STAGGERED
I’m not sure what sort of a blog this will be today. After a weekend on my best friend’s stag do, my brain isn’t quite in top form. Today is mostly for gathering back together the strands of reality and life where I’m not roaming around with 9 other men wondering how best to attempt to be ‘laddy’ – a concept none of us were particularly familiar with to begin with – and find more booze. There is no goading, no ‘ironic’ lewd comments on passing females, no competitive attitude and no costumes. I make it sound like perhaps the weekend was more debauched than it was. A good example of how we were as ‘lads’ would be when we were in the harbour side square in Bristol on Saturday night and in a poor attempt to be ‘laddish’ I shouted, in full sarcastic tone you understand, ‘let’s go find some tits!’ only for Tom (stag number 5) to respond whilst looking at a device that points at all the locations of the planets and stars said ‘No, I’m trying to find Eros the comet). We rapidly came to the conclusion that one day we will invent an ‘alternative’ stag do for people like us whereby you’d spend all afternoon having high tea before seeing a French film and having a discussion about it afterwards. There was some insincerity in this idea not least because our stag do was one where the hero of the weekend was a man we saw, trousers round legs, standing up asleep on a busy street in the city centre of Bristol. Still much fun was had by all, everyone was much fun to hang out with and the stag is so covered in paint balling bruises it feels worth it. Not quite sure how that equates to celebration but it seems right. I will never understand how this all works.
OUT OF THE ZONE
Is it wrong that I feel like I’ve beaten the system when I go to gain my well earned free coffee from Cafe Nero? I’m not good at keeping the cards and often it takes me many months just to collate ten stamps and when I do they seem to be spread across several different tiny blue paper receptacles. So when the blue moon does come around and this happens I feel a bit like a winner of the day. I haven’t won much today after managing within the space of two hours this morning to hit myself in the eye with my computer lead, slip over in the kitchen and spill hot tea on my hand, and punch a knife. This coupled with the headaches I’m still getting from last week (google tells me its either a strain body builders get, or brain cancer. Once again, google proves why we need actual doctors), several small paintball bruise marks and a very sore right hand from where I punched a metal pole while doing ‘inventive bowling’ ( See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfeIPp8EJSg ) means I am all a bit worse for wear and in no way was more losing needed before the day was over. I hate days like that, where you just know you know that whatever you do, you won’t be ‘in the zone’ all day and in fact are so far the opposite direction that you should probably stay in bed?
If you aren’t familiar with being ‘in the zone’ its when every bit of paper you throw in the bin goes in straight away, every door you stylishly kick shut closes first time without you falling over, and you rarely press ‘backspace’ on your keyboard when typing. Know what I mean? You are the real life Fonz, everything moves to your command and it feels like you can do no wrong. This happens to me very rarely but when it does I feel like kicking my heels in the air with every step, only I don’t as I know I’d pull a muscle or fall over and ruin everything. Well today is the opposite to the zone and so, filled Nero cards in hand I took them to the desk with my frappe latte choice of beverage. ‘Take that the system!’ I thought. Some small impoverish Columbian child isn’t getting any much needed wages from me! Ha! The man at the desk then looked at my three cards with a disarray of stamps, made me add them all up in front of him, before restamping one card and throwing the two away with a look at me that said ‘you sir, are an idiot, a vagabond and a mess’, then took the completed single card and said with as much sarcasm as can be crammed into one word ‘congratulations’. I felt yay high, which I believe is the height of sarcastic enjoyment, and realised that today, even guaranteed win is a definite loss. After three days of brilliant mayhem, it feels like karma is back in full swing. Touche world. Touche.
