» I witnessed a crime

Not my story...
...but one of my favourites.

Many years ago, some of my friends used to do the rubber-sword live action RP - dressing up as orcs and running about in the woods hitting each, that sort of thing.
One Sunday a group of four or five were driving back in a van from an event where they had been playing Knights Templar when, driving past a bus stop, they happened to see some bloke pushing a girl about.
I often wonder what went through the minds of the bloke and girl as a battered transit van pulled up next to them and a gang of knights in shining armour piled out. They restrained the bloke, hailed a cab and paid for it to take the girl home, and then gave the man a short homily: "Remember, son, hitting women is wrong - and we're watching", before leaping back into the van and screeching away.

I wish I'd been there.
(Thu 14th Feb 2008, 12:19, More)

» Faking it

Da, Comrade.
I was feeling under the weather a few weeks ago and ended up skiving off on Friday in order to sit around the house, coughing in a decorously consumptive fashion like a Victorian orphan and generally feeling sorry for myself. After a while of this I got bored and fired up Mediaeval II: Total war, in which I quickly got engrossed in conquering Europe as the Scots; a challenging but ultimately possible pastime.
Eventually, after invading Mexico and Jerusalem I looked at the clock and realised it was the early hours of Saturday - I'd played for almost a full 12 hours without really noticing the passage of time and it struck me what a futile way I'd spent my time; rather than making the best of my enforced confinement, I'd done little but clicketty on the mouse for more than half a full day.

As a result of this, on Saturday I got up and headed out into the great wilds of London intending to find something worthwhile to do. Naturally this involved a trip to Forbidden Planet, but walking past St Giles-in-the-fields church round the corner from Tottenham Court Road tube station I noticed a sign on the door saying something along the lines of "Russian Poetry competition today - Admission free" and thought to myself Russian Poetry, eh? That sounds great! and went in there instead.
It turned out that this was part of an International Festival of general Russianess organised by an organisation called "Pushkin in Britain" and the church was full of Babushkas and the like.
Curious to know more and not put off by the babble of Russian that filled the building (there were surprisingly many people about) I snuck in, not wanting to draw attention to myself, and sat at the back in a row of dour-looking types who wouldn't have been out of place in the 1950's politburo. As I sat, an astonishingly pretty in that high-cheekboned-Slavic-way girl came up and jabbered something incomprehensible to me. I nodded and smiled and she jabbered some more and I, not wishing to seem impolite, nodded and smiled again so she thrust a sheet of paper into my hands and walked off. Looking at the piece of paper, it turned out to be a judges voting form for the poetry competition.
So it was that, despite my knowledge of things Cyrillic being limited to Krushchev's "Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!" speech and having no real idea what was going on, I ended up being a judge in a live-reading Russian Language poetry competition.
I don't know what the form is for judging poetry competitions. Perhaps it's like a job rating pornography and you're supposed to sit there saying things like "Phwor, I wouldn't mind some of her internal rhyming structure!" and "Look at the iambic pentameter on that!". I don't know. At least things were helped along by some of the poems being partially in English, which allowed me to infer that the competition seemed to be about the experience of being Russian in London but when it came down it the only way I could do my judging job at all was to base my marking on the overall Russianness of the entrants.
I tried my best. I tried to take it seriously. But I'm not sure that the broad grin of absurdist glee slapped across my face was the expression I was supposed to have.
Nobody else in there looked very happy, I can tell you. It was one of the things I was looking for in my marking. I was looking for: Dour? Check. Passionate? Check. References to Potatoes, Roman Abramovitch and polonium? Check. Astonishingly sexy Russian accents? Boy oh boy, yes. Hoody Hoo.
My overall winner was a woman whose poem appeared to be called "Do not forget the motherland!" and was delivered in the manner of an enthusiastic newscaster talking about the tractor production figues in about 1962.

It was, without a doubt, the coolest thing I did all weekend.
(Wed 16th Jul 2008, 12:17, More)

» Cringe!

I never met a white supremacist who wasn't a wanker.
There's a downside to aquiring lots of music from anyone who leaves me alone with their computer and a flash drive.

One good thing about being alone in the house is that I can have a bath with the door open. I can hit the 'random play' function on my computer and turn the volume up good & loud and have music in the bath. It's really nice; with (at last count) 85ish gb of music, I rather like hitting random - there's a lot of stuff I don't know about in there and random play throws up some interesting variety. Of course, one thing I hadn't realised during my music-filching from friends and acquaintances is some of the stuff I'd pick up in the process, amongst which, it turned out, were the jolly complete works of White Supremacist C&W singer 'Johnny Rebel' sitting in the depths of my hard drive. You can probably guess the rest.

Belting out of the speakers, good and loud, a cheery rendition of a song about what you might expect to see if you walked through an immigrant area of town. Suffice to say, it wasn't a song you want playing at full volume on Saturday afternoon in South London with the window open.
I sat bolt upright, hopped out of the bath, and ran through to turn it off before the neighbours grabbed their pitchforks and stormed my flat. Running through, I stubbed my toe painfully against the step and was reduced to a pathetic hopping and flailing into the living room. As I did so, I looked up through the window and directly into the eyes of the yuppie couple in the flat across the road.
Their thoughts could not have been more clear if they'd held a couple of flags and semaphored them to me.
"There is a fat, naked, wet man covered in bubbles in the flat opposite dancing to loud, White Supremacist Country & Western Music."
I turned the music off and fled from the room. Behind me, as if by telepathy, I could hear their conversation. "I'm going to sue that Estate Agent."

Once I got dried I searched my MP3's and deleted Johnny Rebel.
You can't be too careful.
(Mon 1st Dec 2008, 11:54, More)

» Conned

It's been sixteen years that are gone forever and I'll never have again
I arrived in Manchester to study at a pretend University in mid-1990. On (I think) my second day in town I was strolling down the main road (Oxford Road) when I was approached by a well-dressed man of early middle years.
"'scuse me, son?" He asked politely, so I 'scused him. "I wonder if you can help me. God forgive me, I'm trying to get to the men's hostel in Wythenshawe and I've not got my fare for the bus and, God forgive me, I was wondering if..."
Well, undoubtedly you can see where this was going. The upshot was that I was pretty callow and naive at the time so he got some cash out of me. I wised up pretty sharply when two days later, I was walking down Oxford Road again when he came up to me: "'Scuse me son, God forgive me, I'm trying..."

As time went by I realised that this man and a compatriot would walk down opposite sides of Oxford Road, accosting everyone who passed with the tale that, God forgive them, they'd lost their fare to the men's hostel in Wythenshawe and could they be spared some change? This went on for the entire five years I lived in Manchester. A couple of times a week, "'scuse me son..."
You know how it goes. Sometimes they got some money out of me if I was feeling flush, sometimes not. I learned the location of a Mens Hostel which was literally a hundred yards from Oxford Road and went through a period of directing them to it with all appearence of helpful cheer and goodwill, saving them the trouble of getting to Wythenshawe. They didn't like that much, because apparently the central Manchester hostel didn't have the right facilities. Perhaps the pool wasn't of the right quality, or the central Manchester hostel didn't give complimentary chocolates in the rooms and Wythenshawe did. I don't know.
The most striking thing about this bloke was that he didn't give any appearence of being your average homeless man. Whilst not smart, he certainly wasn't a bum, either. He plainly took care of himself; shirt and tie, personal hygeine, he made an effort, which was enough to at least predispose me to listen and sympathise and occasionally cough up.
I did wish he'd occasionally use a different story, though.

Eventually I left Manchester. A couple of weeks before I left, I had been walking through town in a pretty poor mood for lady-related reasons when: "'scuse me, son, God forgive me, but...". I turned to him and replied:
"Look, you've been trying to get to the mens hostel in Wythenshawe for five years. I really think you could have walked it by now."
And then I left town. I thought that was that.

A couple of weeks ago I was staying in a central Manchester hotel whilst up there to see chums and on Saturday morning I took a walk down Oxford Road to the Manchester Museum, one of my favourite places. As I was walking, a familiar figure approached me.
"'scuse me, mate? God forgive me, but I'm trying to get to the mens hostel in Wythenshawe..."
I was so shocked I put my hand in my pocket gave him a quid.
Subsequent to this, though, I've been thinking. I'm now fascinated by this man, and what his story must be. He's spent the last sixteen years walking up and down Oxford Road in Manchester, asking people for money to get to Wythenshawe. What could make someone think that this is a good way to spend all that time? I stop and think about the thimgs I've done since 1990. I've got a degree. I've started my own company. I've seen the view from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, the Temple of the Jaguar and the Space needle. I've seen attack ships in flames off the shoulder of Orion and T-beams glitter at the Tannhauser gate...
In the same period this guy, come all weathers, has been hanging around outside Whitworth Park pretending he wants to go to Wythenshawe. Is there a good living to be made on Oxford Road panhandling from students? Or is he on day-release from a local Sanitorium and knows nothing else? Or is he a tragic figure like King Pellinore or Sisyphus, doomed by the gods ever to quest for the mens hostel in Wythenshawe but never to find it?
I think the next time he collars me, probably in 2022 the way things are going, I'm going to offer to buy him a drink and ask him his story.
(Tue 23rd Oct 2007, 12:05, More)

» Spoilt Brats

What is being spoiled?
Something adults seem to forget is what a Lord of the Flies-like experiment in social Darwinism school actually is. The slightest weakness will be picked upon and utilised mercilessly by your equally insecure and cruel peers.
So it was with Cecil Smallpiece. That's not his name, But, frankly, it may as well have been. The real one wasn't much better. If you're a parent and your surname suggests that you have small genitals, I strongly advise you to ensure that your children are able to fight from an early age.

This was a mining town in the early 1980's. Don't believe the Billy Elliott-style poor miners with a tin tub in front of the fire image depicted - miners were bloody well paid for a hard job, and when that ended the shock was the harder for it.
Cecils parents weren't hit by this. His dad was a councillor and quite senior in the union, and as the rest of the town slipped into depression, their nest stayed feathered. He was the first person I ever knew to get a computer (A mighty ZX80!) and a video recorder (watching The Empire Strikes Back on someone's TV not in the cinema remains a powerful early memory of mine). Everything he asked for, he got - and his classmates promptly stole or broke. He had the biggest collection of toy soldiers of any child I ever saw. When the Dungeons & Dragons craze was at it's height he had *every* book and figure and game and add on and...you name it.
His parents told him he was talented and gave him lessons in four different muscial instruments. He had a private french tutor.
Everything he wanted or asked for, he got. He got stuff even when he didn't want or ask for it. He was spoiled rotten.

And I think he would have given every bit of it up to be liked. His name was a good starting point, but the obvious material wealth of his family bred resentment and the bullying never stopped. He kept up a facade to his family, but if school is the Serengeti, then he was the antelope who ran too slow.
He never hit back until it was too late, because well-brought up children didn't do that - and when he did his victim status was so well established that it just made things worse.
Years later we found out that his home life wasn't much better - it turned out that his dad had a nasty temper behind closed doors and would hand out beatings without provocation. A lot of the presents were guilt gifts.

Looking back now, I wonder who was spoiled. The kid who had everything? Or me, who didn't get much in the way of presents but who had parents who didn't kick me around? Him, who had private tuition in everything, or me, who had parents who encouraged me to be interested in stuff and learn what I enjoyed doing? Him, who would go home with his brand new games kit covered in mud and scabs after every games lesson and tell his mum how he scored three goals, or me, who wore my brothers old games kit but didn't have to lie about anything to make my parents proud?

Perhaps the reason adults forget how harsh school is is because we want to forget what we were like, and what we did to the "spoiled" kids.
(Thu 16th Oct 2008, 10:51, More)