1 post tagged “lots of parentheses”

I have made a conscious decision to write more stuff that isn’t related to insurance, and venturing the odd blog entry seemed like a good start. So I opened my wonderful ‘No One Cares What You Had for Lunch’ book to tell me what I should write, and chose a page at random. It said “Why not begin your blog entry by saying ‘So, here are a few odds and sods that happened to me over the weekend…’” – so that’s how we’ll begin:

• I went to ATP festival this weekend, down in the massive pallid inverted udders of Butlins, Minehead. Now, it is rare, but it is possible to wake up energised from a frontal lobotomy. I would like to present Butlins staff as evidence of this anomaly. Before I’d so much as entered the resort, I was stopped by a chipper young lad who first asked if I’d booked in, and then told me that my car smelt of burning.
  “Yeah, I know,” said I; “There’s an oil leak, and it’s dripping onto the exhaust.”
  “It doesn’t smell good,” said he; “I think it’s your brakes. You should probably get them checked out.”
  I don’t think yer man would have been able to interpret a look of utter incredulity, nor understand concepts such as “I just told you exactly what’s wrong with my car. I have a piece of paper to prove it. Or perhaps I should tear up my MOT certificate because the mechanic clearly didn’t rely on the superior diagnosis of some bumpkin’s nostrils?” So I just drove off.
  
  
• For those who don’t already know, this time round ATP was curated by Mike Patton and The Melvins, whose choices of ‘difficult’ bands and artists were hand picked especially to make the punters confused and anxious. For example, math-rock noiseniks Zu come with a guarantee that their well-scattered time-signature changes will evoke hypnosis or seizure in at least 40% of their audience. I also briefly watched Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, whose music was referred to as in the programme as being “often dubbed doom-jazz”. They played really slow soundtrack music. In the dark. It struck me that ‘watching’ a group of German skinheads (presumably – the lack of illumination made it difficult to tell) playing one note every thirty seconds on a sunny Saturday afternoon was quite an odd thing to do. At one point one of my friends noted “They are a lot more nuanced than their name suggests”. Well quite.
  
  
• It was a joy and a privilege to see Ms P there. Although I did learn that she is *way* more hardcore than I am. What can I say? I like sleeping.
  
  
• I went for a wander at about eight o’clock on Sunday morning, as I couldn’t sleep and I figured the cold air would clear my head. I saw almost no-one, except for Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers – who presumably hadn’t slept (he’d been absolutely binned during the previous evening’s performance) – who was harassing a member of staff. “Look, would you just give me your fucking hat?” he roared. It was a bowler hat.
  
  
• I cut the festival short by an evening because I had a wedding to attend in my home town. The groom was my best mucker when I was thirteen, who is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, but a bit of an animal. I’m not going to go into all of the stories, because there’s not enough room on the internet. But some of his friends are even worse (he at least knows that there are times when one should behave), so I was expecting some drama; and what I got far exceeded my expectations. One particular friend (who we’ll call Eyeball, due to his getting one MAD BULGING EYE after a few snifters) excelled himself. A selection of adventures that I observed included telling a table full of seniors that the ladies present were “radiating sexuality” (some interpreted this as charming, which was sweet in an odd way); licking one random unwitting lady’s arm (who took it surprisingly well); trying to pull down one different random unwitting lady’s trousers (who took it considerably less well); repeatedly trying to pull down the groom’s father’s trousers (he had already reprimanded Eyeball previously for his “disgusting” language in the presence of both seniors and children)… I’m sure there was plenty more. I couldn’t help thinking that – despite weddings commanding decorum – somebody would probably spark him out at some point. This feeling proved well founded when his brother nutted him unconscious in the car-park. He lay there for ages, while concerned members of staff milled around him checking his pulse and supplying fresh towels to mop up the blood. PC Plod pulled up later as well, but by this point Eyeball had regained consciousness and been sent home in a taxi.
  
  
• Other than that, the wedding was a delight. I shan’t bore you with all the details, but I caught up with loads of people that I should really make more effort with; and at the end of the evening I embraced a sweaty groom, and we told each other that we loved each other and meant it. Textbook.
  

Sadly the blog bible that told me what to write this evening didn’t tell me how to finish the entry. So now I’m a bit screwed. Sorry.