Suh-moking

I should be writing stuff for the show which is now 8 days away, but the Law of Wanna-do-this-instead has come down upon me with it's litigious might.

A friend of mine is putting together a collection piece (what a clumsy and vague explanation, you'd swear art was one of my cultural blind-spots) about smoking, specifically people's experiences or memories of it.  This is what I wrote.

*****

The piano cuts out again, abruptly.  The melody crashes short in an ugly bark of mashed keys.  Deep-set, pin-prick eyes glare imperiously out of their wooden container, the frustrated countenance of the music teacher is a physical extension of the dilapidated vertical piano.  Criticisms explode in place of the jaunty number of only seconds ago; shrill, piercing, heard but unheeded.

I'm only in the choir because I am a good boy.  I was asked to join, I agreed, like a good boy is supposed to.  It is a slow process of discovery for me.  My discovery is that I don't enjoy the regimented specifics of the big choir.  Singing becomes significantly less fun when I'm not allowed to warble wildly wheresoever my voice wants.

The class is split along alto/soprano lines, being a young group, tenor and bass hardly factor.  I'm sure there's something more societal and less biological in how the alto/soprano divide dovetails so perfectly with the male/female divide.  Or more specifically, male/female+camp males.  The girls undergo a grinding repetitive practice of their soaring soprano, like unfeasibly laborious angels.  The boys are trusted to behave in the back.

Mistake.

If I've learned anything from my time growing up as a boy, it is this: boys are not at peace quietly waiting their turn.  They are hardwired to be as rowdy and infuriating as is humanly possible without prompting all-out infanticide (kids in Herod's time were really annoying).  We talked about wrestling, and just as surely as icing sugar leads to cake, talking about wrestling leads to wrestling.  I am now 23 years old, and I still feel that I am only a pose and a dramatic glance away from a running lariat at any given moment.

As ex-housemates of mine would explain it, the teacher "lost her fucking bin" when we got too loud, her mahogany visage crumpling into fury as though portraying the effect of woodworm in time-lapse.  There's no way to plead wrestling-based innocence when your legs are tied to someone else's in a textbook figure-of-four leglock.  The teacher's tirade raged on, as legs came loose and we got to our feet.  My back was to the teacher, while my friend faced her head on, wearing his best "I'm disappointed in myself" face (copyright Conor Sampson (2010)).  I saw this as a personal challenge of mischief, and while he maintained his theatrical expression, I locked eyes with him, and under the shrieking crescendo of a bollocking, I narrowed my eyes in a broad parody of what I imagined cowboys to be, raised my hand to my mouth, and took a big old toke of my imaginary cigarette, rebellious nonchalance personified in glorious mime.  It is still possibly the funniest thing I have ever done.

He laughed, we got in worse trouble.

This is the closest I have ever come to smoking, and the closest to ever being naughty.

Exemplum: An Example From One's Own Life

My Mondays seem to be coloured by a necessity to get up ludicrously early in order to involve myself in community radio, be it to attend meetings or to actually record a show. This week then it was an earlier start again, as I/we had to be there for half 9 in order to undergo some training by an envoy from the BBC.

Luckily we decided to take our CDs and notes regardless, as the training was called off due to the person who was meant to train us becoming ill. We had reached the station almost an hour early, and so we wasted some time in a little café which was run by the world’s surliest salesperson.

The recording went ahead afterward, and was a lot more fun to do than the first, with both my radiopadre and I loosening up and embracing tangents. The downside to this turn of events is that some sections of our show might be slightly chaotic or difficult to listen to, although I’m not really sure how inaccessible our humour actually is. It is also good that we have begun our tenure in radio presenting with recordings that aren’t going out live and are able to be edited, as in one of the sections our silliness led to comments that a certain program was “gay”, which I foolishly said in whispered tones as though this was a shockingly unacceptable thing. I had intended to have this sound utterly ludicrous and have the joke collapse under the weight of its own idiocy, however it just made me sound homophobic, so I am glad that we were able to just take it out. I don’t mean this to sound as though I am saying: “oh I’m edgy with my ‘you can’t tell these anymore’ jokes”, because it wasn’t edgy, just stupid. I think its interesting that we have recorded about four hours worth of footage, which in reality is closer to two since it is packed with songs, and that is all it took before something came out wrong. Also, Dafydd almost said ‘fuck’, so we have now edited the suggestive ‘fuh’ out of the recording. Just so everyone knows it isn’t just me cocking up. And if you disagree, you are clearly a gay fuck.

I made a point of going to sleep early as my early starts look set to continue this week, as I had to drag myself out of bed today for a haircut, will have to do so again tomorrow for another pre-record (which I am looking forward to), and the rest of the week I will likely have to be up in order to practise material for an open spot I’m doing on Friday. Exciting and busy times.

I was involved in an incident as I made my way to the barber, and while I am amused in retrospect, at the time I was annoyed.

A new walkway has been constructed near to me, which came about due to the creation of the new road, which meant that it was no longer possible to nip through the industrial estate to pass into a town which has a train station. The new shiny path, or as I have now decided to call it: Path 2.0, skirts a small hill, and so provides a leisurely, and importantly a clean, stroll instead of what used to be a muddy and bog-filled dirt track. I do have a history of enmity with the path as when they were constructing the path they failed to put any signs up in the night declaring that there were foot-deep holes spaced out down the path, filled only with the potential of a lamppost. Now since there were no lampposts, and no sun or moon, I fell in one, it hurt, I got compensation, like those horrible people on the telly tell you to get and I spent it on something frivolous and silly no doubt and I’m not proud of myself and I don’t like falling down holes and hope it never happens again okay? Nowadays though, there are lampposts.

Not that I needed them since it was in the morning and sunny, so I strolled on amiably, listening to Atom and His Package and looking forward to a haircut. Of course looking at me you wouldn’t think I was having a good time, but that is neither here nor there: it is up to me when and where I practise my look of deadpan-disgruntlement. The woman who cut my hair was certainly unperturbed by my vacant gaze, though it is difficult to hold a miserable jib when I am looking directly into my own face. I begin to think “aww, smile!” and then I get incredibly angry as there is nothing that will make me grimace quicker than someone beseeching me to smile. Once again, I digress.

The actual anecdote revolves around a dog, a little mongrel that was wandering the path by itself. People often walk their dogs down the path, and so I naturally assumed it was with somebody, though I later came to discover it certainly was not. The way in which I discovered this was by looking sideways and down. The dog was keeping perfect pace with me, jogging alongside me as though he was my friend, although similarly giving off the vibe that I was his owner. This meant that when the dog later went about being a nuisance to other people walking their dogs, it was I who received suspicious glances until I, through a mix of gurning and mime, made it as clear as possible that I was in no way affiliated with the overly friendly hound. Luckily I avoided any situations of utter random hilarity, although a worry did pass through my head when the dog hung back in order to do his secondary business that an overly enthusiastic member of the police would leap out of the bushes in order to force me to remove the offending refuse. Bizarrely, the leavings were a pure cocaine white, which is most bizarre as I have absolutely no idea how white cocaine is.

The dog continued to follow me, which was becoming a serious nuisance as I was heading into town, where it would be necessary to cross quite busy roads, and even though I knew it would make a better anecdote, I didn’t really want the dog to get run over. Even though if I subsequently nursed it back to health I would most definitely have a worthy good deed for Jon Richardson, I knew it was a better deed to ensure the dog wasn’t run over in the first place. The path forks two ways at the end, one around the back of houses, the other over the new bridge, it is worth noting that I am a traditionalist and therefore always go the old way around the houses. As soon as I started on this path the dog sprang ahead down the street, and I saw my chance. I doubled back and cut across a little barrier in order to join the path across the bridge, and in so doing escape the dog. I thought myself a very canny fellow.

I only made it about halfway over the bridge though, before I realised that the dog, most likely utilising his extraordinary sense of smell if I’m any judge, was at my side again. I turned to it and said “Go away!” and it did.

Anti-climactic who?

At least it didn’t get run over (as far as I know).

On my way back, it wasn’t there…