Upset the Rhythm

Previously on this blog, regular readers might have spotted an entry in which I lamented the fact that the band Ut have never reformed; in fact, I may have claimed that Ut and Abba are the only two bands left who haven't reformed. That was a lie, and all the more so because Ut are now touring again, and I know this because, reader, I saw them. At the Lexington, in London.

Before them was a duo called Peepholes. A woman who looked a bit like Dave Grohl drummed and 'sang' through a mike so echo-laden that anything she said outside of the performance was entirely incomprehensible (as was, naturally, everything within the performance). Meanwhile, a tall skinny guy layered big slabs of synth over the top. The echo made it all sound as though it was coming from a long way off - about 1980, I'd say.

Trash Kit were a more engaging prospect. They have met both Pedro Almodovar and John Waters, the lead singer announced excitedly. That was almost enough to win me over in itself (she even looked a bit like Almodovar) but I also liked the wonky guitar playing underpinning the short, scrappy, upbeat songs. One was about going to the hairdresser's and they try and straighten your hair - oh yeah tell me about it sister - but the song was basically just: 'No, stop it, aaaaagh!' Which anyone can identify with.

Not a patch on Ut though. Ut really do come from the past, they aren't pretending. Originally they were part of the New York's 'No Wave' scene, which was a bit like the New Wave, but more, er, negative. In fact, its general disinterest in things like 'songs' and 'melody' made tonight's many 'tuning problems' onstage seem a bit ironic. Not that I cared. I mean, here they were: Nina (the nervy one), Jacqui (the sceptical one) and Sally (the customer-facing one). Nina and Sally wore garishly-patterned and quite possibly wipe-clean clothing, which was either an ironic post-feminist statement or the height of fashion. Or both. As previously mentioned, there were many pauses between songs, but it was worth the wait. One of the best things about Ut is that they have three distinct and striking voices - Nina's howl of despair, Jacqui's angst-ridden yelp, and Sally's mellow-but-tough transcendent croon. Mirroring, I like to think, the three stages of catharsis, even though 'the three stages of catharsis' are something I just invented. I expect.

Three women with great voices, then - they'd go down a storm on X-Factor, and they even have the song for it:

'Going down down to the marketplace,
Gonna learn to lie like an evangelist.'

The campaign for Christmas number one starts - and ends - here.

MORE WORK

We had a meeting up in London - it makes a change. We were told that NHS Blood and Transplant are going to be 'managing fridges' in hospitals. I might apply - my managerial skills aren't up to much, but surely even I could manage a fridge. They tend to just get on with things anyway, don't they?

No meeting would be complete without an innuendo nobody else notices, so when a colleague said (of some report or other) that he had 'pulled it off after last Thursday's meeting' I was satisfied, except to note that it would have been even more effective if he had said 'I pulled one off after last Thursday's meeting.' As he could so easily have done.

It has been noted, in fact, that my 'notes' at these meetings tend to consist entirely of doodles, mainly of faces, fanged and slavering. At this meeting, it was even suggested that I was drawing my assembled colleagues, though nothing could have been further from my mind. I'm not that engaged with my immediate surroundings.

Although at least I am physically present. We keep having to field calls for a guy whose PA works in our office, but who is on holiday at the moment. We have absolutely no idea where this man is at any particular time, and it is a little embarrassing to have to keep telling people this. We are getting to the point of just making things up out of sheer frustration - 'Oh, he's auditioning for X-Factor.' 'Oh, he's in the fridge right now.' 'Oh, he's juggling turnips.' My Customer Service assessor would not approve.

Talking of customer service, I got a haircut. They are almost ridiculously obliging at my barber's. They usually offer me a tea or coffee (I always decline) but on this occasion one of them was going to Marks and Spencers and asked if anyone wanted anything. It took me a while to realise that this was not just aimed at his colleagues, but included me as well. It was as though I might have produced a shopping list - 'Oh, and two dozen eggs, six parsnips, and one of those Dine In For £10 offers - you choose.' This is what my Customer Service workbook calls 'extending the service offer.'

WORK

My Customer Service course has been bamboozling me with such questions as: 'Describe the organisation's guidelines for recognising customer expectations.' I seem to have answered that question without ever working out what it means. And yet other questions, on the very same page, are insultingly obvious: we are asked how to recognise if a customer is 'angry or confused.' Hmm, well, let me think... Anger, isn't that the one where they ask to 'speak to someone who knows what they are doing', and use such words as 'dickhead'? Confusion, is that the one where they go: 'Durrrrrr...' and drool spills out of their vacantly gaping mouth onto the floor?

We are also asked to describe how we have dealt with 'difficult customers'. At Waterstone's this would be a cinch - I could say: 'I went out the back', or: 'I pretended to be unable to speak English'. In this job there haven't really been any. I am going to have to send out some e-mails just to wind people up, and thus gather some 'evidence'.

I am also asked to confirm that my work station is tidy, a tricky question for me, because - conventionally speaking - it isn't. So I am forced to explain that my approach to work is in fact analagous to an ongoing process of tidying - ergo, what may appear 'mess' to some people is in fact merely work to be done. Were my work station ever perfectly tidy, I would no longer be able to grasp the concept of work at all. I know what my assessor will say to this: 'That's not what's written on my answer sheet.' Of course it isn't, that's because it's a blazingly original thought!

FrightFest, and after

Judging by the queue for the cubicles in the men's toilets, FrightFest is secretly a convention for shy bladders. After all, I am also afflicted by this syndrome, which makes it hard to piss in the urinals with people spurting away on either side of you. But the warm feeling of being surrounded by fellow sufferers - or my impatience with the queue - was enough to unfreeze my loins, and soon I was happily pissing everywhere I could.

But that's by the by. For the first time I did not go alone to FrightFest, I went with Dave. No, not that Dave - and not that one either - the other one. This Dave attracts trouble. After the first film a young guy came up to ponce a fag off him. He obliged, but then this guy wouldn't leave us alone, and followed us up the road, talking constantly. Among other things, he said (a.) that the Prince Charles cinema shows new films cheaper than other cinemas after they've been out a couple of weeks, which I knew - and (b.) that his uncle lives on the Caledonian Road, which I didn't. He eventually left us alone, but not until we had both shaken his hand. No wonder they say smoking's bad for you.

Rabies (Israelis lose their tempers) was followed by The Glass Man (Andy Nyman shoots a traffic warden - in a scenario conjured by Jason from Footballer's Wives!), and these were both excellent in their different ways, though I wasn't quite so sure about Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil. Here our eponymous heroes are innocent hillbillies mistaken for psychopathic inbreds by excitable college students who have seen too many horror films, and who set about impaling themselves on tree branches and throwing themselves into wood chippers in their inept attempts to deal with the perceived situation. Amusing, yes, but too slight to detract from 'Dale''s disturbing resemblance to a bearded Heather-from-Eastenders...

I returned on Sunday despite the absence of trains, due to 'essential engineering works' - thank God they weren't frivolous engineering works, that would have been really annoying. On the bus back from Newbury Park - I was on the top deck - I heard a voice from downstairs shouting: 'Anyone getting off at Brentwood?' Thinking that this was the driver, I nearly responded. Luckily I didn't, because it was only a drunken man - another Dave, in fact, as became apparent when he sat next to the girl who was sitting behind me, an acquaintance of his. I learned quite a bit about them on this journey. He had been 'getting right on it' apparently, and was looking forward to 'getting right on it' again in the near future. Both of them were thirty, but she was going out with - gasp! - a 45-year old. 'Is he a typical 45-year old?', asked the Dave. No, he wasn't, she insisted: 'He's Italian'. As so few 45-year olds, notoriously, are.

Meanwhile, I was wondering if I was 'a typical 45-year old' - or, indeed, if I was even 45. It's hard to keep track, these days.

When I got in it was just in time to see Primal, on Film4. This is just the kind of film that you could end up seeing at FrightFest, if you aren't careful. In this Australian shocker, a picturesque group of young things travel to the outback in order to, would you believe, look at some aboriginal paintings. Before long, a couple of them have 'gone primal', which means their teeth fall out and they grow new ones. Sharp ones. And they run about like people pretending to be animals, roaring, and tearing people's throats out. Pretty much what you'd expect, in fact.

As is the film. Although I'll admit that I wasn't expecting the heroine to get raped by a giant leech. If that's what it was. Throughout the film, much has been made of the heroine's reluctance to use the c-word. At the end, having despatched a former friend 'gone primal' with a rock dropped onto her head she finally lets loose with the word: 'Cunt!' It's the last line of the film. This, then, was her character arc. She has learned to unselfconsciously use the word 'cunt'. Well, I guess we've all learned something. If you are looking for a cultural wasteland, go to Australia.

the passable man

1.

So it was my brother's stag do. I was best man. This was not a position I was really comfortable with. I would never normally aspire to the heights of 'best'. 'Quite good', maybe. 'Passable', sure.

Almost, I would prefer to be the worst man, and perhaps I was. When Justin said he didn't want any fuss made - no strippers or silly costumes or anything like that, just a quiet night out - I actually listened. When what I should have done, as best man, is agree with him - then, on the night, force him into a mankini and have everyone beat him with rubber hoses.

I did have one 'brilliant' idea, which was that everyone should wear eye patches, which Justin does all the time, one of his eyes having been paralysed after a motor cycle accident. This struck me as admirably fair, appropriately jolly, and visually pleasing to onlookers. However, Justin felt that it would make him uncomfortable - and I suppose it's true that were he - say - a hunchback, and everyone turned up with a cushion stuffed under their shirt backs, that might come across as offensive, not to mention sinister.

That one idea completely exhausted my imagination, so on the day itself I was shocked to realise that I had nothing arranged. No outfits, no planned humiliations. In a sudden panic, I took with me a blow-up doll which had represented Justin, in his absence, on the hen night. Perhaps I would not have bothered had not the doll (with no modification other than an eye patch) so closely resembled him.

So doll in bag I went to the Green Man and we sat outside in spite of the unsettled weather, eight or ten of us, drinking. I had made no plans about getting to Brentwood, three miles away. I had imagined that we might walk through Thorndon Park - I had visions of making a ritual sacrifice to the Great Stag Lord, as dictated by family tradition. The Great Stag Lord would then summon a fleet of helicopters in gratitude.

We got cabs. In O'Neill's Phil got me to go to the bar to order a round of the 'Bramley's apple' shots he had seen advertised on a board there. When I got there, it turned out that he had been misreading the dessert menu. So we nearly had ten blokes downing ten bowlfuls of apple crumble and custard in one. Which really would have been messy.

By this stage the inevitable parrot had emerged, along with the pirate costume. It was so obvious that I hadn't thought of it, but luckily Alex had. So Justin was decorated with inflatable parrot and hat, plus a wig that carried more of a suggestion of Whoopi Goldberg than Johnny Depp, or so I thought. And there he sat, as the alcohol really started to kick in, looking like a waxwork on the verge of melting.

But he did not melt: he went to The Swan along with the rest of us. There, by a happy coincidence, his 'teenage fanclub' awaited. Or so they were once known - a group of girls who he used to encounter, over and over, during nights out in Brentwood. They are no longer teenagers of course. But the blow-up doll was at last inflated, and tossed over to them, and in all their excitement they ripped its arm off, possibly with their teeth. The necessary sacrifice had been made.

A curry followed. Alex was sick on the way to the curry house, and he was sick on his return home later, but while in the curry house he cunningly managed to reverse this process, even to the extent of acting as a receptacle (albeit an unknowing receptacle) for other people's unwanted chillies. The word 'hero' is often misused, but here it does seem apt.

2.

In the speech I would describe the stag do as 'a riot'. Then I would go on to say: 'And if anyone wants to buy a plasma TV, see me afterwards.' This was a joke referencing some riots of the time, which many readers will no doubt remember. I myself remember watching it on TV, mainly a burning furniture store which News 24 chose to focus on as iconic. Not that there were many rioters around, or people of any kind. Even firemen seemed to be keeping well out of it. A (false) rumour came through that Primark in Romford had been targeted. 'Tens of pounds will be lost!', I wailed. I was becoming hysterical.

Even more alarming to me was the consequent appearance of armies of people in the streets, wielding brooms - 'Oh my God, it's the Big Society!', I screamed from my hiding-place behind the sofa. It was almost as though those riots were the 'culture change' deemed necessary for Cameron's brave new world to be ushered in. Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist but - hmmmm... Lorraine, on the other hand, thought that the police started the riots so as to demonstrate that they should not be subject to government cutbacks. This seems equally plausible. I wish these conspiracy theories were not incompatible so that I could believe them both. As it is, I shall have to believe them on alternate weeks.

On the radio, Jeremy Vine was busy fielding calls from people wishing to bring back National Service. One female caller suggested that the rioters should be 'systematically sprayed with dog poo'. I liked her use of the word 'systematically', and wondered if she had a system in mind.

3.

And so to the wedding. This took place in Brighton, in the week after Gay Pride. Brighton, then, wasn't especially gay - shame had set in. Ross hypothesised an event called 'Gay Prude', involving lots of repressed gay men and women in drab and securely-buttoned clothing. Who nevertheless feel a need to parade.

He then went on to suggest that Aswad's Don't Turn Around is about golden showers, and that the chorus goes: 'Don't turn around/It's only warm water.'

I don't think I should listen to him. He seems untrustworthy.

I was down there from Monday. On Tuesday I was wandering through a museum exhibit of idols, masks and totems from various cultures. One was intended to embody a spirit that would help with the smooth running of 'the ceremony of the yams'; I wished that I had a spirit whose aid I could call on for the best man speech. Perhaps I accidentally invoked an evil spirit, because although the speech went fine, my Mum fell over in Brighton town centre and had to attend the ceremony in a wheelchair provided by the Holiday Inn. At least we got to see 'the real Brighton', in A&E, where a man in one of the cubicles was steadfastly refusing to get on a trolley, so that a nurse walked in and accused him of 'not using the cubicle effectively'. That was telling him.

The wedding ceremony was effective - light-hearted, with a reading of a poem about old people having sex. The ceremony of the yams also passed off without a hitch.

Then the speeches.

People had been full of sound advice about this. 'Whatever you do', they said. 'don't fuck it up. That would be a disaster.' In my anxiousness to shrug off all my responsibilities, I had recruited three other people to help deliver the best man speech, and ended up writing four speeches instead of just the one. Dave Sullivan and Kevin then threw my speeches away and did their own, which only added to my anxiety, given Dave's notorious fondness for four-letter words and Kevin's penchant for ranting about women, or 'whores' as he calls them. In fact, Dave's swear count only came to two shits, a prick and a plonker, and in any case he more than redeemed himself by putting it all in rhyme.

(Some maintain that 'plonker' is not a swear word, but I would suggest that it may be one when used to refer to an actual penis, in this particular instance my brother's. However, the sting is surely removed when, as here, it is rhymed with 'Tonka'. And it is also fair to say that Dave's 'prick' was not a real one, but a splinter.)

Kevin also acquitted himself well, steering clear of my proscribed topics (paedophilia, rape, and genital mutilation), as did Phil (obligingly reading what I had written for him), and then I stood up and said: 'That's all we've got time for.'

Joke.

Afterwards, my part of the speech was mainly remembered for one particular joke, which I didn't think would go down as well as it did. I had talked about my qualms about joining, via Justin, such a big and complicated family as the Backhouses, and then I said: 'But I'm sure Bobs felt the same when I first showed her my extensive collection of mummified badgers.'

I had thought this rather obscure, but no, it seemed to be the jest of the season. There may well be people at that wedding whose only knowledge of me will rest upon that association with 'mummified badgers'. Just as well I didn't put 'child pornography' after all.

When all the tension was over, there was one delightful sunny day, before it was time to return. We sat by the beach, next to a plate of spare wedding cake sweltering under clingfilm. Children threw stones into the sea, as though in a futile attempt to destroy it.

On the very last night I sat in a curry house opposite Christopher, three and a half, who talked about his recent experience of doing a poo. So young, and already a perfect mastery of curry house etiquette!