Johnny Man Bag

So the dreaded day of Mat's stag do arrived. The prospect of war games in the rain was not appealing. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was suffering from pre-traumatic stress syndrome. Meanwhile, everyone else was amusing themselves with the thought of me 'going Rambo' and disappearing into the Abridge woods, never to return.

In fact, 'laser tag' turned out to be fun if treated more in the vein of a Sunday stroll in the countryside. Obviously there was an element of hiding behind things while clutching my weapon. But my Sunday strolls tend to involve that anyway.

I was even able to kill a few people. Which came as a pleasant surprise.

Props included tanks, a crashed Cessna, fairy wings, and a tutu. These last were sported by the stag, of course. And it didn't necessarily demean him - I read that in the (apparently 'stunning') new film Johnny Mad Dog the ferocious African boy soldiers who are the subject of the film wear wigs, wedding dresses and, yes, fairy wings. Although a group of young kids we passed, not having the benefit of this cultural reference, laughed at him and called him 'gay'.('And you're homophobic!', retorted one of our number.)

Despite the accessories, Mat's team (and mine) won very conclusively, although the spoils of war (free promotional mugs and weak orange squash) went to victor and defeated alike.

All in all, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Perhaps I'll take up real war now.

After this we went into London to be made drunk. Rhys had prepared a Mr & Mrs style quiz for Mat. I remember Mr & Mrs when it was presented by Derek Batey and made by Border TV (coincidentally owned by Derek Batey). 'How does he like his bacon?', he used to say. I don't remember him talking about the contestant's flaccid penises, so this was obviously an innovation of Rhys. In any case it served its purpose, which was to force Mat to drink some shots, including one which came in a fancy bottle but which smelled like Toilet Duck. Soon, Mat was very pissed, and resembled some kind of effete zombie.

We ended up in the curry house in Brick Lane which features paintings of such well-loved figures of Indian mythology as Princess Diana, and Mat was presented with a whole chicken which Rhys had vomited on specially (Mat was apparently so drunk that he thought this yellow stuff was some form of omelette!)

As if in horror, the clocks went back.

downfall

Who says immigrants get a raw deal? They are now going to be allowed to join that most exclusive of clubs, the BNP. Wonder if they'll be - ahem - 'swamped' with applications. This isn't the BNP's choice, of course, they aren't keen on it at all; and you have to admire the perversity of their attitude. Whereas all the other parties are blandly going out of their way to appeal to the widest possible demographic, they are actively telling people to bugger off, or trying to. Which seems doubly perverse, if their target market of 'indigenous whites' really is becoming a minority like they say it is.

Their spokesman on Jeremy Vine's show sounded a bit shaken to hear that some foreigners are white. It doesn't bode well for Question Time.

Now I have a week off. It's only Sunday, and already I have achieved much. For instance, I have achieved a haircut. That was in Brentwood. There was nobody in the shop, apart from three unoccupied barbers, pacing restlessly like caged tigers. In a sense this was encouraging - no need to wait. In actuality it was a bit unnerving, all that pent up energy; I felt that they might very well turn on me. In the event, one of them cut my hair.

I used to go to the place in Ingrave, which apparently has now been abandoned. It was called 'Hairport', a pun which caused some confusion when the very Essex, h-dropping woman who ran the joint answered the phone. 'Airport!' she'd shriek, with such loudness that she might very well have been shouting over the noise of planes taking off. You wonder if this was their downfall.

local people

I keep catching this programme on Resonance about 'sound poets'. All that is required of sound poets, it seems, is the ability to stand in front of a mike and generally act like a retard. But what do I know? I didn't even know that Henri Chopin, one of the greats, and a friend of William Burroughs, used to live in Ingatestone, just down the road. Judging by the wordless spluttering, snorting and gabbling going on in this programme, it seems unlikely that the people of Ingatestone would have held him in high regard. One can't imagine a yearly festival in his honour, for example. Still, this is by far the most interesting thing I have ever heard about Ingatestone, and now I want to know more. But this endlessly repeated programme keeps promising that that next week's edition will be a Henri Chopin special. And next week never comes.

In the meantime I turn on Paul O'Grady to find former schoolmate (three years below me), friend of the family (my Mum knows his Mum) and old mucker (me and Justin and Kevin and Chris were on the periphery of the group he used to hang around with) Stephen Emery (now Moyer) sitting there on the sofa, reading out the name of a competition winner from Wigan. Weirdly, this seems to confirm his celebrity status and - simultaneously - to bring him right back down to earth.

He isn't really on earth any longer, of course: he lives in LA, and is now an immortal vampire (in the series True Blood, at least). Having gone from 'jobbing actor' to star, he has now 'passed over' into that other realm. I am not in the least envious, preferring to have success on my own terms, terms which, to the casual observer, may suggest something a little closer to 'failure'. But now it's time to start 'recovering' those youthful memories of S. Moyer, which I suspect will materialise in the form of tabloid exclusives. Serves him right for raping my goldfish in 1987.

But that's another story. Twenty-five grand to you.

Arse souls

I've reached databases on my ITQ course. 'Entering Repetitive Data' was a particularly thrilling segment I recall from this week. Lorraine said that our ITQ tutor, Barry, referred to our monitors as 'slave terminals'. Needless to say, we had a good laugh about that one.

David Essex was on the radio, saying of Susan Boyle that 'her voice comes from somewhere you wouldn't expect it to come from'. Her arse?

I saw a film called Miss Leslie's Dolls at the BFI. Miss Leslie's Dolls (1973) is a film which was once considered 'lost'. Now that I and a handful of other people have seen it, presumably that means it no longer is. Although it might be considered that those people who turned out on a Wednesday night to see this peculiar artefact are the ones who are really 'lost'. Well that is for the reader to decide.

Anyway, Miss Leslie's Dolls has a group of young people seeking shelter from a storm in an Old Dark House presided over by a, er, big-boned woman who is very clearly a man speaking in a dubbed female voice. The ambition of the doll-fixated 'Miss Leslie' is to possess (in the supernatural sense) the body of a beautiful young woman, an ambition continually thwarted (as she/he sees it) by 'Mother' (a skull). Yes it's that kind of film. But it's on the 'hypnotic' side of boring and the notion of bodies-as-dolls chimes in nicely with the wooden performances.

Refreshingly too, Miss Leslie does get to fulfill her mad ambition in the end (sorry if I ruined the film for you). What saves the film, in fact, is its twisted sincerity, as though the makers shared Miss Leslie's fantasies and making this film was the only thing that stopped them from going round killing young women and psychically invading their bodies in real life. Or maybe they did that anyway, who knows?

At work I changed my intranet profile to describe one of my hobbies as 'attempting to transmit my soul into the body of a wood pigeon'. I don't think anybody has noticed.