At the moment I’m waiting to find out when the interviews will be for the one available studio position in, the now flitting, S&UN prepress.
Barry and myself took a trip into Glasgow on last Wednesday after being invited over to Central Quay to visit the Daily Record building, S&UN Prepress’ new home. It’s more than a little odd going over and being giving the guided tour before you even know if you have a job.
We overestimated the journey time and we found ourselves waiting outside the building in the warm sunshine to go into the large office block on the Central Quay, looking out over the sparkling waters of the Clyde. It was around lunchtime so there were a few people milling about. Some smokers hanging around the corner of the building and some runners enthusiastically jumping out from the office block’s revolving door, people leaving the office on their lunch break to go out for a quick jog up and down the riverside. Barry and myself watched wondering how they managed to fit it all in, in a half hour.
When the time finally reached the fifteen minutes early marker, a reasonable amount of time to be mega early we thought, we went through the revolving door and gained our visitors’ passes from the front desk before heading into the canteen to wait for Kirsty, our host and tour guide. As we sat waiting I couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen in the coming weeks. Would I be lucky enough to continue with my employment at the newly formed Media Scotland, would I be leaving with a redundancy payment, were there other jobs out there and was the lasagne really worth £3.50? I can make great lasagne but I wouldn’t charge someone £3.50 for a bit.
A canteen in a place of work that actually sells hot food?
I’ve never worked in such a place. The last time I was served a hot meal on a weekday lunchtime by a canteen was probably in Primary school. The meal was always spooned out from the large steel containers by the line of dinner ladies on to those all in one plastic trays, sectioned off in bevelled shapes for each course.
Getting school dinners was always a rare thing for me. School dinners were only a very occasional Friday treat, if treat is the word for it. The chocolate Rice Crispie cake was about as good as it got. Chaz always reserved his piece of Chocolate Crispie cake early morning, chatting up the dinner ladies, probably giving them some sort of sales pitch, even at that age.
Whereas, I was a packed lunch man. A couple of pieces, a packet of crisps and a fun size mars bar if it was Friday. You had to make sure you ate all your pieces though. Mr Stevens, the Janitor, stood over the large bin, eyeing you, and everything you chucked away, up suspiciously, whilst maintaining a constant vigil over the goings on over the whole lunch hall. If you even attempted to chuck half a sandwich away he would launch into a barrage of abuse, his voice echoing throughout the giant room, shaming you before the whole lunch hall and sending you back to your table with your tail between your legs and your unwanted piece that your Mum had apparently spent so much time over making that morning. Nobody was sure how Mr Stevens knew it was your Mum that had made your pieces that morning, not to mention how long it took her. He was always a highly suspicious character himself, if you ask me.
Anyway, in the Glasgow canteen, after a talking with one of the sales girls, who had moved over from the Hamilton building a few weeks before, Kirsty soon turned up and after a short chat gave us the tour of the building, going from the top, second level, where Prepress would now be based, all the way down through the busy floors, to the all important basement car park. There’s even a gym for when you’re wanting to run off some executive stress or pump some iron, handy for when you’ve had too much lasagne in the canteen.
An interesting visit but all slightly uncomfortable considering I have no idea yet on whether I’ll actually be working there or not.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label School. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label School. Tampilkan semua postingan
Rabu, 28 Maret 2012
Minggu, 10 Juli 2011
Restaurants, rehearsals and running
We’ve not heard back from Chaz yet. Both Ka and myself text him a message yesterday to ask him how he got on with his casting audition to be in the next big Brad Pitt movie being filmed in Glasgow.
Chaz and myself ordered dinner in the Crooked Lum on Thursday night, two three course meals, taking full advantage of a 25% off voucher Chaz had procured from a taxi driver. I ordered a fillet for my main but Chaz had to do better. He challenged himself by ordering the steak platter, a massive square plate of food which included a large sirloin, fillet and ribeye along with a mountain of chips, a massive mushroom and a giant half tomato that looked like it had been grown in some kind of mutant vault in a local Nuclear facility.
Over dinner Chaz informed me that he was to go along on Saturday in a suit and tie for a movie audition to be an extra in a forthcoming Brad Pitt movie production which apparently involves zombies, being zombies or being attacked by zombies. I’d always thought Glasgow was the perfect setting for a zombie movie – although I’m not sure we need more of them diving about Glasgow than there is already.
By trade, Chaz is a car salesman but I’d also always thought he’d have made a rather good actor. Chaz lamented the end of his drama days over dinner. His best part to date being the role of Lead Pharisee in the school Easter play in the late eighties. Chaz managed to turn the part of the Chief Pharisee into a sort of flamboyant Police Informant type Government spy character. His biggest scene, pivotal to the capturing of Jesus, included Chaz skidding on to the stage and informing the gathered characters that:
“It’s alright, he’ll do it, at ten o’clock tonight!”
Unfortunately his adventures in drama ended during the final rehearsals for that particular scene with the skid on to the stage not quite ending where it should have, resulting in a continuous skid off the stage and the bashing of an eye off the end of a gym bench below.
Let’s hope he gets on better with his zombie audition. I hope he’d done his homework and watched Sean of the Dead, Land of the Dead or has just simply walked up Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night.
Or the Hamilton town centre on a weekday, for that matter, a strange, destitute place into which my work has just moved and is taking some getting used to. Ka and myself met for lunch last week, my first week in the Hamilton office, and we sat on a bench in the middle of the local shopping precinct to eat our lunch. Strange, smelly, lonely looking characters soon began to circle us like vultures, eyeing either the bench, our lunch or the very flesh which clings to our bones. I wasn’t sure which, but it was enough to put me off my ham sandwich and Irn Bru.
Thankfully, Ka and myself ate in far nicer surroundings yesterday. Once again, we found ourselves dining out, once more in a restaurant, Grace and Dougie treating us to a meal for our anniversary, which was then followed up with a few coffees and shandies at a local pub.
With all this eating in mind we woke this morning finding our usual trip to the gym a bit of a stretch, so instead opted for a run round Calderwood and St. Leonards, circling around the neighbourhood, one lap being just over 5km. It went well considering it was our first jog in months, since before Ka fell pregnant. So Ka and myself are feeling rather pleased with ourselves. Next time we’ll make it two laps. Mum, Dad and Lynsey were popping round for a cuppa though so we had an excuse today to make it a single lap. We’ve promised ourselves to go running more often, especially in the run up to Ka’s run for charity in October (details of which can be found here http://www.justgiving.com/Kelly-Ann-Reid).
There is a turn off, halfway round, where you can trim a good half a mile off the whole lap. Ka was tempted to take this route as she was knackered, struggling for breath and generally getting grumpy after fifteen minutes running and stressed that she may have to ease herself back into the running by taking a shorter route round. When I refused to go this way and told her she would be fine with various other words of encouragement she swiftly replied with a barrage of abuse, just as we passed a row of quiet houses. The occupants of these houses had probably been enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon up until that moment when they spilt their teas, woke from their naps or jumped from behind their Sunday papers to the loud, shouting couple jogging by their front window.
No pain, no gain, they say. Although I didn’t believe it was the pain of the hurling abuse from your stressed wife as she runs around the block after you. So with little argument after this I reluctantly agreed to take the shorter route only for Ka, not more than 5 minutes later, to agree to carry on with the full lap, missing the halfway point turn off. Typical Ka. She was either fiercely determined to complete the planned route, or was simply refusing to go along with anything I agreed to.
It’s all well and good running for miles on a treadmill in a gym but when it comes to real outdoor running it’s very different. Hills appear on your route spontaneously before you, inclines that you did not even realise were inclines when you usually drive along them in the car. Midges and bugs are everywhere too. On passing various clusters of bushes and foliage various sizes of insects would instantly decide to aim for you face, particularly the eyes, nostrils, or even worse, the mouth. You’ll be chatting away to your fellow jogger, or arguing, as you tackle the latest incline when all of a sudden a passing midge that had previously been buzzing about a local bush, would take a notion for a kamikaze mission with your tongue, stopping and firing itself straight into your oral cavity.
Something a little more pleasant is the nodding to and greeting of fellow joggers. You notice this when you’re out walking on the hills too. You’re all complete strangers but you follow some sort of unspoken code with which you nod or greet passing joggers, as if acknowledging each others’ athletic prowess and sportsmanship tackling the dangerous pavements and grass verges.
A greeting of a different kind I received today was a wolf whistle. I’ve never been wolf whistled before but managed not to get too excited about it as it was from a trio of giggling 12-13 year olds who passed by me giggling. A few moments later their giggling was interrupted by the jogger they’d failed to notice behind me, elbowing them off the pavement. Ka mumbled some more abuse as she caught up, running up behind me just as the rain started to fall and a jeep carrying our former neighbour Kay, passed by. The horn tooted as the neighbour waved at us, grinning smugly over her phone from behind her windscreen in her nice, warm, dry 4x4.
With the exception of the interfering insects, the threatening rain and the teenagers, the 5km was a bit of a breeze to be honest and I was pretty surprised at how easily I managed it.
Well, when I say easily we did finish the run with faces the colour of tomatoes. I was suffering with weird blurred vision after coming to a stop outside outside our front door, wiping the dead midges from my face as the old legs began to quiver a little with exertion. The walk I performed going up the stairs to our front door wouldn’t have looked out of place in Chaz’s zombie movie.
Chaz and myself ordered dinner in the Crooked Lum on Thursday night, two three course meals, taking full advantage of a 25% off voucher Chaz had procured from a taxi driver. I ordered a fillet for my main but Chaz had to do better. He challenged himself by ordering the steak platter, a massive square plate of food which included a large sirloin, fillet and ribeye along with a mountain of chips, a massive mushroom and a giant half tomato that looked like it had been grown in some kind of mutant vault in a local Nuclear facility.
Over dinner Chaz informed me that he was to go along on Saturday in a suit and tie for a movie audition to be an extra in a forthcoming Brad Pitt movie production which apparently involves zombies, being zombies or being attacked by zombies. I’d always thought Glasgow was the perfect setting for a zombie movie – although I’m not sure we need more of them diving about Glasgow than there is already.
By trade, Chaz is a car salesman but I’d also always thought he’d have made a rather good actor. Chaz lamented the end of his drama days over dinner. His best part to date being the role of Lead Pharisee in the school Easter play in the late eighties. Chaz managed to turn the part of the Chief Pharisee into a sort of flamboyant Police Informant type Government spy character. His biggest scene, pivotal to the capturing of Jesus, included Chaz skidding on to the stage and informing the gathered characters that:
“It’s alright, he’ll do it, at ten o’clock tonight!”
Unfortunately his adventures in drama ended during the final rehearsals for that particular scene with the skid on to the stage not quite ending where it should have, resulting in a continuous skid off the stage and the bashing of an eye off the end of a gym bench below.
Let’s hope he gets on better with his zombie audition. I hope he’d done his homework and watched Sean of the Dead, Land of the Dead or has just simply walked up Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night.
Or the Hamilton town centre on a weekday, for that matter, a strange, destitute place into which my work has just moved and is taking some getting used to. Ka and myself met for lunch last week, my first week in the Hamilton office, and we sat on a bench in the middle of the local shopping precinct to eat our lunch. Strange, smelly, lonely looking characters soon began to circle us like vultures, eyeing either the bench, our lunch or the very flesh which clings to our bones. I wasn’t sure which, but it was enough to put me off my ham sandwich and Irn Bru.
Thankfully, Ka and myself ate in far nicer surroundings yesterday. Once again, we found ourselves dining out, once more in a restaurant, Grace and Dougie treating us to a meal for our anniversary, which was then followed up with a few coffees and shandies at a local pub.
With all this eating in mind we woke this morning finding our usual trip to the gym a bit of a stretch, so instead opted for a run round Calderwood and St. Leonards, circling around the neighbourhood, one lap being just over 5km. It went well considering it was our first jog in months, since before Ka fell pregnant. So Ka and myself are feeling rather pleased with ourselves. Next time we’ll make it two laps. Mum, Dad and Lynsey were popping round for a cuppa though so we had an excuse today to make it a single lap. We’ve promised ourselves to go running more often, especially in the run up to Ka’s run for charity in October (details of which can be found here http://www.justgiving.com/Kelly-Ann-Reid).
There is a turn off, halfway round, where you can trim a good half a mile off the whole lap. Ka was tempted to take this route as she was knackered, struggling for breath and generally getting grumpy after fifteen minutes running and stressed that she may have to ease herself back into the running by taking a shorter route round. When I refused to go this way and told her she would be fine with various other words of encouragement she swiftly replied with a barrage of abuse, just as we passed a row of quiet houses. The occupants of these houses had probably been enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon up until that moment when they spilt their teas, woke from their naps or jumped from behind their Sunday papers to the loud, shouting couple jogging by their front window.
No pain, no gain, they say. Although I didn’t believe it was the pain of the hurling abuse from your stressed wife as she runs around the block after you. So with little argument after this I reluctantly agreed to take the shorter route only for Ka, not more than 5 minutes later, to agree to carry on with the full lap, missing the halfway point turn off. Typical Ka. She was either fiercely determined to complete the planned route, or was simply refusing to go along with anything I agreed to.
It’s all well and good running for miles on a treadmill in a gym but when it comes to real outdoor running it’s very different. Hills appear on your route spontaneously before you, inclines that you did not even realise were inclines when you usually drive along them in the car. Midges and bugs are everywhere too. On passing various clusters of bushes and foliage various sizes of insects would instantly decide to aim for you face, particularly the eyes, nostrils, or even worse, the mouth. You’ll be chatting away to your fellow jogger, or arguing, as you tackle the latest incline when all of a sudden a passing midge that had previously been buzzing about a local bush, would take a notion for a kamikaze mission with your tongue, stopping and firing itself straight into your oral cavity.
Something a little more pleasant is the nodding to and greeting of fellow joggers. You notice this when you’re out walking on the hills too. You’re all complete strangers but you follow some sort of unspoken code with which you nod or greet passing joggers, as if acknowledging each others’ athletic prowess and sportsmanship tackling the dangerous pavements and grass verges.
A greeting of a different kind I received today was a wolf whistle. I’ve never been wolf whistled before but managed not to get too excited about it as it was from a trio of giggling 12-13 year olds who passed by me giggling. A few moments later their giggling was interrupted by the jogger they’d failed to notice behind me, elbowing them off the pavement. Ka mumbled some more abuse as she caught up, running up behind me just as the rain started to fall and a jeep carrying our former neighbour Kay, passed by. The horn tooted as the neighbour waved at us, grinning smugly over her phone from behind her windscreen in her nice, warm, dry 4x4.
With the exception of the interfering insects, the threatening rain and the teenagers, the 5km was a bit of a breeze to be honest and I was pretty surprised at how easily I managed it.
Well, when I say easily we did finish the run with faces the colour of tomatoes. I was suffering with weird blurred vision after coming to a stop outside outside our front door, wiping the dead midges from my face as the old legs began to quiver a little with exertion. The walk I performed going up the stairs to our front door wouldn’t have looked out of place in Chaz’s zombie movie.
Kamis, 03 Maret 2011
Wrong turns and red cards
"I think I've taken a wrong turn", I growled as I pulled up alongside Glasgow's Royal Infirmary after leaving Colin's house in Kirkintilloch for home.
It could be the current roadworks on the A80 or it could just be my navigational skills but leaving Kirkintilloch to join the motorway proved itself too confusing for me last night. Especially being in the darkness, surrounded by traffic cones and countless 40mph signs, glaring everytime your headlights hit. For some reason I decided to take the road for Glasgow, believing that to be the best route back to EK. Of course I was wrong and if I'd stayed on the traffic cone filled road coming out of Kirkie, I'm sure I would have come across a road for Carlisle, somewhere through the plastic orange forest. These roadworks on the A80 feel like they have been a permanent fixture for years. It certainly feels like years driving up it, having to stay at 40mph the whole way. Still, nice to see the Motorway Maintenance employees are keeping their jobs.
Kenny and myself had been invited by Colin to watch the old firm game in his new pad. We had a good night. Colin was the perfect host, serving up a big footie buffet comprising of pizzas, sausage rolls, mushroom tasting scotch eggs and enough onion rings to feed a stadium along with plenty of beer, coke, bru and he even took requests for tea and mulled over the possibility of a bovril.
I'm not really into football in any big way and never have been. I always yearned to be a good footie player and enjoyed playing when I did but never could quite get the hang of it. I was always the last, or the second last, to be picked for the playground teams. I even tried to get into the school team at one point, under the watchful eye of Mr Stevens, the Janitor (a big, tall, scarey guy with a shock of grey hair who shouted at you if you tried to throw your lunch in the bin). When the other guys in school were all collecting the Football Panini stickers, desperately trying to swap for their favourite player, I was collecting the Star Wars stickers, trying to get the Millenium Falcon. I guess I was always just too much of a geek.
As a result, I've only ever had a feint interest in the sport of the masses, watching only the occasional game or getting excited about a World Cup and then watching a whole four matches. So I turned up at Colin's house not even knowing who played for what team. Bougherra? Was he not in the Jungle Book? With Baloo? (nose). It's been months and months since I last sat and watched any game of football. The World Cup final was probably the last football game I actually made a point of sitting and watching and last night reminded exactly why.
Last nights performance was more of a circus than a football game. Overpaid, over hyped egos, pouncing about a pitch for 95 minutes, doing their best to look aggressive, baring some teeth, squaring up shoulders, waving hands about whilst screaming and swearing, knowing full well most viewers back home, young and old, are more than capable of the odd lip reading session. One minute acting like cavemen, and the next rolling around the grass after being tapped on the shin.
One Rangers player spent five minutes talking to a rather embarrassed looking injury man desperately trying to make it look as if the bounce he'd suffered on the back of the head, from a passing thigh, was actually, in any way, painful.
It didn't stop with the injury time along with the red and yellow cards though. After the final whistle the managers started haranguing each other, Ally McCoist and hired ned, Neil Lennon, almost starting a boxing match in the dugout. The two, supposedly professional, bosses exchanging words and then growling at one another, spitting venom as police and trainers rush in to break them up. Or rather just before they would have had to actually hit each other which, let's be honest, was never going to happen. You wonder what they would have done if everyone had just left them to it. They would have angrily looked into each others eyes for a while longer and then looked around for suggestions on what to do next as Jim White got all excited in the commentators box.
Neil Lennon called they're little exchange 'passion' today. A wonderful statement. Scottish sports fans all over the country, watching and listening, believing it's okay to act like a complete kn*b becuase it's merely considered 'passionate'. You wouldn't appreciate the game without the 'passion'. A great example of Scottish football to set, not only the West of Scotland but, the rest of the football watching world.
34 arrests were made in and around the stadium for a variety of racial, breach of the peace and sectarian offences.
Stamping out sectarianism in Scotland, the big battle Alex Salmond is trying to win. It certainly won't be helped by those two numpties having a go in the dugouts.
Like I said though, what do I know, I was never into football.
Glad of it.
Saying that, I did win the first sweepstake based on the first player to score so the 95 minutes was not a complete waste of television time. £5 I won. Kenny, you owe me a pound.
It could be the current roadworks on the A80 or it could just be my navigational skills but leaving Kirkintilloch to join the motorway proved itself too confusing for me last night. Especially being in the darkness, surrounded by traffic cones and countless 40mph signs, glaring everytime your headlights hit. For some reason I decided to take the road for Glasgow, believing that to be the best route back to EK. Of course I was wrong and if I'd stayed on the traffic cone filled road coming out of Kirkie, I'm sure I would have come across a road for Carlisle, somewhere through the plastic orange forest. These roadworks on the A80 feel like they have been a permanent fixture for years. It certainly feels like years driving up it, having to stay at 40mph the whole way. Still, nice to see the Motorway Maintenance employees are keeping their jobs.
Kenny and myself had been invited by Colin to watch the old firm game in his new pad. We had a good night. Colin was the perfect host, serving up a big footie buffet comprising of pizzas, sausage rolls, mushroom tasting scotch eggs and enough onion rings to feed a stadium along with plenty of beer, coke, bru and he even took requests for tea and mulled over the possibility of a bovril.
I'm not really into football in any big way and never have been. I always yearned to be a good footie player and enjoyed playing when I did but never could quite get the hang of it. I was always the last, or the second last, to be picked for the playground teams. I even tried to get into the school team at one point, under the watchful eye of Mr Stevens, the Janitor (a big, tall, scarey guy with a shock of grey hair who shouted at you if you tried to throw your lunch in the bin). When the other guys in school were all collecting the Football Panini stickers, desperately trying to swap for their favourite player, I was collecting the Star Wars stickers, trying to get the Millenium Falcon. I guess I was always just too much of a geek.
As a result, I've only ever had a feint interest in the sport of the masses, watching only the occasional game or getting excited about a World Cup and then watching a whole four matches. So I turned up at Colin's house not even knowing who played for what team. Bougherra? Was he not in the Jungle Book? With Baloo? (nose). It's been months and months since I last sat and watched any game of football. The World Cup final was probably the last football game I actually made a point of sitting and watching and last night reminded exactly why.
Last nights performance was more of a circus than a football game. Overpaid, over hyped egos, pouncing about a pitch for 95 minutes, doing their best to look aggressive, baring some teeth, squaring up shoulders, waving hands about whilst screaming and swearing, knowing full well most viewers back home, young and old, are more than capable of the odd lip reading session. One minute acting like cavemen, and the next rolling around the grass after being tapped on the shin.
One Rangers player spent five minutes talking to a rather embarrassed looking injury man desperately trying to make it look as if the bounce he'd suffered on the back of the head, from a passing thigh, was actually, in any way, painful.
Neil Lennon called they're little exchange 'passion' today. A wonderful statement. Scottish sports fans all over the country, watching and listening, believing it's okay to act like a complete kn*b becuase it's merely considered 'passionate'. You wouldn't appreciate the game without the 'passion'. A great example of Scottish football to set, not only the West of Scotland but, the rest of the football watching world.
34 arrests were made in and around the stadium for a variety of racial, breach of the peace and sectarian offences.
Stamping out sectarianism in Scotland, the big battle Alex Salmond is trying to win. It certainly won't be helped by those two numpties having a go in the dugouts.
Like I said though, what do I know, I was never into football.
Glad of it.
Saying that, I did win the first sweepstake based on the first player to score so the 95 minutes was not a complete waste of television time. £5 I won. Kenny, you owe me a pound.
Senin, 11 Oktober 2010
Back to the Future and the bow and arrows
Back to the Future. Still a brilliant movie, even 25 years after it's original release. We went along to see the 25th anniversary release in a packed cinema on friday night and, although a movie I've seen more than a few times on DVD, TV and the good old VHS, it was still just as entertaining on the big screen. From the opening sequence with the guitar amplifier blasting Marty back into that book shelf, him lifting his big, mirror sunglasses from his nose to the parents first kiss and the Doc's climatic struggle at the top of the clock tower it has all aged pretty well. Unlike Lucas and other fantasy movie makers, Zemeckis has refrained from any jazzy new effects and shoddily pieced together 'extra special' sequences, which says it all really. There's not much you can do to a classic.My mate Chaz introduced me to this movie back in, what was probably, 1986 one day after school. He was always the car maniac and kept harping on about this movie with the DeLorean.
Before dinner, after getting back to his house from school, we had been firing arrows inadvertantly on to his roof and over into his neighbours garden with my new bow, the same bow Kenny, my brother, later 'borrowed' for a halloween party. Kenny was going as Robin Hood. A feather cap and green tights, and all he needed to complete the outfit was my much loved bow and arrow set. I had told him no, he wasn't borrowing it, as he would break it. But no. Mum said 'just lend your wee brother it for the day and he'll bring it back'.
Did he bring it back? No. Or maybe he did but it was in pieces, I can't remember the exact details of the remains. So I lost most of my arrows to Chaz's neighbours, and his roof in Tasman Drive, and my bow to a shoddy Robin Hood in green tights and glasses. I was gutted about that.
Anyway, on the same visit to Tasman Drive, I was also introduced to Chaz's German Sheperd, Max. Chaz swears to this day that I spent the visit cowering from his dog. Chaz will occasionally bring it up to this day, how I was so terrified of his beast of a dog. How I yelped with fear when I seen it lumbering towards me. The truth of the matter was that I perhaps was cowering to some extent, but only because, upon meeting Max, I discovered his liking for the crotch and it spent most of the first hour of Back to the Future trying to eat my groin. Very off-putting.
It never put me off the Back to the Future movies though as I became hooked as a kid and beyond. Rather disconcertingly, some of the guys in the work call me 'Doc Brown' and have been for some time, for some, strange reason. Not sure why. Gareth and DVD Andy asked if, after watching the movie on friday night, I stood outside and signed autographs? Ka frowned on hearing this and, remembering Marty's Dads dancing at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, said that I had more similarities with George McFly rather than the Doc.
Rabu, 18 Maret 2009
The corners of my mind
Happy Birthday to my brother Kenny who is... erm... something today. I can't remember. What age is he? I've completely lost track. Wait a minute, there's two years between each of us which would presumably mean he is 27. I think. I hit the grand old age of 31 this year so he must be 27, Lynsey in the middle being 29... ah, but he was born in 1983 so he must be 26. This is worrying. Not only are my siblings getting scarily old around me but I am suffering early memory decline and dementia. It's not the first time I've had this moment of realisation. A few weeks ago I was prompted to remember something that happened way back in primary school and I realised I could barely remember anything that happened in Art School, never mind High School and Primary. Is this normal? If not, I'm in trouble. Friends from school and college have often started a conversation with 'Remember when...?' and I embarrassingly have to pretend I remember, hoping they're not making some crazy, ridiculous occurence up in order to catch me out. Worryingly I've found myself in, and quite often caused, quite a lot of crazy, ridiculous situations so it's a pretty safe bet nodding my head and agreeing with some fake laughter. Kenny probably has more than a few of his own embarrassing memories of me kept instore for his best man's speech. Memories which will no doubt be used to laugh at me rather than with me. Primary school has to be the hardest of all the memory centres to dip into. The occasional funny moment springs to mind such as the Tambourini paper towel eating incident and other such wonders like the eating of sock elastic and pulling it back out through the nostril (something, I hasten to add, I did not take part in). Chaz's leap to sickening freedom, Colin's mass saying, playing Blinds Man Buff with a blind person, acting out Star Wars scenes in the schoolgrounds and the footie game in which I got belted in the balls with a Mitre Delta. Okay, I'm now remembering more of the stupid stuff rather than the stuff that actually matters such as my best grades, my timestables and my brother's age (though being hit in the groinal region should probably matter to some extent to any bloke - no matter the age). Perhaps I'm also exaggerating about the timestables. I do remember most of them and even sing them sometimes in my head, in the strange, ritualistic way we were taught (sometimes it takes ages to work something out when your standing in the middle of a supermarket). Primary school was torture a great deal of the time so this would perhaps account for the lack of memories. Perhaps I've deliberately shoved all the bad memories to the back of my head, under a psychological rug. A particularly heavy psychological rug which is rarely moved to hoover under for fear of the memories being set free and running wild in the brain. Perhaps some other memories have been mistakenly swept under the rug and in order to find the one you need you have to trawl your way through all the bad memories. In order to solve the Kenny's age problem I'll just use the most obvious solution and ask him. He won't mind. He barely remembers anyone's birthday and he's only... what... 27?
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