Protection Money

I’m stood having a wee in the pub (in the pub toilet that is). It’s one of those long communal urinals which run along the gutter. It mixes your urine with that of complete strangers – a cocktail of piss. On this occasion I'm stood alone and my wee flowed undiluted. I made my best attempt to control my outpouring so as to not splash wee-flecks onto my shoes. I was largely successful.

As I stood at the urinal, the toilet door swung open and two men walked in. The first was a young guy in his early twenties. He had long foppish hair swept across his face and tight black drain-pipe trousers. You know the sort – a cunt. The second was a large thuggish brut of about fifty. He had a shaven head and wore a luminous tabard. You know the sort – a bouncer. Conscious not to maintain eye-contact for too long in a gentlemen’s public convenience I averted my gaze but continued to listen to their conversation.

“I put in the money but nothing came out,” said the dandy Emo.

“What type did you select?” grunted the thug.

“Ribbed – for her pleasure,” he replied timidly. What a guy, I thought. A real modern man. And fair play to him for asking the bouncer to solve his problem. I’d have written it off as an unfortunate embarrassment and run off with my (flaccid) tail between my legs. Having said that, maybe he should’ve taken the time to get some ‘doms from a more reputable source. Or maybe he was just too horny.

“Just give it a hit,” said the bouncer as he pounded the machine. Whack. Nothing. Thud. Nothing. Smack! As he hit the machine for the third time a pound coin shot out of the change dispenser and dropped to the floor. It bounced and rolled quickly towards my foot. I could feel the eyes of the two men stalking the coin. The coin tapped into my foot and ricocheted into the urine-aquaduct which lay before me. Without changing my stream of pee it pushed the coin down the gutter towards the outlet. A shiny gold boat sailing on a yellow sea.

“Well I’m not fucking havin’ that,” moaned the young ragamuffin.

“Your choice,” said the bouncer “we’ll see what the manager can do”. They both left. I quickly finished my deed and washed my hands. As I turned to leave I gave the condom machine a quick nudge. Out popped £2 and a pack of three ribbed condoms. I pocketed the money and sheaths and beat a hasty retreat. I didn’t see the guy in the pub to return his stuff but I do hope he managed to find some protection. I can’t bear the thought of him having unprotected sex and contracting an STD.

Dan

Hierarchy of Tragedy

Not every tragic event is front page material. News editors often have to prioritise the deaths that they cover, and place them in their newspaper or news programme accordingly. Should you ever become the editor of your own news publication or production company, print out the following chart and tape it your desk or wall. Consult it whenever you need to know where to place that difficult story.

Of course, even if you don’t work in the media, the chart can be a useful way to find out how much you should be grieving for any given tragedy.

Chris

Google

No I didn't.

Pete

TV

I don’t like being told what to do. It grates. I am intelligent enough to work out that if I need something then I should get it. For example, if I am hungry then I will make a small trip to somewhere that houses food (such as a fridge or my pocket) and eat it. If I need to shit then I make a calculation that takes into account the time I have left until I shit myself and all the available shitting locations for the most efficient place to shit. See intelligent stuff. It is now the Christmas holiday season and I am beginning to get the feeling that I am not able enough to make any of these decisions for myself.

The reason for this is my increased consumption of television. I don’t normally watch a lot of live TV, mainly due to the fact that Ladma related activities prohibit me from being in the same place every week to see the same programs. The modern PC is a multimedia god. It pretty much services all my needs in a way the humble TV never could. However, I am back in the family home, away from my PC and TV has stepped in to fill the gap and what a horrific job it does.

The more television I watch the more I get the feeling that it’s getting one over on me. There is no way of cheating it or telling it to fuck off. Adverts are the worst. If I do happen across a program that takes my fancy then it is rudely interrupted by a series of completely irrelevant Ads that tell me to buy Cars, Sofas, Shampoo and everything else there is no point me buying. They curtly cut through my passive viewing with increased volume and shouty voices. What’s worse is that I have seen each Ad around 30 times already. It’s ok though, I have choice I can change the channel and watch something else. Oh dear, all the commercial channels are running Ads at the same time so I can’t escape.

The only thing I can do is resign myself to slouching back in my seat and turning my brain off. I live in time with what the television tells me to do. For now I live the same life as the rest of the idiot country do. I eat and shit when the adverts come on and masturbate to the news.


Pete

Christmas Already?

I’m no Scrooge but I’m sick and tired of all the Christmas nonsense which is currently permeating everyday life. Everywhere you look on television, in shops or...well basically just on television and in shops, there’s just bloody Christmas this and Christmas that. It’s not even December yet for god sake! They’ve been taking bookings for Christmas parties at my local pub since September. Soon we’ll have the January sales and it’ll be straight back into preparations for next Christmas. Why won't they just let us celebrate Shrove Tuesday in peace?

I have therefore decided to respond in kind. Next year my birthday celebrations (which should take place entirely on July 27th) will begin in May. A protracted preamble will ensue before culminating in a dull drab celebration on July 27th which would’ve been much more exciting had we not built it up beyond recognition for the previous three months. And just in case you’re worried that you’ll miss my May celebrations, there’ll be adverts all over T.V and mince pies will be half price.

Dan

Hull Comedy Festival

After taking part in Brighton’s Fresh Meat festival last month we were eager to continue our foray into live comedy. This time we would be doing our own one hour gig in front of paying customers as part of Hull’s Comedy Festival. Even though this had been planned in early June we hadn’t given much thought to the show until two weeks before we were due to perform. This meant that we had to publicise, write and rehearse the show in a very short amount of time. Chris was also busy teaching which meant we would only have one day to rehearse together in Hull.

Dan and I had travelled up to Hull a week early to prepare and publicise the gig. This proved to be time consuming and tiring due to having to walk around Hull from gig to gig handing out flyers and putting up posters. We also went to a few promotional events to meet other performers and to show films.

The amount of take-away food we consumed in this period began to increase. Having grown up in Hull we knew where the best take-aways were and that they were half the price of those in Brighton. The worst case of this was the night of Chris’s arrival. Dan and I had been out all day setting up the tech in the venue and were starving when we eventually finished at around 8pm. Chris wasn’t due in till 10 so we went for a Wetherspoon’s curry and waited. He was early so we finished up and set off for home. He hadn’t eaten so we decided to get him a pizza from the local pizza place, Pizza Hot (which for some reason looks uncannily like a Pizza Hut). We ended up getting a 15” a 12” and some garlic bread to share as it had been a full hour since our last meal. Chris would then continue to live on take-away food for his remaining time in Hull before declaring that he ‘was ever so greezy’.

The venue was a bit of a nightmare due to none of the staff knowing anything about the set up of the room and how to work the AV. The old massive CRT project wasn’t correctly configured and not only overspilled the screen but was blurry in the left corner. The PA system also didn’t have the correct leads which meant we could only use subwoofers that tended to distort.

One day before we were set to perform my confidence was quite low. What with the tech problems and the lack of rehearsing and ticket sales my conception of the show was that it would be poorly performed, badly attended and with bad sound and vision.

This was a new festival and a show unlike the others that were being put on so we didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect on the night. However, with a last minute gasp of energy we improved the AV greatly (Dan blacking out most of the windows in the room with some of my mum’s bin liner bags helped a lot). The day of the gig our rehearsals went well. We had all been good boys and not only learnt our respective lines but improved them (or in Dan’s case written and adlibbed loads more). All we needed now were punters.

Ten minutes before the show was set to start we were told that we had only sold ten tickets in advance, mostly to friends. At this point I shat my pants and cursed all the nights we spent handing out flyers and putting up posters. The land lady was also quite eager to have an interval (so she could sell drinks to our friends to at least make some money) which meant us performing a quick rewrite of the act in order to incorporate an interval.

Luckily the numbers of people swelled to nearly 40, meaning we had to give instructions to Jonny (our tech and ticket man) to put out more chairs.

The gig itself went well. No mistakes were made and confidence was so high we riffed and played around with the material. The films were particularly well received. Perhaps this was due to the contextualisation that we gave them beforehand as we were able to explain the motivation behind Deep Catalyst and Safe Blokes.

After the gig we were approached by a number of people who said that they had enjoyed the show and wanted to know more about us, which was nice. One guy even said that he had come after seeing a poster in a local take-away. It just shows you that the £90 we spent on printing and the hours of trudging round handing out flyers and posters paid off by bringing in £5 from one lonely guy who had nothing better to do with his Friday night than see three pricks trying to be funny.

Pete

Small Is Beautiful

The more time I spend back in Hull for the Comedy Festival the more I feel like I’m existing in some kind of eighties fantasy film or sub-Tolkien incubus. Hull proudly claims its place as Britain’s Middle Earth, but finds itself more Mordor than Shire. Although the vast majority of Hull’s population are perfectly normal and well-rounded (at least more so than Middlesborough’s) there is a small demographic of grotesques who trample the city’s streets clad in pink tracksuits or hideous purple wooly jumpers. Surrounded by queer oddities with sunken jaws or floor-scraping knuckles, one suddenly becomes a seven out of ten (a safe seven at that) when in Brighton one might have been a six…or maybe a five. Yet it’s only when you look closer at the people that you realise that these are your people. They’re people you grew up with and – if you look closer in your wardrobe – you can still find those three-stripe Adidas trousers that fit you like Cinderella’s glass slipper.

And so Hull got me thinking about my past – my friends, my family and my school. I went to William Gee School for Boys. When I first joined the school our motto was “Aiming for Excellence”. By the time I left, the school motto was “Being the Best You Can Be” and the GCSE pass rate was 11%. It seemed that some people weren’t taking the motto seriously and it won’t surprise you to know that the school closed a year after I left. Yet my time at school remains one of my happiest periods and seeing old school mates around town reminded me of one old school tale.

Dean Barnes was a slip of a boy. With the rest of the year towering at just under the six foot mark, poor old Dean hovered around the five foot area. As he watched his peers shoot up and out of sight, Dean’s height stagnated and drew to an unfortunate halt. But Dean’s height wasn’t his only lamentable affliction – Dean was cursed with the darkest of dark eyelashes. In a mixed school, Dean may have been able to use these long, luscious, ebony hairs to his advantage but appearing like you wear mascara in an all male school is not a good look. The combination was to have wicked and terrible results for Dean.

Now, it may surprise you to know that the biggest bully in our school was a teacher – Mr Anderson. In one particular Maths lesson – as we worked less than intensely at our desks – Mr Anderson whipped out a large piece of card and proceeded to fashion himself a large cone. Giggling to himself, he then took the thick, wooden board ruler and attached a long piece of string to the end. Grabbing his makeshift items, he ordered Dean to his feet (it transpired he was already standing) before placing a chair on one of the desks.

“Get on the chair,” Anderson bellowed as the dazed Dean scrambled onto the desk and mounted the chair.

“Put on the hat,” Anderson ordered as he shoved the cone onto Dean’s head and thrust the board ruler with attached string into his hand.

“Now pretend to fish,” Dean just sat there bemused. “Pretend to fish, dwarf!” Anderson bawled.

And so the impish Dean sat hunched over on top of the desk. The cone hat sunk over his forehead and finished just above his mascara eyes which gave Dean’s baby-face its fairy-like quality. His cheeks began to glow a fiery red as his eyes began to swell with tears. But this mascara would never run. As Dean’s pole swung limply from his wrist like the fishing rod of a garden gnome, the class erupted in laughter and Dean the Dwarf took his place amongst Hull’s hobbits, elves and other fantasy creatures. He sat there for about ten minutes before the bell rang. To this day I wonder how long this bizarre picture would’ve persisted had it not been for that French lesson.

So was Mr Anderson being cruel? Well let me just say this: In the sixties a man of Dean’s stature and facial curiosities would’ve been used to carry round lines of cocaine on his head for people like Andy Warhol or Elton John; in the late-nineties he was used to mimic a fictional creature in a failing inner-city comprehensive. I think it shows how far we’ve come.

Dan