What were you afraid of when you were younger that seems silly to you now?
Submitted by wandie
When you are four the fact that they can't go up stairs, thus making them quite easy to get away from, doesn't make them less scary.
On my many travels around the world I have had a lot of time to think.
Perhaps those hours could have been better spent by doodling, playing video games or just chewing gum, drooling or reading People magazine but like the fool I am I chose to think. As a result of all that thinking I have decided to let you in on a secret; There is more to life than death and taxes.
Not much more, but something.
Those things are: Chinese Restaurants and Irish pubs.
Think about it. Have you ever been anywhere that doesn't have one or both of those institutions?
If I were interested in creating a new religion that espoused another mad conspiracy theory (see Mormons, Christians, Muslims, Judaeism, Communism, Burtism, Buddhism and anyone else I may have forgotten to offend) I would develop a theory about how these two nations are in the grasp of the Devil and doing his bidding.
If you are interested I'll get you started with a couple of lines.
Feel free to join in and maybe we could create a new liturgy.
Lets face it. It has to be better than the rubbish that's on offer now.
"Behold the sacred Scroll of Number 47" (fried rice with green chillies)
"Brothers, Let us drink from the haloed cup of innebriation.
Touch the cup of death so that we may extend our life and ward off the inevitable" (Guiness)
Just a thought. Maybe you had it too
Pity me. Reach into your soul and dredge up the best of your sympathy. I have a hangover!
This is no ordinary head thumper. I am not suffering from some self-induced malaise this time. For once I have the excuse of being able to blame almost all my friends for my current state of dehydration. You see it really was nothing to do with me. Unless you consider the fact that this weekend was my stag do.
I suppose, in a small way, I am responsible for instigating the entire debauched lunacy by asking the nearly Mrs B to marry me but I maintain that the resultant war wounds are not my fault. In fact I would go so far as to blame Meneer Heineken and his cohorts. If he hadn't made the brew I wouldn't have been forced to drink it now, would I?
But you don't want to know about that do you?
You want the dirt. The sleeze and the sorrow. You want to know what happened and who did what to whom. You want to know how many people were arrested and what costume I was forced to wear whilst dancing on stage at the Foile Berger don't you? Well I am not telling.
So there.
What goes on tour stays on tour.
Well nearly. There is one thing I think you should know about this weekend of drunken revelry. You can sum it up like this.
Paris is an extortionate rip off but utterly utterly lovely.
Oh, go on then. Just one or two snippets. Just to prove that I am still the man I was when I left.
Actually that's not true. I am in fact a better man. (Despite the fact that my brain is now the size of a Water shrews gonads).
Mrs Nearly B and I have been together for 13 years so far and in all that time she has never doubted my fidelity. In fact she has proved to be an amazing woman. Even when I brought an entire troop of naked dancers into the living room and let them rub jam into my arm pits and then let them lick the fragrant goop off again she has never doubted that she is the one for me. She didn't bat an eyelid as I frolicked in a whirlpool bath with ten nubile playboy bunnies and she wasn't even phased by the sudden appearance of Lindsey Lohan, Jennifer Saunders and a small ferret called Ralph in our bed one night. Because folks, she trust me.
Yes she does.
Completely.
She trust me because she knows that I am totally and utterly crap at playing away. She knows that by the time I had realised that the opportunity to indulge in some nudey prod games had arisen I would probably have already drunk myself into a stupor, eaten too much and fallen asleep or talked so much the object of passion had left and gone to sleep it off under a flyover somewhere where the drone of traffic was more soothing than my monotone drawl.
So when the weekend of my Bucks party hove into view she knew that there was no way I would be coming home with hickeys and a nice collection of STD's. And as ever, she was right.
The event was organised with military precision.
London - Paris - London. Hospital. Home. Wedding. Divorce court. Penury. Gambling habit. Death and a small headstone. Got it?
On day 2 of the blast we were in Paris. The sun was setting and we had been touring the sights of the city. We had seen an Irish pub, a Belgian pub, three or four French Bistro bars and probably some others that I have forgotten by now. The crew was still together and we had ended up sitting in a bar in the Pigale region of the city. For those of you who are not as cosmopolitan as I am (CUE SMUG GRIN... AKA RICTUS) this is the red light area.
We had established ourselves in a bar where the manager was delighted to have suddenly acquired the alcoholic equivalent of a gushing oil well. With beer at E10 each and six of us drinking about 4 an hour he was suddenly watching his profits rise as fast a sailors dick on shore leave. And so when we made ready to leave he used every trick in his book to get us to stay. In other words he gave us free beer and a discount off further rounds. It worked and so we remained there for ... forever I think but I am hazy on the exact times.
When the beer was drunk and the party was in full flow we inevitably decided to visit a strip club. It is traditional after all. So the gang of stout yeomen staggered up and away and blew kisses to invisible friends in the bar. Fortune favours the inebriated and as luck would have it there was a strip joint right next door! Would you believe it?
In we all trooped, having first negotiated an amazing discount of about 40 centimes on the entry price. We are the toughest of the tough!
Inside it was like a ... well I am not sure but it was bloody horrible. Dark, Dank and tiny. There was one light bulb and a dance floor about as big as a tablecloth. The walls were all made from artex and painted oxblood red. In short it was as sleazy as sleaze itself. Proper job.
There was a pole in the middle of the room. There was no one spinning on it. One of our party - a distinguished doctor would you believe - decided to have a go. Up he got, grabbed the pole and swung around. It was then that we heard the screams! The manager came rushing into the room and grabbed the pole.
"NO TOUCH NO TOUCH!"
I had heard of no touch the girls but no touch the pole? Surely that was the point of the place?
Be that as it may, the pole wasn't actually fixed to the ceiling. Brilliant!!!! A pole dancing club with no pole. I was already feeling at home.
Then the dancers came in. There were two of them. One was called Claud the other Bernard. They had a little hop and sat in the corner opposite us and waited. So did we.
When the girls finally came in they were amazing. Not because they were stunning looking or exotically dressed but because one of the them was the size of Sly Stallone and wearing dungarees and the other one was wearing a woolly jumper.
The cheers went up! At last!! Woman flesh!!
Except there wasn't any.
They refused to do anything at all.
Not so much as a nipple.
We had found the only lap dancing club in the entire universe where no one but the customers danced and there was no nudity!!!
We had spent E100 for six beers and a piss.
Excellent value all around in Parisien terms.
My sort of place.
My sort of story.
My sort of Stag.
I will be running for Pope in 2010. Please vote for me
Sometimes a night away from home for work can almost be worth it. This is the beautiful Exeter Cathedral.
I'm not really a massive fan of the Royal's but can now number a whopping two (tenuous) connections with the Queen.
This picture of the most recent, is the beautiful Drumkilbo House near Perth in Scotland where the Queen spent the night back in 1963 and where I spent the week with friends back in July.
I was surprised too. (I bet her room wasn't in the servants quarters.) Not only did they allow us to rent the place but also Glamis Castle is just a few miles down the road and was the childhood home of the Queen Mother.
Now Drumkilbo is beautiful and amazing to stay in, particularly when you live in a small one bedroom flat in Stockwell but for the Queen who has a handful of castles and palaces perhaps it was a novelty because if I'd been given the choice, I'd have probably plumped for Glamis:
When the water stops it's time to move
Then you need to watch the Olympics on a big screen in Trafalgar Square.
I have been on the road a lot recently. Clocking up the miles on the highways of Europe.
As is often the case, I listen to the radio and most of the time I listen to Radio 5 , Radio 4 or one of the local stations.
Anyhow, as you know the world is currently bathed in the sweat of a billion athletes and it is almost impossible to escape from the fit and fantastic. As we indulge in our 4 yearly (there must be a word for that) orgy of medals and patriotism I generally tend to avoid watching anything. I can't remember a second of the Athens games and only Kylie and her lawnmowers still resides in my mind from Sydney. Funny enough though I do remember Munich and Moscow.
Beside the point.
As I was blasting along at 80 mph I started to listen to a commentary on Radio 5. It was for a first round badminton match between 2 Brits and 2 Chinese in the mixed doubles. It is hard to get more obscure than that in my world. As far as I know there are 2 real sports and some crap ones. Then there are the costly ones like sailing and drag racing that don't really count and then there are cheaper but less realistic options, such as cheese rolling which is on the fringe of my experience but again I am not sure it is a sport proper.
Once again I digress.
The thing is that this match was between opponents i had never heard of in a sport I don't know. It was broadcast from the other side of the earth and the commentators were new to me. I was driving very fast on a busy road and all in all the sum total of that lot should have been a total waste of time but it wasn't. It was electric.
Honestly. It was superb. There was drama and all the highs and lows of giant killers and comeback, tensions, internal struggles with expectation, supporters fading away as the game looks lost only to return when the win seems likely. The entire sporting experience in a hours radio commentary.
I don't know who was playing - my memory is weak for these things - nor who the commentators were but I will remember the feeling as long as I live. It was superb.
I still haven't watched anything on the TV.
Don't think I will anymore.
The Olympics are now in full swing, what event(s) are you looking forward to watching the most?
The swimming/diving. I only cheer on the men who are wearing speedo's though ;0)
Well my reading marathon of Dostoevsky's The Idiot paid off. ...some trace of her, which was inspired by the novel was breathtaking, frustrating, fascinating, distracting and utterly engaging all at the same time.
I actually left the theatre feeling a bit shaky.
But how can I describe a performance unlike anything I've ever seen before? I can't hope to do it justice but I will at least try.
If you imagine a film set. A black and white movie. And it is being acted, lit, shot and sound recorded on a stage in front of you while simultaneously being editing and projected onto a screen hanging above the stage you get a bit of the idea.
There were no technical crew on stage though. It was all done by the actors with choreographed precision. (And live musician's back stage.)
At any one time three people could be playing in a shot. For example there was a scene where Prince Myshkin played by the once again far too talented Ben Whishaw is eating soup while deep in thought. Someone is filmed filling the soup spoon with soup and lifting it as though to their mouth, stage right while stage left, Whishaw completes the action lifting a soup spoon to his mouth and eating it. In the centre a third actor provides a voice to Myshkin's thoughts.
It is all instantly edited together so that on screen you are watching the Prince eat soup and listening to his thoughts.
At the same time the remaining actors are providing necessary sound effects and rapidly setting up for the next scene. In a film, each scene would be shot perspective by perspective then edited together at a later stage.
It all sounds a little chaotic and it was at times and quite distracting. Sitting close to the front, as I was, you are level with the stage so you did get sucked into what was happening there rather than watching it all come together on screen.
But it ached with cleverness at times. The sheer imagination and organisation and not forgetting the performances as there often wasn't another actor to play off.
Critics of it argue that you go the theatre to see the actors and it was difficult to see them in the flesh at times with lighting rigs, props and off-scene actors dodging about, especially as the stage had low lighting so as not to interfere with the 'film' lighting. But the thrill of the live performance was magnified by the fact that there were so many different technical elements all coming together at once right before your very eyes.
Katie Mitchell who wrote and directed has chosen to pick out the bare bones of the novel's story and pieced together its overall themes using a series of very loosely connected set pieces. There is little conversation and a lot of monologue.
A lot of the Dostoevsky's characters have been jettisoned to concentrate on the love triangle between the central characters. And that isn't a great shame, but I felt the Aglaya character who serves to complicate the love triangle in the book was introduced a little too late and the character underplayed.
One or two characters also seem to pop up randomly and this is where the background knowledge of the novel certainly helped to add to some context.
So it certainly wasn't without its floors. But the thrill of the live performance certainly made up for it.
