This isn’t, as the title may lead you to believe, a Quentin Letts style rant about Health & Safety laws gone mad. Should you wish to read that, I’m sure there’s loads column inches elsewhere that are concerned with how people can’t take responsibility for their own wellbeing, needing to hold a building accountable for their hapless actions. I have recently been involved in a courtroom as a witness defending against one of those cases, but sadly can’t remember enough about it to try and explore the experience here. All I predominantly recall about my day in court was how I found our barrister quite attractive. She was a youngish Oxford graduate and I couldn’t help but be slightly aroused by a woman with such an extensive use of vocabulary. Or maybe it was when she put the grey wig on that did it for me, giving a kind of illusive frisson - the attainable aspirations of gerontophilia, but with the actual real face of an achingly beautiful woman. It left me confused, but mildly stimulated. Make no bones - I liked it. But sadly, there isn’t time to go any further – we must press on. No matter how unlikely it is that you will read another phrase in this entry boasting the same caliber of “the attainable aspirations of gerontophilia”.
This is about a different kind of compensation, which on the surface is more psychologically altruistic than self-servingly financial. Let me give you an example.
I once found myself calling for a taxi quite late on a Saturday night. The switchboard informed me that they wouldn’t be able to provide a car for about an hour. Figuring that this was a weekend primetime for the taxi trade, I cut my losses and booked the cab anyway, deciding that I was rather peckish, and could easily fill the next hour in the Indian restaurant across the road.
The establishment was bustling with inebriated Saturday night revelers, who were slightly loud and excitable, but not particularly misbehaving. Nevertheless, I found myself self-consciously trying to draw a line between myself and the archetypal obnoxious, boorish drunken animal-men that sometimes frequent such environments, shamelessly wishing to let the staff to know I wasn’t one of them. So when the waiter arrived with the menu, I meekly proffered a “thank you… cheers… thanks a lot”. Similarly, when he bought over a glass of water, I said something like “oh cheers, thanks, thanks so much”. Then upon taking my order and collecting my menu from me I said, “that’s brilliant, cheers, thanks again”.
Predictably, when the food arrived I was similarly gushing. The only time I broke from my torrent of thanks-you’s, was to apologise for knocking my fork off the table on to my lap as I attentively attempted to make room for him to place my naan down. The level of appreciation I’d shown so far had been astounding, and I hadn’t even eaten a single bite yet. At this rate by the end of my meal, I would be collapsing to my knees, hands clenched together, weeping hysterical gratitude at the waiter’s shoes. I had embarked on a series of social over-compensations to convey an image of being a “nice guy”, yet was even starting to irritate myself with my over-politeness. Why was I doing this, I asked myself?
I suspect this quirk is borne of my Liberal guilt. It was as if my groveling wasn’t just about me and the here and now, I was also somehow attempting to apologise on behalf of any of my fellow caucasians that may have ever shown rancour or ignorance. Not just to the Asians who ran this particular restaurant, but throughout the whole of history. I wanted to show that I was not another white ignorant man, yet ironically this is actually exactly what I am. The only thing I ever learned about history was at school, through the GCSE syllabus. And I have absolutely no idea why I’d feel so inclined to apologise to the staff of an Indian restaurant for either the Agricultural, OR the Industrial Revolutions.
You may think there is nothing fundamentally wrong with manners. And I’d agree. However, there is a line to be drawn between civility and my toadying, liberal (and arguably rather patronizing) over-compensation. And I would learn exactly where this line following the acquisition of second hand furniture from a gay man. When I arrived at the house to collect these goods, the brazenness of this particular man’s sexuality took me quite by surprise, and provoked a predictably pathetic attempt to demonstrate how much I wasn’t a homophobe through my trademark over-friendliness. Before I knew it we had exchanged phone numbers and I found myself getting text messages inviting me for a drink. You could argue the implications of my assumptions of any romantic intent were arrogant; that it was merely innocent friendliness which had motivated his invitation. Perhaps such a presumption even seems homophobic in itself. You might well be right. But whenever my friends text me to see if I fancy a drink, very few of them conclude that text with a little kiss. Furthermore, this interaction seemed only to cease following a text I sent where I referenced both my irritable bowel syndrome and the rather hirsute nature of my anal area. Incidentally, the comment itself bore no intended terminative motive, I was merely crafting a clumsy conversational response. Anyone who reads this blog will know I ALWAYS reference my irritable bowel whenever the opportunity arises. Look – I’m even doing it now!
Sometimes wonder just how accommodating I might have been, had the interaction continued. On paper it sounds ridiculous. Yet they do say we live in a compensation culture. This disgruntles many commentators, who see it being exploited for financial gain. I, on the other hand, am more concerned about having to oblige an anal consummation, just to carry on being polite.
Back By Popular Demand
Yes. You have read that rather bombastic title correctly. In order to gratify the constant requests of my regular fan-base, I have decided to resurrect my blog and attempt update it with a little more consistency.
Admittedly, when I say “Fan-base” I am actually referring to someone I bumped into in a pub. Technically more a friend than a fan, he was. And when I say “constant requests” I am referring to said friend casually asking if I’d “done any more of that blogging of late”; a telling statement also compelling me to concede the dubious credulity in claiming this fan-base is in any way “regular” (as presumably if he were, he would already be well aware whether I’d done any more of “that blogging of late”). But sadly, this is all the encouragement I need to get me going. I’ll take all the compliments I can get, no matter how tenuous - a proclamation I seem to remember also making in my last entry, hereby making “I’ll take all the compliments I can get” some kind of catchphrase. And with catchphrases like that, I bet Catherine Tate must be shitting herself.
Perhaps the reason I feel obliged to re-appropriate casual remarks as compliments is to counter-balance the off-handed insults that casually got bandied towards me that very same evening. I was out with Alan Apperley (incidentally, Alan recently released his debut novel “Indeterminable Creatures” which is rather excellent and should definitely be purchased, by you, from here. You’ve no excuse not to really). I was having an otherwise pleasant evening, when Alan’s wife suddenly asked me how old I was. For some reason, I have not yet learned my lesson, choosing once again to respond with THAT fateful question, despite the pain it always inevitably causes nowadays (and embarrassment it causes the other party – I hope). You know the one. Yes, that’s right – the one that you invariably always regret ever asking, but become too consumed by curiosity and misguided optimism to resist. Yes THAT question - the verbal equivalent of willing smacking yourself in the face with a trowel.
“Well how old do you think I am?” I ventured.
Depressingly, she punted at 36.
I know it’s my own fault, I should have known better than asking. But still, thirty-fucking-six?! Truly dismal! What makes it worse is that one would assume she has probably guessed my age then taken the obligatory few-year buffer of politeness off, meaning that to the casual observer I must have the appearance of a man knocking on the door of 40. It never used to be this way. Whenever people guessed my age whilst I was in my twenties, I would always come out as looking slightly younger than my actual age. Yet since hitting thirty, the guesses have seen a clear numerical advance in years, leading me to believe my appearance must have worryingly advanced roughly a decade in the space of 30 months. I sat for a while, zoned out of the conversation, contemplating what could have possibly aged me so much? Thankfully her husband was on-hand with an inadvertent answer though a third-party conversation he was having with someone else. They were talking about some chap or other they knew who was being referred to as “one of them baldies”, when suddenly, Alan felt the need to turn round and address me with a “no offense” gesture. I genuinely didn’t know what he was getting at, and looked over my shoulder, assuming he must have been referring to someone behind me. I regard myself as having a degree of self-awareness and whilst my head of hair is undoubtedly diminishing, I have only ever seen it as a bit of a recede, at worst a slightly limp-fronted and pervy Jack Nicholson. This was the first time I had been classified as an actual “baldy” – y’know – a proper “baldy”; so naturally my incredulity obliged me to draw attention to and consequently attempt to refute his comment. He responded by saying nothing, but merely lifting up my fringe with his hand and omitting a coy and disconcerting grin, with his stupid Tony Blair-esque face.
Well as you can imagine, the night had been ruined for me. I caught the next bus home and spent the remainder of the evening in front of the mirror, pulling my hair backwards and forwards. And I was quite shocked by how far things had gone, but I still don’t believe what I witnessed makes me a proper baldy. Were my face the character on your opponent’s card in the game “Guess Who?” and you asked if his card was a baldy and he said yes, I struggle to believe you would leave me standing beside Richard, Tom, Bill and Herman. Not just yet, anyway. Though undoubtedly, the rate of my recede now certainly makes this ‘proper baldy’ tag a strong forthcoming probability. And I have Alan to thank for this particular enlightenment. By rights I should have gone home and started TEARING HIS BLOODY NOVEL UP INTO TINY SHREDS. But I am not the type of churlish man who would allow rancor to corrupt his taste and would still recommend his novel to you, my readership , because it is genuinely brilliant. I can honestly say it is well worth the money. At the time of writing, the novel’s been out for 6 months and is currently retailing at about 24 pence on Amazon. But obviously my readership - which ostensibly consists of one reader - only looks at this blog very sporadically so by the time you get here, it might be best to check Amazon yourself to see if it’s any cheaper. Better still, why not email Alan directly and ask him to confirm Amazon’s price valuation of his work for you?
The prospect of losing my hair is not something I am particularly happy about, mainly because I am still single. And nobody can fall in love with a baldy, can they? It just doesn’t really happen. Sure, you see baldies who are married. It’s not that a baldy can’t be loved because you do see them around, all married and stuff. Quite brazenly married too, with their shiny heads and all. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. But I believe it is an evolutionary measure rather than a coincidence, that most baldies become baldies at certain age, when they have had a sporting chance to entrap a mate. So a lot of them are already safely married before they have the audacity to fully recede. And by this time, their respective partners just learn to live with it; ideally seeing past the desolate cranium, able to appreciate the security, life aspirations, history, trust and love which has developed between them in the interim. Or at the very least, viewing balding as a flimsy premise to end a relationship, consequently feeling obligated to stick with their baldy to the bitter end as an act of compassion, in the same way they might do had their husband fallen foul to a debilitating illness, or disfiguring accident. Either way, the point is that I don’t have that luxury. And the last thing I need is yet another obstacle to hinder my already moribund sex life. The only consolation being that at least my baldy gene will not receive the opportunity to get passed on to any poor, unwitting offspring. Evolution always finds a way.
So here I am again, back by popular demand.
Basically mourning the fact that the same can’t be said about my hair.
Admittedly, when I say “Fan-base” I am actually referring to someone I bumped into in a pub. Technically more a friend than a fan, he was. And when I say “constant requests” I am referring to said friend casually asking if I’d “done any more of that blogging of late”; a telling statement also compelling me to concede the dubious credulity in claiming this fan-base is in any way “regular” (as presumably if he were, he would already be well aware whether I’d done any more of “that blogging of late”). But sadly, this is all the encouragement I need to get me going. I’ll take all the compliments I can get, no matter how tenuous - a proclamation I seem to remember also making in my last entry, hereby making “I’ll take all the compliments I can get” some kind of catchphrase. And with catchphrases like that, I bet Catherine Tate must be shitting herself.
Perhaps the reason I feel obliged to re-appropriate casual remarks as compliments is to counter-balance the off-handed insults that casually got bandied towards me that very same evening. I was out with Alan Apperley (incidentally, Alan recently released his debut novel “Indeterminable Creatures” which is rather excellent and should definitely be purchased, by you, from here. You’ve no excuse not to really). I was having an otherwise pleasant evening, when Alan’s wife suddenly asked me how old I was. For some reason, I have not yet learned my lesson, choosing once again to respond with THAT fateful question, despite the pain it always inevitably causes nowadays (and embarrassment it causes the other party – I hope). You know the one. Yes, that’s right – the one that you invariably always regret ever asking, but become too consumed by curiosity and misguided optimism to resist. Yes THAT question - the verbal equivalent of willing smacking yourself in the face with a trowel.
“Well how old do you think I am?” I ventured.
Depressingly, she punted at 36.
I know it’s my own fault, I should have known better than asking. But still, thirty-fucking-six?! Truly dismal! What makes it worse is that one would assume she has probably guessed my age then taken the obligatory few-year buffer of politeness off, meaning that to the casual observer I must have the appearance of a man knocking on the door of 40. It never used to be this way. Whenever people guessed my age whilst I was in my twenties, I would always come out as looking slightly younger than my actual age. Yet since hitting thirty, the guesses have seen a clear numerical advance in years, leading me to believe my appearance must have worryingly advanced roughly a decade in the space of 30 months. I sat for a while, zoned out of the conversation, contemplating what could have possibly aged me so much? Thankfully her husband was on-hand with an inadvertent answer though a third-party conversation he was having with someone else. They were talking about some chap or other they knew who was being referred to as “one of them baldies”, when suddenly, Alan felt the need to turn round and address me with a “no offense” gesture. I genuinely didn’t know what he was getting at, and looked over my shoulder, assuming he must have been referring to someone behind me. I regard myself as having a degree of self-awareness and whilst my head of hair is undoubtedly diminishing, I have only ever seen it as a bit of a recede, at worst a slightly limp-fronted and pervy Jack Nicholson. This was the first time I had been classified as an actual “baldy” – y’know – a proper “baldy”; so naturally my incredulity obliged me to draw attention to and consequently attempt to refute his comment. He responded by saying nothing, but merely lifting up my fringe with his hand and omitting a coy and disconcerting grin, with his stupid Tony Blair-esque face.
Well as you can imagine, the night had been ruined for me. I caught the next bus home and spent the remainder of the evening in front of the mirror, pulling my hair backwards and forwards. And I was quite shocked by how far things had gone, but I still don’t believe what I witnessed makes me a proper baldy. Were my face the character on your opponent’s card in the game “Guess Who?” and you asked if his card was a baldy and he said yes, I struggle to believe you would leave me standing beside Richard, Tom, Bill and Herman. Not just yet, anyway. Though undoubtedly, the rate of my recede now certainly makes this ‘proper baldy’ tag a strong forthcoming probability. And I have Alan to thank for this particular enlightenment. By rights I should have gone home and started TEARING HIS BLOODY NOVEL UP INTO TINY SHREDS. But I am not the type of churlish man who would allow rancor to corrupt his taste and would still recommend his novel to you, my readership , because it is genuinely brilliant. I can honestly say it is well worth the money. At the time of writing, the novel’s been out for 6 months and is currently retailing at about 24 pence on Amazon. But obviously my readership - which ostensibly consists of one reader - only looks at this blog very sporadically so by the time you get here, it might be best to check Amazon yourself to see if it’s any cheaper. Better still, why not email Alan directly and ask him to confirm Amazon’s price valuation of his work for you?
The prospect of losing my hair is not something I am particularly happy about, mainly because I am still single. And nobody can fall in love with a baldy, can they? It just doesn’t really happen. Sure, you see baldies who are married. It’s not that a baldy can’t be loved because you do see them around, all married and stuff. Quite brazenly married too, with their shiny heads and all. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. But I believe it is an evolutionary measure rather than a coincidence, that most baldies become baldies at certain age, when they have had a sporting chance to entrap a mate. So a lot of them are already safely married before they have the audacity to fully recede. And by this time, their respective partners just learn to live with it; ideally seeing past the desolate cranium, able to appreciate the security, life aspirations, history, trust and love which has developed between them in the interim. Or at the very least, viewing balding as a flimsy premise to end a relationship, consequently feeling obligated to stick with their baldy to the bitter end as an act of compassion, in the same way they might do had their husband fallen foul to a debilitating illness, or disfiguring accident. Either way, the point is that I don’t have that luxury. And the last thing I need is yet another obstacle to hinder my already moribund sex life. The only consolation being that at least my baldy gene will not receive the opportunity to get passed on to any poor, unwitting offspring. Evolution always finds a way.
So here I am again, back by popular demand.
Basically mourning the fact that the same can’t be said about my hair.
Bruce's Stag Weekend
The stag do is a concept which probably best epitomizes masculinity in the modern age. Yet it seems for someone like me, stag weekends have the rather astonishing ability to allow the word “man” to be something that is simultaneously literal, yet oddly tenuous.
This particular stag-do begins in a car park in Manchester on a bright sunny Friday morning, and I am standing in shorts next to my parked-up Nissan Micra feeling a sense of dread and nervousness.
Perhaps you believe that irrespective of how happy and fulfilling the resulting outcome of his wedding should hopefully turn out to be, if anything, it should have been the stag’s liberty to feel any doubts, stresses and apprehensions. But this does not make my own fears any less genuine. Because he might well be approaching the life-changing transition of matrimony, but in less than an hour’s time, I will be playing football. And whilst I do not intend to sound like I am belittling whatever pressures or sense of occasion the stag may feel, I would argue that what I was about to do was definitely braver.
Let me explain why, using the following three points.
1) I have not kicked a football since school.
2) School was a very long time ago.
3) I was no good at kicking a football even when I was at school.
That last point cannot be overstated. I really was no good a kicking a football. That is not to lazily assume I was always the kid cursed with the indignity and humiliation of being picked last for the teams in P.E.; because in my defence, it was usually more 50/50 between me and this other lad, who had chronic asthma and six toes on his right foot (the latter should not be regarded as particularly exceptional, given the type of small rural West Midlands village I grew up in). Yet even if this hadn’t been the case, there wasn’t a single thing I ever enjoyed about the sport, even right down to the attire. Particularly the shorts. I have never felt more vulnerable either before or since those old P.E. days. I went to school in the eighties, when shorts really did mean shorts. I just never trusted them. The impending threat of popping out of them was all too prominent, and I’m not trying to be boastful either; this was a threat that was irrespective to the size of one’s decidedly averaged sized genitalia. It genuinely wouldn’t surprise me if the writers of the film Basic Instinct, had actually gathered some inspiration from seeing us sat on the benches in our school changing room. In fact retrospectively, the timing of the film’s release coinciding with our school days seems suspiciously impeccable.
And then there was the game itself; which for me personally, seemed to entail hovering uselessly about on a field impatiently awaiting the sound of a shrill whistle. Not a noise commonly associated with beauty, but which I became conditioned to believe sounded like a choir of heavenly angels. If the ball went into the top half of the pitch, I might, at a push, jog a few paces forward in a conceited attempt at enthusiasm. Or if the action entered our half of the pitch, I might half-heartedly trot a few paces the other way. On some rare occasions some deluded idiot would kicked the ball towards me (or “pass” it, as I believe is the correct terminology). Whenever that happened, I’d stand frozen in bewilderment, as a herd of twenty schoolboys stampeded toward this spherical thing I'd unwittingly found in my possession (not a sentence I am proud of that one, and certainly less so were it quoted out of context). My instinctive resolve was always to run round and round the ball in some sort of panicky circle for a while not knowing quite what to do, before finally opting to kick this round article (or ‘football’ as I believe is the correct terminology) toward any old random wilderness; sometimes at the feet of someone from my team, sometimes to a member of the opposition. That was ostensibly my whole game-plan in its entirety, and mostly it kept me reasonably successful in my heady aspirations of sporting underachievement.
So as you can imagine, football was only a game I would have ever played under duress. And yet here I was, about to do something I detested under my own volition; and since we were hiring 5-aside indoor soccer pitch between us, I was actually PAYING for the privilege. Furthermore, the more astute of you may have noticed that this was a FRIDAY morning, so I had even taken a day’s holiday off work to be putting myself through this! What on Earth had led me here? To this car park in Manchester? To do something that now seemed suddenly much less preferable to a day at work?
One (or more) of the following three points may be possible explanations:-
1) I am the sort of person who will generally agree to do anything. So long as it’s in the future. So long as there is a buffer of time ahead of me to provide a nice cushion, I will be pretty much amenable to most ideas.
2) Subconsciously this may possibly have something with my similarly previously documented hypochondria. Perhaps I only agree to do stuff in the future because I assume I’ll already be dead before they arrive.
3) Preceding the agreement of my participation, I may have had a particularly good gym session that charged me with endorphins and hubris. “Why not play football?” my brain might have asked. “You have put the hours in at the gym. You’re certainly a lot fitter than you used to be at school. You never know, given the benefit of age and experience, you might just get on the pitch and something might suddenly click into place and you’ll start playing like Bobby Charlton!” (Note to self, don’t listen to brain – the resulting ache alone, which followed the game would soon be enough to heavily disprove such a flimsy theory).
Co-incidentally, the Stag party comprised mainly of a lot of people who I had been to school with, and had not really seen since my salad days (ironically named, since I ate far fewer salads back then). This was quite good, because expectations of my prowess would be low. But there were also some of the stag’s more recently-made friends who I had never met before. And the one thing that seemed to unite them was that they were all men who now had families, or were in long-term relationships and successful jobs and arrived in cars whose models were called things like ‘BMW Hercules’ or ‘Rover Thor’, which is quite humbling for a man who drives a Nissan Micra at 32 and furthermore feels immense gratitude that he can afford to do so. And whilst I know that Rover Thor and BMW Hercules aren’t actually real names, the fact that my knowledge and enthusiasm towards cars is so tenuous only serves to diminish the already pitiful number of points on my ‘Top Trump card’ of masculinity even further.
I knew my old school chums would be well aware of my lacking sporting prowess, but it was the people I had not met before who I worried most about. I am socially anxious and find it difficult to get to know new people at the best of times, so the thought of having to do so through my incompetence on a football pitch seemed fraught with potential humiliation. And this was an anxiety I held before it was revealed to me that a referee had been booked especially for our game; effectively meaning I would now also be paying towards having my incompetence and humiliation professionally observed and assessed. I suspect that was the very moment my sense of maleness was so low, that I was half considering skipping the post-match shower, just in case I found that my penis suddenly became inverted.
But y’know... The game wasn’t that bad after all. Don’t get me wrong, I did not suddenly play with the ability of Bobby Charlton like my briefly deluded brain briefly suspected I might. I didn’t even play with the ability of Bobby Davro, truth be told. But it was ok. I gave it a shot. And once in a while some of the more seasoned players even gave me the odd compliment for my efforts at tacking and saving a goal (my football knowledge is so lacking that it was impossible to tell whether I was merely being patronized. But fuck it, I took the compliments anyway). And despite the fact that Dave Barnett received an excruciatingly painful ankle injury, leaving him writing in agony, allowing him to be liberated the pitch (the lucky bastard), I did get ample opportunity to play in my favorite position a fair bit. (My favourite position being substitute, obviously).
And with the much-dreaded football game all done, survived and out of the way, it was time to enjoy the rest of the stag weekend.
“So what are we doing tomorrow?” I casually asked Bruce as we left the changing room.
“Oh, there’s a home derby on nearby”, he replied, “Think we’re going to see that. Stockport vs. Macclesfield”.
But this wasn’t the only nasty surprise that would be sprung on me. Apparently the too-good-to-be-true budget price City centre apartments that had been booked for our stay had no on-site parking. And the nearest car-park I could find to our accommodation was at the Arndale Centre. The nasty surprise being that parking cost £25 per night! You can call me tight-fisted if you must, but it seemed absurd for my car to stay in accommodation that was almost as expensive as mine. £50 to park for the weekend! It’s not like the car-park even had any ensuite facilities. Thank God it was just a “stag-weekend”. For had it been a stag “fortnight”, because given the market value of my car, then technically, it would have been cheaper for me to have just driven my Micra into the nearest scrap-yard and simply just left it there.
The Stockport vs. Macclesfield game wasn’t all that bad. I have not been to a football match for about 12 years, because I always found them so mind-numbingly dull. But nowadays they can be much more enjoyable, thanks to the advent of mobile technology which at least allows you to tit around on the internet for 90 minutes. However, for any other non-football fans reading, I must pass on a small piece of cautionary advice. At one point I looked up to witness a goal being scored, and in order to show a bit of polite interest, I burst into enthusiastic applause. Obviously, being a dispassionate observer, I didn’t actually care that Stockport had attained a goal, and was pretty much faking it. A bit like an orgasm that the wives of some of those disgusting, clammy football-loving faces must also feel obliged to fake. But unfortunately, I had not done enough ground-level research, so had failed to ascertain that we were located in the Macclesfield end. Consequently, I found myself the recipient of dagger glances. And to let me tell you, these lower division football fans are not the type of people one would wish to disgruntle. Honest to God, I had seen some of them buy pies, proper pies, in a round foil pie dish, then (and this is the astonishing part) just eat them WITH THEIR OWN BARE HANDS. No word of a lie, they devoured them without using ANY CUTLERY WHATSOEVER! These football types are like savages or something!
I mentioned this to one of the stag party, who seemed genuinely nonplussed by my observation, as if going to see football and eating a pie with your fingers, is the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it is. I wouldn’t know. As I have mentioned several times before, I am not really much of an authority on maleness. In fact at times throughout this weekend, I started to suspect I was simply just not made of the sufficient “man”-stuff required for stag do’s, like I was in some way unqualified. I even began thinking I’d possibly be more suited to hen dos. I’ve seen them hen parties round the town – squealing in equal measures of excitement and despair, and drinking blue drinks. That doesn’t seem as hard. I reckoned I could easily do that.
Or could I? On both Friday and Saturday night I would be the first to retire to the apartment. Yet I did so with a degree of self-justifying nonchalance, convincing myself that my restraint was borne of some situational upper-hand. I reasoned that 1am was a perfectly acceptable time to head home. As I mentioned earlier, most of the party are in settled relationships. It is probably rare they get such an opportunity nowadays, and having obtained a “free pass” from their respective partners to engage In this debauchery, it is natural they would wish to take full advantage of it and stay out as late as possible, and live like they were over-excited teenagers once more. Bless ‘em. But this is not such a novelty for me. I am a single man. I don’t have the responsibility of compromise with other people like my friends do. I could be out late indulging in this sort of debauchery EVERY SINGLE NIGHT if I so choose. That’s right, EVERY NIGHT! Admittedly I spend most nights alone, lying face down in my pillow crying myself to sleep because of the aching loneliness of my existence. But that’s irrelevant: at least I’ve got the option.
Perversely this trip actually allowed me a rare opportunity to spend the night in a shared bed. Actually, perhaps “perversely” is not a particularly great word to use in this context, as I was sharing a bed with Ben; the best-man who’d been a close friend of mine at school. He has lived in the North-West since moving there at university age. I have not seen much of him in the intervening years, but he has changed very little. Although I think there may have been a degradation in his bowels if I’m to be honest, as I seemed to spend the night in a dense cloud of his perpetual, never-ending supply of flatulence. Still – it was nice that we could still feel comfortable enough to share such an intimacy after all this time, because surely you can’t get much more intimate than having particles of someone else’s fecal matter wafting up your nose for the duration of a night.
So that just about sums it all up. It wasn’t until returning to the multistory car park on the Sunday morning that I was able to reflect on the weekend. And despite what this blog may have led you to believe, in all seriousness I really had actually enjoyed this stag-do. Any initial reticence about seeing old school friends would turn out to be completely unfounded. I feared the last 14 years and their acquisition of posher cars, more lucrative careers and kids might leave a social void between us; but it was just like the old days again, as if we were all back at school in the science labs or something. So much so, that when I got into the drivers’ seat, I even found a crocodile clip that someone had surreptitiously attached to the back of my shirt.
Ah how the old memories came flooding back…
This particular stag-do begins in a car park in Manchester on a bright sunny Friday morning, and I am standing in shorts next to my parked-up Nissan Micra feeling a sense of dread and nervousness.
Perhaps you believe that irrespective of how happy and fulfilling the resulting outcome of his wedding should hopefully turn out to be, if anything, it should have been the stag’s liberty to feel any doubts, stresses and apprehensions. But this does not make my own fears any less genuine. Because he might well be approaching the life-changing transition of matrimony, but in less than an hour’s time, I will be playing football. And whilst I do not intend to sound like I am belittling whatever pressures or sense of occasion the stag may feel, I would argue that what I was about to do was definitely braver.
Let me explain why, using the following three points.
1) I have not kicked a football since school.
2) School was a very long time ago.
3) I was no good at kicking a football even when I was at school.
That last point cannot be overstated. I really was no good a kicking a football. That is not to lazily assume I was always the kid cursed with the indignity and humiliation of being picked last for the teams in P.E.; because in my defence, it was usually more 50/50 between me and this other lad, who had chronic asthma and six toes on his right foot (the latter should not be regarded as particularly exceptional, given the type of small rural West Midlands village I grew up in). Yet even if this hadn’t been the case, there wasn’t a single thing I ever enjoyed about the sport, even right down to the attire. Particularly the shorts. I have never felt more vulnerable either before or since those old P.E. days. I went to school in the eighties, when shorts really did mean shorts. I just never trusted them. The impending threat of popping out of them was all too prominent, and I’m not trying to be boastful either; this was a threat that was irrespective to the size of one’s decidedly averaged sized genitalia. It genuinely wouldn’t surprise me if the writers of the film Basic Instinct, had actually gathered some inspiration from seeing us sat on the benches in our school changing room. In fact retrospectively, the timing of the film’s release coinciding with our school days seems suspiciously impeccable.
And then there was the game itself; which for me personally, seemed to entail hovering uselessly about on a field impatiently awaiting the sound of a shrill whistle. Not a noise commonly associated with beauty, but which I became conditioned to believe sounded like a choir of heavenly angels. If the ball went into the top half of the pitch, I might, at a push, jog a few paces forward in a conceited attempt at enthusiasm. Or if the action entered our half of the pitch, I might half-heartedly trot a few paces the other way. On some rare occasions some deluded idiot would kicked the ball towards me (or “pass” it, as I believe is the correct terminology). Whenever that happened, I’d stand frozen in bewilderment, as a herd of twenty schoolboys stampeded toward this spherical thing I'd unwittingly found in my possession (not a sentence I am proud of that one, and certainly less so were it quoted out of context). My instinctive resolve was always to run round and round the ball in some sort of panicky circle for a while not knowing quite what to do, before finally opting to kick this round article (or ‘football’ as I believe is the correct terminology) toward any old random wilderness; sometimes at the feet of someone from my team, sometimes to a member of the opposition. That was ostensibly my whole game-plan in its entirety, and mostly it kept me reasonably successful in my heady aspirations of sporting underachievement.
So as you can imagine, football was only a game I would have ever played under duress. And yet here I was, about to do something I detested under my own volition; and since we were hiring 5-aside indoor soccer pitch between us, I was actually PAYING for the privilege. Furthermore, the more astute of you may have noticed that this was a FRIDAY morning, so I had even taken a day’s holiday off work to be putting myself through this! What on Earth had led me here? To this car park in Manchester? To do something that now seemed suddenly much less preferable to a day at work?
One (or more) of the following three points may be possible explanations:-
1) I am the sort of person who will generally agree to do anything. So long as it’s in the future. So long as there is a buffer of time ahead of me to provide a nice cushion, I will be pretty much amenable to most ideas.
2) Subconsciously this may possibly have something with my similarly previously documented hypochondria. Perhaps I only agree to do stuff in the future because I assume I’ll already be dead before they arrive.
3) Preceding the agreement of my participation, I may have had a particularly good gym session that charged me with endorphins and hubris. “Why not play football?” my brain might have asked. “You have put the hours in at the gym. You’re certainly a lot fitter than you used to be at school. You never know, given the benefit of age and experience, you might just get on the pitch and something might suddenly click into place and you’ll start playing like Bobby Charlton!” (Note to self, don’t listen to brain – the resulting ache alone, which followed the game would soon be enough to heavily disprove such a flimsy theory).
Co-incidentally, the Stag party comprised mainly of a lot of people who I had been to school with, and had not really seen since my salad days (ironically named, since I ate far fewer salads back then). This was quite good, because expectations of my prowess would be low. But there were also some of the stag’s more recently-made friends who I had never met before. And the one thing that seemed to unite them was that they were all men who now had families, or were in long-term relationships and successful jobs and arrived in cars whose models were called things like ‘BMW Hercules’ or ‘Rover Thor’, which is quite humbling for a man who drives a Nissan Micra at 32 and furthermore feels immense gratitude that he can afford to do so. And whilst I know that Rover Thor and BMW Hercules aren’t actually real names, the fact that my knowledge and enthusiasm towards cars is so tenuous only serves to diminish the already pitiful number of points on my ‘Top Trump card’ of masculinity even further.
I knew my old school chums would be well aware of my lacking sporting prowess, but it was the people I had not met before who I worried most about. I am socially anxious and find it difficult to get to know new people at the best of times, so the thought of having to do so through my incompetence on a football pitch seemed fraught with potential humiliation. And this was an anxiety I held before it was revealed to me that a referee had been booked especially for our game; effectively meaning I would now also be paying towards having my incompetence and humiliation professionally observed and assessed. I suspect that was the very moment my sense of maleness was so low, that I was half considering skipping the post-match shower, just in case I found that my penis suddenly became inverted.
But y’know... The game wasn’t that bad after all. Don’t get me wrong, I did not suddenly play with the ability of Bobby Charlton like my briefly deluded brain briefly suspected I might. I didn’t even play with the ability of Bobby Davro, truth be told. But it was ok. I gave it a shot. And once in a while some of the more seasoned players even gave me the odd compliment for my efforts at tacking and saving a goal (my football knowledge is so lacking that it was impossible to tell whether I was merely being patronized. But fuck it, I took the compliments anyway). And despite the fact that Dave Barnett received an excruciatingly painful ankle injury, leaving him writing in agony, allowing him to be liberated the pitch (the lucky bastard), I did get ample opportunity to play in my favorite position a fair bit. (My favourite position being substitute, obviously).
And with the much-dreaded football game all done, survived and out of the way, it was time to enjoy the rest of the stag weekend.
“So what are we doing tomorrow?” I casually asked Bruce as we left the changing room.
“Oh, there’s a home derby on nearby”, he replied, “Think we’re going to see that. Stockport vs. Macclesfield”.
But this wasn’t the only nasty surprise that would be sprung on me. Apparently the too-good-to-be-true budget price City centre apartments that had been booked for our stay had no on-site parking. And the nearest car-park I could find to our accommodation was at the Arndale Centre. The nasty surprise being that parking cost £25 per night! You can call me tight-fisted if you must, but it seemed absurd for my car to stay in accommodation that was almost as expensive as mine. £50 to park for the weekend! It’s not like the car-park even had any ensuite facilities. Thank God it was just a “stag-weekend”. For had it been a stag “fortnight”, because given the market value of my car, then technically, it would have been cheaper for me to have just driven my Micra into the nearest scrap-yard and simply just left it there.
The Stockport vs. Macclesfield game wasn’t all that bad. I have not been to a football match for about 12 years, because I always found them so mind-numbingly dull. But nowadays they can be much more enjoyable, thanks to the advent of mobile technology which at least allows you to tit around on the internet for 90 minutes. However, for any other non-football fans reading, I must pass on a small piece of cautionary advice. At one point I looked up to witness a goal being scored, and in order to show a bit of polite interest, I burst into enthusiastic applause. Obviously, being a dispassionate observer, I didn’t actually care that Stockport had attained a goal, and was pretty much faking it. A bit like an orgasm that the wives of some of those disgusting, clammy football-loving faces must also feel obliged to fake. But unfortunately, I had not done enough ground-level research, so had failed to ascertain that we were located in the Macclesfield end. Consequently, I found myself the recipient of dagger glances. And to let me tell you, these lower division football fans are not the type of people one would wish to disgruntle. Honest to God, I had seen some of them buy pies, proper pies, in a round foil pie dish, then (and this is the astonishing part) just eat them WITH THEIR OWN BARE HANDS. No word of a lie, they devoured them without using ANY CUTLERY WHATSOEVER! These football types are like savages or something!
I mentioned this to one of the stag party, who seemed genuinely nonplussed by my observation, as if going to see football and eating a pie with your fingers, is the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it is. I wouldn’t know. As I have mentioned several times before, I am not really much of an authority on maleness. In fact at times throughout this weekend, I started to suspect I was simply just not made of the sufficient “man”-stuff required for stag do’s, like I was in some way unqualified. I even began thinking I’d possibly be more suited to hen dos. I’ve seen them hen parties round the town – squealing in equal measures of excitement and despair, and drinking blue drinks. That doesn’t seem as hard. I reckoned I could easily do that.
Or could I? On both Friday and Saturday night I would be the first to retire to the apartment. Yet I did so with a degree of self-justifying nonchalance, convincing myself that my restraint was borne of some situational upper-hand. I reasoned that 1am was a perfectly acceptable time to head home. As I mentioned earlier, most of the party are in settled relationships. It is probably rare they get such an opportunity nowadays, and having obtained a “free pass” from their respective partners to engage In this debauchery, it is natural they would wish to take full advantage of it and stay out as late as possible, and live like they were over-excited teenagers once more. Bless ‘em. But this is not such a novelty for me. I am a single man. I don’t have the responsibility of compromise with other people like my friends do. I could be out late indulging in this sort of debauchery EVERY SINGLE NIGHT if I so choose. That’s right, EVERY NIGHT! Admittedly I spend most nights alone, lying face down in my pillow crying myself to sleep because of the aching loneliness of my existence. But that’s irrelevant: at least I’ve got the option.
Perversely this trip actually allowed me a rare opportunity to spend the night in a shared bed. Actually, perhaps “perversely” is not a particularly great word to use in this context, as I was sharing a bed with Ben; the best-man who’d been a close friend of mine at school. He has lived in the North-West since moving there at university age. I have not seen much of him in the intervening years, but he has changed very little. Although I think there may have been a degradation in his bowels if I’m to be honest, as I seemed to spend the night in a dense cloud of his perpetual, never-ending supply of flatulence. Still – it was nice that we could still feel comfortable enough to share such an intimacy after all this time, because surely you can’t get much more intimate than having particles of someone else’s fecal matter wafting up your nose for the duration of a night.
So that just about sums it all up. It wasn’t until returning to the multistory car park on the Sunday morning that I was able to reflect on the weekend. And despite what this blog may have led you to believe, in all seriousness I really had actually enjoyed this stag-do. Any initial reticence about seeing old school friends would turn out to be completely unfounded. I feared the last 14 years and their acquisition of posher cars, more lucrative careers and kids might leave a social void between us; but it was just like the old days again, as if we were all back at school in the science labs or something. So much so, that when I got into the drivers’ seat, I even found a crocodile clip that someone had surreptitiously attached to the back of my shirt.
Ah how the old memories came flooding back…
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