case I scored (hah), and so that I could just run away and hide when I lost interest in speaking to other people. This worked PRETTY well. However unfortunately at about the same time as I arrived, these two girls in the pitch behind me also rolllled up. Now they were actually pretty hot so I was ding-dong. However THEY WERE LITERALLY THE MOST BORING BITCHES EVER. They both woke up at about, I dunno, 740am EVERY DAY and would just discuss absolutely NOTHING in loud piercing voices. Like, one morning they discussed the order in which they would pack their bags for TEN SOLID MINUTES. I was just not impressed so on the final night I whipped up a lynch mob and we burnt their tent to the ground: FACT.
Upper Thames Rowing Club
This is a club on the Henley course. It begins with U. It also has a really expensive fish and chips stand. BUT A FREE GIN AND TONIC ONE. So it evens out.
Violence
Henley is a violent place. However, the violence is of a 'Gentlemanly' slant. Even the pikeys are slightly sophisticated. Let me give you an example. I was walking back to the campsite by myself on the Friday evening. I was in a bit of a bad mood. Anyway as I crossed Henley bridge, this group of four or five 'pikeys' on the other side started yelling at me. It was rather obscene and I know that there are mothers reading this so I shall not repeat what was said (it was 'fuck'). Anyway I was in no mood for this, like I was in my bad-ass-mofo mode so I was just like LEAVE ME ALONE YOU INGRATES (in slightly coarser language). Naturally they were all like "wot? wot dyou say?" but I strolled off down the bridge without giving them a second thought or glance.
About a minute later I got a tap on the shoulder and I was presented with a load of pikeys surrounding me. They must have been so offended by my language that they stopped where they were going, climbed over two barriers, crossed the road and pushed past all the people on the bridge. The lead pikey was wearing gloves. He had some nice hair.
"Oi, why you swearing at us?" he enquired.
"Because you were swearing at ME," I responded.
"No we weren't."
What exactly do you say to that? It was a filthy lie and he knew it. Anyway what exactly else would they have been saying? "Wayhey!!! Did you see the racing today? Radley were bloody good weren't they!!!" NO THEY WOULDN'T.
So I was basically like "Yes you were."
I think he saw that he wasn't going to win this battle with reasoning as I was clearly far more intelligent than him. DAMN IT I just realised - if I'd told them that I'm gonna go to Oxford they would probably have like, apologised, admitted their mistake and gone on their way, realising that I was their better. Stupid Thomas why didn't you think of saying that? Anyway, I didn't say anything more, and so he settled for the tried and tested "Mate, if you swear at me again I'm gonna BITE YOUR FUCKING FACE OFF."
For about three seconds I just stared blankly at him trying to work out this threat. I am not sure of the practical possibility of this. I mean Curry when coxing occasionally breaks out a "YOU TRY TO UNDERTAKE ME AND I'LL BITE YOUR FUCKING NOSE OFF, SUNSHINE" which is a more realistic threat. But my FACE? I mean the guy had a big mouth but surely not that big. Unless he was going to bite it off in lots of smaller bites, which could work, I guess.
I mean I was in such a bad mood that I felt like getting really beaten up anyway. So I very nearly just reached over and poked him really hard in the centre of the chest. Unfortunately I was not QUITE that drunk yet so instead I was like "Well if you don't swear at me, I won't swear at you, then nobody's face gets bitten off."
He thought about this proposal. He repeated the face-biting jibe.
One of his friends obviously saw that I was HARD and probably armed to the teeth with Hamlet quotations so was like "Hey Quentin, leave it mate" (I couldn't remember the actual name).
"Look, I'll cut out my swearing if you cut out your biting," I said. Quentin narrowed his mongoloid eyes at me. Then he was like "Ok safe" and we shook hands on it.
Let me repeat that.
WE SHOOK HANDS ON IT.
This is how sophisticated and gentlemanly Henley is. Even the pikeys conclude their drunken scuffles in the street with a firm handshake and a mutual understanding. It was brilliant.
Water
Water. Like the water I dropped my mobile telephone into on the Friday. Basically me and Curry had made ourselves a little picnic by the bank of hummus and bread and tortilla chips and chicken and a whole chorizo sausage (the chorizo was a bad investment). Anyway, when we were finished one of the midgets ran past. I was like 'That's exciting' so I LEAPT to my feet to get a better look. With a milquetoast little sliding sound that was almost disappointed, my phone tumbled out of my pocket. It fell to the bank, bounced OH SO SLOWLY, and then plopped into the water. I sadly watched the Nokia sign disappear into the depths.
"Oh, that is a shame," I said solemnly, then STRIPPED OFF and dived into the water to fetch it (read: reached in and found it almost immediately). It did not seem to be doing that well. The screen was all washy and throbbing and every time I dialled a number it gave a really weird gurgling noise. Although tbh I don't know if that really made a noticeable difference in the functionality of the phone - the Nokia N73 is a piece of SHIT. You get a text, press 'Read text', then you might as well go downstairs and make a cup of tea while the fricking thing loads properly. It frequently freezes up, randomly stops working and pressing 'Answer message' will usually force the camera to load up. NOTA BENE: NEVER BUY A NOKIA N73. I don't even know why I bothered going into the water to rescue the damn thing.
Water? Like the water I fell into on Saturday while walking to the Barn Bar (this was after my visit to Old Blades, before meeting Becca off Hollyoaks)? I was trying to be sneaky and avoid the slow moving people traffic so I attempted to leap balletically over a hillock. Didn't work and I fell into the water, next to an old lady. She looked at me inquisitively and I gave a cheeky wink as I climbed out with a fish in my ear and a frog on my shoe. The frog was smoking a cigarette and playing the guitar really well. It looked very nice, but slightly dim.
Xylophone
"The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family which probably originated in Indonesia. It consists of wooden bars of various lengths that are struck by plastic, wooden, or rubber mallets. Each bar is tuned to a specific pitch of the musical scale. Xylophones are tuned to different scale systems depending on their origin, including pentatonic, heptatonic, diatonic, or chromatic." (Wikipedia)
Young people
Lots of young people about this year. Too young. No babies, though, which was a plus.
Zebra
No zebra to be seen this year. Which was a shame.
THAT WAS HENLEY. Now I have to find something else to fill my empty and pathetic life with. I KNOW. HEROIN.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Wrapping up the breeding atlas, noticing the change
Roana and I went atlassing one last time to wrap up the majority of "safe dates" for most of the breeding birds in our state. We drove through a block in Havice Valley this time, to try to get as many birds as possible for this year's reports. I didn't take my camera, as the battery was almost dead--I really regret that because I saw some great birds!
The block was beautiful, featuring mostly wooded areas with a few small clearings and some Amish farms. We saw 50 different species, but the most notable for me were Blackburnian warbler, magnolia warbler, and a ruby-throated hummingbird just hanging out on a snag and then an electrical wire. I finally got to see the Blackburnian and magnolia, both at once; the Blackburnian was just going about his business, hawking for insects and enjoying the morning sun, but the magnolia was displaying some morning grumpiness. As a result, neither was too hard to spot, and we got some great views. Oh, what I would've given for my scope and camera! The Blackburnian was as beautiful as I'd imagined he'd be, displaying what the Stokeses call his "fiery orange throat," and the magnolia's pronounced black breast striping showed him to be a male as well. We watched them for a while, hardly believing our luck.
I continued my quest to actually SEE a common yellowthroat, but I was unsuccessful; I did see a striking indigo bunting, a beautiful male Eastern towhee, and a giant great blue heron who had perched on a snag near Penns Creek. For a July atlassing trip, we did pretty well, according to Roana, so I was very pleased.
Another thing I've been noticing lately is the changing behavior of the birds. I've been seeing great flocks of them, flying in long chains, all over the valley. I read somewhere, maybe on the Stokes' blog?, that these flocks gather to prepare for the upcoming fall migration.
Seeing those flocks, and listening to Roana say things like, "we'll have to remember this spot for next year," made me feel like the spring and summer have flown by. It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was taking photos of winter birds around my feeders in the snow. I was looking forward to the spring migration, the Oil Creek birding festival, and seeing tons of warblers. Now, after watching that spring migration's beautiful fallouts of warblers at Oil Creek and elsewhere, I'm seeing most of the birds around here watching their young take flight on their own paths, wrapping up all that breeding behavior until next year and putting on the fat stores that will sustain them on their flight southward. The cycle of the seasons continues, never stopping to let me catch my breath.
The block was beautiful, featuring mostly wooded areas with a few small clearings and some Amish farms. We saw 50 different species, but the most notable for me were Blackburnian warbler, magnolia warbler, and a ruby-throated hummingbird just hanging out on a snag and then an electrical wire. I finally got to see the Blackburnian and magnolia, both at once; the Blackburnian was just going about his business, hawking for insects and enjoying the morning sun, but the magnolia was displaying some morning grumpiness. As a result, neither was too hard to spot, and we got some great views. Oh, what I would've given for my scope and camera! The Blackburnian was as beautiful as I'd imagined he'd be, displaying what the Stokeses call his "fiery orange throat," and the magnolia's pronounced black breast striping showed him to be a male as well. We watched them for a while, hardly believing our luck.
I continued my quest to actually SEE a common yellowthroat, but I was unsuccessful; I did see a striking indigo bunting, a beautiful male Eastern towhee, and a giant great blue heron who had perched on a snag near Penns Creek. For a July atlassing trip, we did pretty well, according to Roana, so I was very pleased.
Another thing I've been noticing lately is the changing behavior of the birds. I've been seeing great flocks of them, flying in long chains, all over the valley. I read somewhere, maybe on the Stokes' blog?, that these flocks gather to prepare for the upcoming fall migration.
Seeing those flocks, and listening to Roana say things like, "we'll have to remember this spot for next year," made me feel like the spring and summer have flown by. It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was taking photos of winter birds around my feeders in the snow. I was looking forward to the spring migration, the Oil Creek birding festival, and seeing tons of warblers. Now, after watching that spring migration's beautiful fallouts of warblers at Oil Creek and elsewhere, I'm seeing most of the birds around here watching their young take flight on their own paths, wrapping up all that breeding behavior until next year and putting on the fat stores that will sustain them on their flight southward. The cycle of the seasons continues, never stopping to let me catch my breath.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Eight random facts about Delia
I’ve been tagged. Both Nina at Nature Remains (which is an incredibly beautiful blog) and Mary at Mary's Corner of the World{NOTE: that's the updated Mary--I mistakenly credited Mary at Mary's View with tagging me--sorry, both Mary's!) tagged me with the Eight Random Facts meme. Without further delay, then, I’ll tell you eight fairly random facts about myself.
1. I learned to play the guitar after being inspired by the Go-Go’s, my favorite band in high school and college.
2. Until age 38, I’d never been east of Houston.
3. I have a master’s degree in English; my thesis examined the mother characters in four of Tony Morrison’s novels. My job now has nothing whatsoever to do with my degree, but I enjoy it.
4. I’ve had a very crazy employment history. I taught college English for six years at Tarrant County Junior College in Fort Worth, Texas; when I turned 30 and realized that I had another 35 years of that life ahead of me—grading papers every night, talking about the same issues over and over, semester after semester—I realized that I needed a change of profession! Three years later, I quit. I then got into desktop publishing, working at Taylor Publishing, doing pre-flight on school yearbooks. Was your high school yearbook “Taylor-made” between 1998 and 2001? If so, chances are I worked on it. I then moved into the trade-publishing division as the managing editor. That job ROCKED. When they sold the division and laid us all off (ouch), I did more desktop publishing for a business forms company. Then I delivered pizza for a while, then we moved up here. I’ve worked as a staffing agent for a temp service, as an inside sales rep for a life sciences company, and as a mail-list clerk/marketing assistant.
5. My favorite books are Morrison’s Beloved (a literary symphony!) and Melville’s Moby Dick.
6. I’m going back to school to become a forensic scientist, and most of the books I read now are crime- or forensic-science-related.
7. When I was kid, I wanted to become a tree surgeon, a marine biologist, or an astronaut.
8. I was in a Top-40 cover band in college and grad school, playing lead guitar and singing vocals on some songs (the ones by female singers). I played everything from Van Halen to George Strait. I play guitar only occasionally now, though Kat wishes I’d play songs for her every day (though NOT Van Halen or George Strait).
Now to tag eight more innocents. Hmm...have to find people who haven’t already been tagged -- this might be difficult.
1. Zen Birdfeeder
2. Susan at Lakelife
3. Rondeau Ric
Okay, I give up. I can't think of anyone else, so I'll just hit PUBLISH POST. Have fun!
1. I learned to play the guitar after being inspired by the Go-Go’s, my favorite band in high school and college.
2. Until age 38, I’d never been east of Houston.
3. I have a master’s degree in English; my thesis examined the mother characters in four of Tony Morrison’s novels. My job now has nothing whatsoever to do with my degree, but I enjoy it.
4. I’ve had a very crazy employment history. I taught college English for six years at Tarrant County Junior College in Fort Worth, Texas; when I turned 30 and realized that I had another 35 years of that life ahead of me—grading papers every night, talking about the same issues over and over, semester after semester—I realized that I needed a change of profession! Three years later, I quit. I then got into desktop publishing, working at Taylor Publishing, doing pre-flight on school yearbooks. Was your high school yearbook “Taylor-made” between 1998 and 2001? If so, chances are I worked on it. I then moved into the trade-publishing division as the managing editor. That job ROCKED. When they sold the division and laid us all off (ouch), I did more desktop publishing for a business forms company. Then I delivered pizza for a while, then we moved up here. I’ve worked as a staffing agent for a temp service, as an inside sales rep for a life sciences company, and as a mail-list clerk/marketing assistant.
5. My favorite books are Morrison’s Beloved (a literary symphony!) and Melville’s Moby Dick.
6. I’m going back to school to become a forensic scientist, and most of the books I read now are crime- or forensic-science-related.
7. When I was kid, I wanted to become a tree surgeon, a marine biologist, or an astronaut.
8. I was in a Top-40 cover band in college and grad school, playing lead guitar and singing vocals on some songs (the ones by female singers). I played everything from Van Halen to George Strait. I play guitar only occasionally now, though Kat wishes I’d play songs for her every day (though NOT Van Halen or George Strait).
Now to tag eight more innocents. Hmm...have to find people who haven’t already been tagged -- this might be difficult.
1. Zen Birdfeeder
2. Susan at Lakelife
3. Rondeau Ric
Okay, I give up. I can't think of anyone else, so I'll just hit PUBLISH POST. Have fun!
Monday, July 2, 2007
"A male swimming costume that resembles a pair of shorts"
"So," I said, eyeing nervously the huge bosoms of the lingerie-dressed figure who posed seductively in front of me, "Can I have my twelve pounds back, please?"
I'll leave that there.
* * *
Some news:
A guy who I used to go to school with about 10 years ago nearly died this week.
I ran over two hedgehogs the other days.
On the other hand, I bought some floral board shorts yesterday.
Now, those three statements may seem incongruous. It may seem like they do not seem to fit properly together. Death... and FLORAL BOARD SHORTS? The two things make no sense. Death is dark and sad and depressing. You see a hearse driving down the street, you want to take off your hat and hold it to your chest as a sign of sad respect. Yet board shorts are fun and brightly coloured and full of life. You see a guy - or shall I say 'dude' - walking down the street wearing board shorts (possibly with a backwards baseball cap and a Billabong tshirt), and instantly you want to take your hat off and throw it in the air, so excited and joyous are you with the jubilation of this young life. Death makes people want to cry. Board shorts make them want to party.
FACT.
So at first glance those three statements may seem pretty rediculous - in fact bordering on offensive. It's like showing up to a funeral wearing a clown costume, or something equally hilarious. However I think that when I have written the rest of this blog it will make some kind of poignant point about living for today or something, I don't know, I'm not a priest. But what I do know is that a week ago I was untouched by either mortality or board shorts, and now I am sitting here typing a blog about death while wearing some board shorts.
Something has changed in the past 7 days AND I WANT TO DISCUSS WHAT IT IS.
Anyway, last Monday I realised that what I was missing in my life was a pair of brightly coloured floral board shorts. Don't ask me how I knew this, I just did. It was like a lighting bolt of inspiration, I just sat up in my bed in the middle of the night and screamed "BOARD SHORTS!" I think that Isaac Newton had a similar experience when he invented the train. After that, for a good ten minutes board shorts were all I could think about. Fortunately I then fell asleep again and when I woke up I had become cynical and jaded to the whole concept of wearing brightly coloured shorts for boarding with.
After all, I haven't really been surfing since Boxing Day 2004; actually, I tell a lie, I was gonna go on tour with Kelly Slater in 2006, but that kind of fell through when he discovered that not only did I not own any board shorts at the time, I also had no idea how to surf. I tried to show him my bodyboarding skills on the beach in Cornwall but I fell off and knocked over some little girl's sandcastle and accidentally kicked a baby in the mouth so he we like 'Nah'. That's kind of the same story as my ill fated audition to play lead guitar for The Killers at Glastonbury. "So, you only know one chord?" "Yeah, G major. Check it out." "That's not G major." "Sure it is, the guitar's just really out of tune and I don't know how to fix it." "...". "So when do we play Mr Brightside?"
Sorry. I may have just slightly gone off the serious topic of death by typing a paragraph of complete shit. But anyway. When I woke up I was like "Maybe I don't need board shorts after all". That's what I do. I persuade myself not to do or get stuff, rather like Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet: Lust for Glory'. To quote further, and to prove that my three years of studying literature at A level were not totally wasted, I believe that my native hue of resolution (board short buyin' resolution), was indeed, sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought (do you really need board shorts, Thomas?). And thus I decided against it.
However , over the next few days I ran over two hedgehogs in my car. Repeatedly.
:-o
So that's something else to add to the list of things I have killed by accident: a cat, a goose, two hedgehogs. However, maybe not, as in fact in this case both of the hedgehogs were already dead when I ran them over. The fact that they were both dead in the patch of road that I have to drive across to get into my drive has nothing to do with it as I'm pretty sure that I wasn't the one that killed them. However, because of this fact, I drove over each hedgehog about eight times in two days as I went in and out my drive. As this went on, they slowly became less and less hedgehogs, and more and more 'paste on the road'. I was a bit surprised that their spines did not puncture the tyres, as I have seen in so many cartoons. Although, thinking about it, if cartoons had been telling the truth then I'm pretty sure that they would have simply waddled off after being hit by the car and would have returned themselves to their proper shape using an air pump of some sort. Eventually my mother got sick of seeing two squished hedgehogs outside our house so she got a shovel and put them in the bin.
This got me thinking about how I would like to be disposed of after I die of my injuries from single-handedly slaying all of the Neo-Nazis holding our new Prime Minister Gordy Brown hostage. [For future reference: Cremate me, then put the urn on top of a HUGE funeral pyre, like eight metres of solid wood, douse the whole thing in petrol and fireworks, then set fire to a pig and send it running towards the pile]. This of course set me pondering my own mortality. It is a bad idea to get me thinking about my own mortality as I am a pretty deep thinker and I pretty much end up either curled in a ball on the floor sucking my own thumb, or coming up with an amazing new philosophical way to view existence and the cosmos. Neither are good. In this case it was choice A, and after about ten minutes of lying under the desk, I realised - I have to make every day count. I can't let myself waste away my time living a life without brightly coloured board shorts. So I got up, took my thumb out of my mouth and I went to Kingston and I bought a yellow tshirt from Primark. And some board shorts.
Unfortunately when I got home I realised that, despite the fact that they were indeed brightly coloured and floral, what I had carelessly picked up from the rack at M&S without really looking were NOT BOARD SHORTS. They were in fact NORMAL SWIMMING SHORTS. They were like hot pants. Oh my misery when I realised that I had just bought some short shorts; it was indescribable. I gnashed my teeth and jumped about then I sat in my chair. Fortunately at this point the period of introspection about my own mortality had passed so I gave up on the board short idea again and went back to spinning around in my swivelly chair gleefully.
Days passed and I still had no board shorts.
Then I heard some news which actually properly fucked me up; this guy who I used to go to school with was in hospital! Everyone refers to him as 'Will' now but when we were friends he called himself 'Billy' and that is what I call him. This is because I am a traditionalist in my use of names; I still refer to 'Starburst' as 'Opal Fruits' and 'Katie Price' as 'Jordan' and 'black people' as 'slaves'. I'M JOKING I'M JOKING I'M JOKING I'M JOKING I'M JOKING I'M JOKING. That was a piece of social irony. In fact I refer to them as 'coloureds'. Anyway, apparently Billy had something wrong with his liver or something - my source (being a hysterical girl) was not exactly precise on the medical details - but I knew enough that he was in intensive care.
This properly screwed me up. I don't know why, I haven't spoken to him properly for about a decade and I barely know the guy. But it was just like - he's somebody I did know, someone who I used to have bare jokes with, and he was now in a hospital bed somewhere. I tell you, there was a mournful hour of me just spinning slowly around in my chair wondering if I should send him a card or something. Fortunately, the next day the news came in that he was out of intensive care, which was a fucken relief. I did literally jump in the air when I found out. It made me so happy and also demonstrated to me a new side of myself. This experience showed me that after all, I DO have a heart, and I can learn to care about Kings boys. Or at least the Kings boys that I used to go to school with. So that was good.
However, I realised at this point that it was time for another long period of introspection about my own mortality. I realised that our time on earth is fleeting; none of us are Gods; we are all just little islands of moving tissue that float about, lazily interacting with each other until the time comes when enough factors pile up on us that it is easier to no longer be moving tissue and in fact break down and rejoin the great circle of life - after that, who knows? The afterlife? Reincarnation? The blackness of the abyss? Nobody knows, and I feel that it is for each of us to take that sole solitary step into the beyond to face the infinite coldness of eternity.
The upshot of this was that floral hotpants were no longer an option. I had to go out and complete my quest and get some proper board shorts. Lying in a hospital bed, would Billy be able to go and buy some flowery board shorts whenever he wanted? Would the hedgehogs? Would FARFUR THE HAMAS MICKEY MOUSE? NO.
So I had to do it for the hedgehogs. And I had to get a refund on the hotpants because I was certainly not wearing them. So I went to M&S. I was a bit put off because I bought them on the Monday and by the Sunday, the entire interior of the shop had changed. Like, the cashier's desk had pretty much uprooted and scooted across to the other side of the shop. This fazed me, however I checked the sign and saw that the refund desk was on the top floor.
I went up the escalators, and finally I clapped eyes on the refund desk, on the far far wall, way off in the distance. This was ok. However what was NOT ok was what lay in between me and the refund desk. Some joker had placed the refund desk strategically in the middle of the lingere area. And M&S doesn't just have some small little corner devoted to bras and other such fripperies, THERE IS AN ENTIRE FREAKING FLOOR filled with heaving bosoms and crotches and thighs. I took a few steps in then I clapped eyes on a poster that had some old woman in a bra and panties and it said "Each pair of these panties sold goes towards Cancer Research for women like Maureen" and I tell you I was nearly like fuck this I'll just give up on the twelve pounds I spent on the shorts. However, I thought again of the hedgehogs and I thought - the hedgehogs would give anything to be able to walk through the lingerie department of M&S to get a refund on their floral hot pants, I can't wuss out now. So I went in and oh, it was horrible. There were bras and padding and lace as far as the eye could see. I tried to just keep my eyes fixed ahead of me but I tell you, there was wavering. It was like walking through a crowd of zombies in Shaun of the Dead, all these fat women holding up panties and saying things like BREAST and CUP and glowering at me, the solitary teenage boy standing nervously next to the shear silk panties. I nearly walked into one of the mannequins and it looked like I was getting my kicks from her plastic bazookas. I would probably say that it was the worst day of my life.
FINALLY however I got to the refund desk. I kind of fell into the queue line, breathing heavily, covered in sweat and bleeding out of a small cut on my upper temple. "Oh god, it's terrible out there!" I panted. The man at the refund desk - who looked as scarred and jaded and desensitised to the whole thing as is possible to be, just looked sympathetically at me and gave me a refund. I fled the shop.
Then I went and bought some board shorts. PROPER ONES this time. They are so good, all red with a nice floral pattern. I can see why they are so popular because - as trousers go - they are FUN. I wore them today while writing this blog and I have to tell you, I feel more like going for a surf than I EVER had. HEY GUYS WHO WANTS TO GO SURFING? Another excellent feature of the board shorts I bought is that they came with a little plastic thing for scraping sex wax onto a surfboard. Unfortunately I have no board nor sex wax; however, the little plastic thing also works as a bottle opener. SO EVERYONE'S A WINNER. Board shorts: fun AND practical. I honestly can't think of anything I would rather be wearing.
I am going to go down a STORM at Henley.
Anyway. Get well soon Billy, from the random guy you used to go to school with.
I'll leave that there.
* * *
Some news:
Now, those three statements may seem incongruous. It may seem like they do not seem to fit properly together. Death... and FLORAL BOARD SHORTS? The two things make no sense. Death is dark and sad and depressing. You see a hearse driving down the street, you want to take off your hat and hold it to your chest as a sign of sad respect. Yet board shorts are fun and brightly coloured and full of life. You see a guy - or shall I say 'dude' - walking down the street wearing board shorts (possibly with a backwards baseball cap and a Billabong tshirt), and instantly you want to take your hat off and throw it in the air, so excited and joyous are you with the jubilation of this young life. Death makes people want to cry. Board shorts make them want to party.
FACT.
So at first glance those three statements may seem pretty rediculous - in fact bordering on offensive. It's like showing up to a funeral wearing a clown costume, or something equally hilarious. However I think that when I have written the rest of this blog it will make some kind of poignant point about living for today or something, I don't know, I'm not a priest. But what I do know is that a week ago I was untouched by either mortality or board shorts, and now I am sitting here typing a blog about death while wearing some board shorts.
Something has changed in the past 7 days AND I WANT TO DISCUSS WHAT IT IS.
Anyway, last Monday I realised that what I was missing in my life was a pair of brightly coloured floral board shorts. Don't ask me how I knew this, I just did. It was like a lighting bolt of inspiration, I just sat up in my bed in the middle of the night and screamed "BOARD SHORTS!" I think that Isaac Newton had a similar experience when he invented the train. After that, for a good ten minutes board shorts were all I could think about. Fortunately I then fell asleep again and when I woke up I had become cynical and jaded to the whole concept of wearing brightly coloured shorts for boarding with.
After all, I haven't really been surfing since Boxing Day 2004; actually, I tell a lie, I was gonna go on tour with Kelly Slater in 2006, but that kind of fell through when he discovered that not only did I not own any board shorts at the time, I also had no idea how to surf. I tried to show him my bodyboarding skills on the beach in Cornwall but I fell off and knocked over some little girl's sandcastle and accidentally kicked a baby in the mouth so he we like 'Nah'. That's kind of the same story as my ill fated audition to play lead guitar for The Killers at Glastonbury. "So, you only know one chord?" "Yeah, G major. Check it out." "That's not G major." "Sure it is, the guitar's just really out of tune and I don't know how to fix it." "...". "So when do we play Mr Brightside?"
Sorry. I may have just slightly gone off the serious topic of death by typing a paragraph of complete shit. But anyway. When I woke up I was like "Maybe I don't need board shorts after all". That's what I do. I persuade myself not to do or get stuff, rather like Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet: Lust for Glory'. To quote further, and to prove that my three years of studying literature at A level were not totally wasted, I believe that my native hue of resolution (board short buyin' resolution), was indeed, sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought (do you really need board shorts, Thomas?). And thus I decided against it.
However , over the next few days I ran over two hedgehogs in my car. Repeatedly.
:-o
So that's something else to add to the list of things I have killed by accident: a cat, a goose, two hedgehogs. However, maybe not, as in fact in this case both of the hedgehogs were already dead when I ran them over. The fact that they were both dead in the patch of road that I have to drive across to get into my drive has nothing to do with it as I'm pretty sure that I wasn't the one that killed them. However, because of this fact, I drove over each hedgehog about eight times in two days as I went in and out my drive. As this went on, they slowly became less and less hedgehogs, and more and more 'paste on the road'. I was a bit surprised that their spines did not puncture the tyres, as I have seen in so many cartoons. Although, thinking about it, if cartoons had been telling the truth then I'm pretty sure that they would have simply waddled off after being hit by the car and would have returned themselves to their proper shape using an air pump of some sort. Eventually my mother got sick of seeing two squished hedgehogs outside our house so she got a shovel and put them in the bin.
This got me thinking about how I would like to be disposed of after I die of my injuries from single-handedly slaying all of the Neo-Nazis holding our new Prime Minister Gordy Brown hostage. [For future reference: Cremate me, then put the urn on top of a HUGE funeral pyre, like eight metres of solid wood, douse the whole thing in petrol and fireworks, then set fire to a pig and send it running towards the pile]. This of course set me pondering my own mortality. It is a bad idea to get me thinking about my own mortality as I am a pretty deep thinker and I pretty much end up either curled in a ball on the floor sucking my own thumb, or coming up with an amazing new philosophical way to view existence and the cosmos. Neither are good. In this case it was choice A, and after about ten minutes of lying under the desk, I realised - I have to make every day count. I can't let myself waste away my time living a life without brightly coloured board shorts. So I got up, took my thumb out of my mouth and I went to Kingston and I bought a yellow tshirt from Primark. And some board shorts.
Unfortunately when I got home I realised that, despite the fact that they were indeed brightly coloured and floral, what I had carelessly picked up from the rack at M&S without really looking were NOT BOARD SHORTS. They were in fact NORMAL SWIMMING SHORTS. They were like hot pants. Oh my misery when I realised that I had just bought some short shorts; it was indescribable. I gnashed my teeth and jumped about then I sat in my chair. Fortunately at this point the period of introspection about my own mortality had passed so I gave up on the board short idea again and went back to spinning around in my swivelly chair gleefully.
Days passed and I still had no board shorts.
Then I heard some news which actually properly fucked me up; this guy who I used to go to school with was in hospital! Everyone refers to him as 'Will' now but when we were friends he called himself 'Billy' and that is what I call him. This is because I am a traditionalist in my use of names; I still refer to 'Starburst' as 'Opal Fruits' and 'Katie Price' as 'Jordan' and 'black people' as 'slaves'. I'M JOKING I'M JOKING I'M JOKING I'M JOKING I'M JOKING I'M JOKING. That was a piece of social irony. In fact I refer to them as 'coloureds'. Anyway, apparently Billy had something wrong with his liver or something - my source (being a hysterical girl) was not exactly precise on the medical details - but I knew enough that he was in intensive care.
This properly screwed me up. I don't know why, I haven't spoken to him properly for about a decade and I barely know the guy. But it was just like - he's somebody I did know, someone who I used to have bare jokes with, and he was now in a hospital bed somewhere. I tell you, there was a mournful hour of me just spinning slowly around in my chair wondering if I should send him a card or something. Fortunately, the next day the news came in that he was out of intensive care, which was a fucken relief. I did literally jump in the air when I found out. It made me so happy and also demonstrated to me a new side of myself. This experience showed me that after all, I DO have a heart, and I can learn to care about Kings boys. Or at least the Kings boys that I used to go to school with. So that was good.
However, I realised at this point that it was time for another long period of introspection about my own mortality. I realised that our time on earth is fleeting; none of us are Gods; we are all just little islands of moving tissue that float about, lazily interacting with each other until the time comes when enough factors pile up on us that it is easier to no longer be moving tissue and in fact break down and rejoin the great circle of life - after that, who knows? The afterlife? Reincarnation? The blackness of the abyss? Nobody knows, and I feel that it is for each of us to take that sole solitary step into the beyond to face the infinite coldness of eternity.
The upshot of this was that floral hotpants were no longer an option. I had to go out and complete my quest and get some proper board shorts. Lying in a hospital bed, would Billy be able to go and buy some flowery board shorts whenever he wanted? Would the hedgehogs? Would FARFUR THE HAMAS MICKEY MOUSE? NO.
So I had to do it for the hedgehogs. And I had to get a refund on the hotpants because I was certainly not wearing them. So I went to M&S. I was a bit put off because I bought them on the Monday and by the Sunday, the entire interior of the shop had changed. Like, the cashier's desk had pretty much uprooted and scooted across to the other side of the shop. This fazed me, however I checked the sign and saw that the refund desk was on the top floor.
I went up the escalators, and finally I clapped eyes on the refund desk, on the far far wall, way off in the distance. This was ok. However what was NOT ok was what lay in between me and the refund desk. Some joker had placed the refund desk strategically in the middle of the lingere area. And M&S doesn't just have some small little corner devoted to bras and other such fripperies, THERE IS AN ENTIRE FREAKING FLOOR filled with heaving bosoms and crotches and thighs. I took a few steps in then I clapped eyes on a poster that had some old woman in a bra and panties and it said "Each pair of these panties sold goes towards Cancer Research for women like Maureen" and I tell you I was nearly like fuck this I'll just give up on the twelve pounds I spent on the shorts. However, I thought again of the hedgehogs and I thought - the hedgehogs would give anything to be able to walk through the lingerie department of M&S to get a refund on their floral hot pants, I can't wuss out now. So I went in and oh, it was horrible. There were bras and padding and lace as far as the eye could see. I tried to just keep my eyes fixed ahead of me but I tell you, there was wavering. It was like walking through a crowd of zombies in Shaun of the Dead, all these fat women holding up panties and saying things like BREAST and CUP and glowering at me, the solitary teenage boy standing nervously next to the shear silk panties. I nearly walked into one of the mannequins and it looked like I was getting my kicks from her plastic bazookas. I would probably say that it was the worst day of my life.
FINALLY however I got to the refund desk. I kind of fell into the queue line, breathing heavily, covered in sweat and bleeding out of a small cut on my upper temple. "Oh god, it's terrible out there!" I panted. The man at the refund desk - who looked as scarred and jaded and desensitised to the whole thing as is possible to be, just looked sympathetically at me and gave me a refund. I fled the shop.
Then I went and bought some board shorts. PROPER ONES this time. They are so good, all red with a nice floral pattern. I can see why they are so popular because - as trousers go - they are FUN. I wore them today while writing this blog and I have to tell you, I feel more like going for a surf than I EVER had. HEY GUYS WHO WANTS TO GO SURFING? Another excellent feature of the board shorts I bought is that they came with a little plastic thing for scraping sex wax onto a surfboard. Unfortunately I have no board nor sex wax; however, the little plastic thing also works as a bottle opener. SO EVERYONE'S A WINNER. Board shorts: fun AND practical. I honestly can't think of anything I would rather be wearing.
I am going to go down a STORM at Henley.
Anyway. Get well soon Billy, from the random guy you used to go to school with.
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