Indulging the Unusual - Unusuindulgence

It has begun. The process of doing weird things just to talk about them on the radio.

For me, the blogging and the radio have been hugely helpful in forcing me to be creative. I am someone who definitely needs fairly short-term deadlines to work towards, even if they are self-imposed. It is when I get into that mindset that I blog often, and since having radio shows every weekend it has become normal to work towards them through the week, rather than being a lazy sponge and watching weeks slip away fruitlessly.

In the sort of life-affirming seminars that get booked by schools and are forced upon children, a lot of importance is put on the taking of opportunities. One in particular that I remember touched largely on half-chances, and on how you should grasp and indulge every half-chance, because you never know what that could amount to. It was a similar philosophy that led me to take the music gig last Friday, and it will certainly, at least I hope, continue to inform my decision-making. But the sort of half-chances that I want to talk about are of a less serious variety.

During the gig, which was for charity, there was to be an event where the audience would be encouraged to throw pound coins at a bottle of Baileys, with the nearest thrower winning the bottle. I was asked whether or not I would like to be in charge of this activity, which I turned down automatically, as the thought of actively having to corral the drunkest members of the audience was not one I relished. As I thought it over by myself, however, I realised that I had to be involved in it. My childhood enjoyment of commentary kicked in and I suggested that both I and the organiser should run the event, and commentate on the throws. I thought this would be a weird and enjoyable experience, which it was, but foremost in my mind was the prospect of doing the radio show the next day and declaring that I commentated on a game where drunk people threw pound coins at a bottle of Baileys. And I was paid for it. I was quite surprised as I asked for each new competitors name, how docile their reactions were. It took me by surprise that simply having a microphone, and having already been on probably helped, put me as quite a figure of authority. The reactions I received were the reactions of people who were speaking to someone who knew what they were doing, while I was, at that point, massively winging it. That, I suppose, is really the key to genuinely being in control. I was a lot calmer and more casual while performing on Friday, and I think that helped, I certainly enjoyed it more, and it felt less like a recitation and more conversational.

The whole ethos of saying yes and going for silly things has probably seeped into our worldview in part thanks to Ray Peacock, who is a bastion of willfully daft eccentric behaviour. We haven't quite got to his level of not worrying about things, but I'd like to think we are on that path. I am using 'we' to refer to The ACRE, I am not being overly bombastic.

When I drove up to Dafydd's house to pick him up on Saturday, he was being accosted on the doorstep by two Jehovah's Witnesses. There're always two, a master and an apprentice. He flashed me a huge grin through the middle of them as I parked up, and he tells me that the belly laugh I let out at that point was audible to him. It later came out that he had been talking with them for quite awhile, keeping them talking because he knew I would turn up soon. It amused me all the more to know that he had indulged them at the door purely to amuse himself and me, which in itself, for me, was more amusing and noteworthy than being accosted by the religious in the first place.

I hope we can keep true to this silliness and open-minded indulgence of the unusual, those two very small occurrences brightened up my weekend no end.

the end.