Baldyman

In the last few weeks the UK was united as neighbours who hadn’t spoken to each other in at least 7 years joined forces for street parties to celebrate the Queen living long enough for them to enjoy a four day weekend. Stars of the music world gathered for a Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace and despite a suspect rendition of ‘Sweet Caroline’, Rod Stewart more than justified his inclusion by the fact that he and the Queen are the only two people in the world to have not changed their hairstyles for the last 50 years. At the box office Top Gun roared back after 36 years away with the ever youthful Tom Cruise still performing all his own death defying stunts at the age of fifty-nine. By direct comparison I am eleven years his junior and my own mission impossible is making it down the stairs without using the hand rail the day after I have played cricket.

Other recent news has seen a wide contrast in its content, with the detailed failings of the Conservatives in the fallout of ‘Partygate’ at one end of the spectrum and the hype surrounding the beginning of the new series of Love Island at the other. One follows a group of shallow, unscrupulous, fame hungry individuals who are detached from reality and spend their days drinking and achieving very little in a responsibility free environment and the other is set in Majorca.

Personally I find it boring that the Love Island contestants are all such perfect physical specimens and think it would be far more interesting to watch if they did a version for people of 60+ years old. Sponsored by Werther’s Original, Stannah Stairlifts and Viagra, current ideas for the series title so far include;

• Saga Island
• Cocoon Island
• Bingo Wing Island
• Afternoon Nap Island
• Underwired Bikini Island

As the next recoupling approaches on Friday, Gladys’ seemingly rock solid relationship with Bob is thrown into chaos with the arrival of 68 year-old retired fish monger Keith from Sheffield. Entering the villa with two good hips, his own teeth and a sizeable pension, his alluring 1980s drawstring speedo trunks, illegible homemade tattoos and tantalising sandal & white socks combination makes him a certainty to turn heads. He now gets to take the lucky Golden Girl of his choice on a hot date that includes a tea dance, crown green bowling and a trip along the coast in a tandem mobility scooter. Despite its obvious appeal, the series would be doomed to fail however as none of the contestants would be capable of opening any of the texts they receive without the assistance of their teenage grandchildren.

When Love Island hits our screens it is a clear indication that both the summer and the holiday season are firmly upon us. All inclusive packages are the increasingly popular choice in a scenario whereby both parents immediately make it their quest to recover the cost of the holiday through levels of alcohol consumption that Oliver Reed would struggle to keep up with. In fact when we go abroad there seems to be a completely new set of rules that quite clearly would not be acceptable or apply in the real world.

• In any other circumstances if someone posted on social media that they were having a pint of Stella and a full fry up in a Wetherspoons at 5.30am questions would almost certainly be asked about their lifestyle choices. In an airport prior to a holiday, this is applauded as perfectly acceptable behaviour.
• If a middle aged man wearing nothing but a pair of spray on budgie smugglers joined a queue of children waiting for an ice cream he would undoubtedly soon be a strong candidate to join the sex offenders register. On a holiday resort nobody even batters an eyelid.
• If a 45 year-old man turned up to a friends’ BBQ wearing salmon pink three-quarter length shorts and fake leather sandals from Next, at best he would be ridiculed, at worst a specific WhatsApp group would be created to rip him to shreds. On holiday however, he is merely one of a plethora of similarly aged men who adopt a far more flamboyant dress sense by wearing clothes that they clearly played absolutely no part in choosing and were bought for them by their wives.
• There is a belief that by placing a book/pair of shorts/ bottle of sun tan lotion on top of a towel on a sunbed that the pool attendant will somehow be fooled that they are currently being used. At no point will they even consider the fact that you may have sneaked down in a lift full of Germans at 6am and in reality have no intention of taking up residency until well after breakfast.
• Despite consuming 3 breakfasts, lunch two hours later, 3 chocolate pancakes, 5 ice creams and enough cocktails to drown Free Willy, a leisurely two length swim of the pool will be sufficient exercise to justify going for dinner in an hours’ time.

Life is all about choices, some of which can be difficult (Monica or Rachael in Friends) and some of which can be a lot easier (fries or carrot sticks with a McDonald’s meal). Boris has clearly made some bad choices in regards to alcohol but (and without wishing to defend his actions in any way whatsoever) he is not the only one to be guilty of such booze related misdemeanours.

Before I begin to recount some (hopefully ) amusing tales of my own inebriated past, I think it’s important to point out that I know a number of people who in recent years have made the decision to give up alcohol altogether. They are living far more productive and meaningful lives as a consequence but unfortunately for someone as shallow and weak as myself, the only really funny personal stories I have is when I have been battered beyond belief.

First I will take you back to about 2003 and a Thursday night out after work in London which at the time was a regular occurrence. On this particular occasion, a new colleague (fresh off the plane from South Africa) had joined the group and was keen to fit in and make a good first impression (I remember that his middle name was ‘Saville’ which I seem to recall was a lot funnier at the time than it would be now). However, at close to kicking out time he had made the dubious decision to purchase 12 Tequilas to cater for his group of new found friends before soon realising that the majority of these had already departed. Not wanting his evening to end is such disappointing fashion, I did what any caring and kind hearted sole would have done and joined him at the bar as we downed 6 shots each one after another. When I soon after exited the establishment and hit the fresh night’s air, it was an almost instant realisation that in hindsight I had almost certainly made the incorrect choice. In honesty I cannot remember the subsequent journey back to Liverpool Street Station, although judging by photos I would discover on my phone weeks later, it would appear that I was wearing my coat as a cape in the belief that I was Superman.

While he had Kryptonite, my own personal weakness and subsequent downfall that evening would come at the hands of a KFC variety meal. As I eagerly tucked in to my feast as the packed train pulled away, my body was soon sending clear signals that this was my second very unwise choice of the evening. With the inevitable now imminent, my natural instinct for damage limitation saw me quickly grab a KFC bag and prepare for the worst. For the context of the remainder of this story, it is important to point out that this was not one of the flimsier bags an individual meal comes in but one of the heavy duty paper bags with handles that is specifically designed to take the weight of a number of take away orders at once.

With bag open on lap and head firmly in bag, it shamefully began and continued on and on for what seemed like an eternity. In this moment of huge public humiliation I could at least take some comfort that I’d acted quickly enough to avoid even further shame… or so I thought. Unbeknown to me however, the bottom of this reinforced bag had long since succumbed to the capacity I was producing and in effect I had been being sick through the bag onto my own lap for a number of minutes. To add insult to even further injury, I was wearing brown, boot cut, corduroy trousers (yes I was a style icon) whose prominent grooves were now acting as a multitude of miniature vomit waterslides. The evening culminated with me (much to the relief of fellow passengers I would imagine) miraculously getting off at the correct stop but then needing the assistance of two strangers to help me out of the train station toilets where I’d decided to take residence.

Next let me take you back to 1998 and a particularly classy establishment by the name of ‘Club Zeus’ which had both a fake stone statue and patterned luminous carpets in the image of the popular Greek God. Student night was infamous for charging just one pound for Kronenbourg and spirits for the whole evening through to the early hours and generally always held the ammunition for a good story. I had just returned from a year long trip to Australia and had shoulder length hair (those were the days), beads (that I ceremoniously cut off on my 30^th birthday) and regularly wore a polo shirt advertising a sky dive I had completed, in an attempt to appear wild, carefree and dangerous to the opposite sex (this is so far from the truth that it makes even me laugh!)

As the clientele gathered outside at closing time I thought it was the perfect opportunity to showcase not only my strength but also my speed and dexterity (I possessed none of these three). What better way to highlight these attributes than offering a lucky lady a piggy back before weaving in and out of a number of concrete bollards on the pavement at full running speed. It was actually going rather well, right up to the point that I suddenly tripped after the final obstacle and found my body tumbling forwards. Now the natural human instinct installed within us when falling over is to put your hands out in front of you to cushion your impact. However when these hands are otherwise occupied by securely holding a young lady’s legs in place, this safety net is well and truly pulled from beneath you. Crashing to the floor with the side of my face acting as a makeshift brake, I then suffered a secondary impact when my piggy back partner landed full force onto my back. She was thankfully unharmed but I had a severely grazed face and a chipped front tooth that still reminds me of my supreme stupidity some twenty four years later. The one saving grace was that the young lady in question was a trainee nurse living in a house full of nurses so I couldn’t have been in better hands to be patched up or cared for. I was due to start my first ever job in London a few days later so for the next two decades the photo on my train ID card clearly showed the battle scars I had acquired on the night in question.

The moral of these stories is that drinking to excess will almost certainly at some point lead to public humiliation and physical harm. On the plus side they do however make for cracking stories to tell in the future but make sure they happen when you are young and have the least responsibilities. Life can move very fast, one minute you’re sleeping through until 3pm on Sunday after a wild, all day drinking session, the next you are driving your son to dance class at 8.30am on Saturday singing a word perfect rendition of Kylie & Jason’s ‘Especially for You’ while listening to Elaine Paige on Radio Two (this is obviously only a hypothetical scenario).

As has become customary I will finish with another joke that I only heard for the first time recently;

A new shop recently opened in London called ‘The Husband Store’ where women can go to buy a husband. The rules of the shop are;

1. There are 6 floors in the shop but you can only visit each floor one time.
2. As you go up each floor the value of the husbands increase.
3. You can choose any husband from any floor but once you’ve decided to go up to the next floor you can’t then go back down to any of the previous ones.

A woman visits the store to buy a husband and when the lift doors open at the 1^st Floor there is a sign saying “These men have jobs.” Continuing up to the 2^nd Floor the sign says “These men have jobs and like kids” and the 3^rd Floor sign says “These men have jobs, like kids and are good looking.”

Although this sounded promising she was compelled to go up to the 4th floor where the sign read “These men have jobs, like kids, are good looking and enjoy helping with the housework” and then again to the 5^th Floor where it said “These men have jobs, like kids, are good looking, enjoy helping with the housework and are extremely romantic.”

Despite all this she felt she just had to continue up to the 6^th and final floor to see what was on offer there. As the lift doors slowly parted for the last time she was greeted with a sign that read “You are customer 30,275,607. There are no men on this floor and it only exists to prove that women are impossible to please.”

Thanks again for reading and keep smiling.