» Eccentrics

Spanners the chemistry teacher
Now I've come to the conclusion that all chemistry teachers are a bit odd, and encouraging eccentrics into the profession is a good way to keep them out of harm's way.

Take Mr "Spanners" Spandrel, our 'O' level chemistry teacher. Mad as a sack of badgers, but great fun with it. He lost an eardrum after an attempt to make the school fireworks really exciting, an incident that saw an oil drum fired about 100 feet into the air before embedding itself a foot deep in the rugby pitch.

Other highlights include blowing out the front of a fume cabinet after an experiment with sodium went badly wrong, a detailed ten minutes on the production of LSD that was only stopped when the bell sounded (wish I could remember the details) and a slightly sweaty recounting of the sexual proclivities of Marie Curie.

As a man he just screamed eccentric. Imagine the hair of Einstein after a severe electric shock, the dress sense of a man who'd been dipped in glue and dragged backwards through a Salvation Army reject bag and fingers that both trembled and were stained with more obscure chemicals than you could shake a stick at.

However, like Bagpuss, he was loved by all and a lot of us turned up for his funeral (sadly a boring old heart attack - we'd all envisioned him dying of something more exotic like developing a new toxin or opening a gate to the nether regions of hell). Many of us then spent a happy afternoon/evening in the pub swapping stories about sundry weird lessons. Spanners, I salute you.
(Thu 30th Oct 2008, 21:10, More)

» Too much information

Parents and orgasms
So far neither of the parents has managed to explain why they got divorced (and it's been over 30 years) so in an effort to get some background detail we got mum drunk last Christmas.

Since she can drink like a navvy and still maintain snag froid this was no mean feat. Nevertheless we persevered and before too long had got her to an acceptable level of inebriation. What followed turned out to be TMI for me and way, way too much TMI for my sister.

So when the question of why they broke up was raised she still refused to say exactly but came out with the following:

"Your father and I always agreed we wouldn’t discuss it but put it this way – if I'd have slept with him before we married you two wouldn't be here. I didn't have an orgasm until 1979."

My sister's jaw dropped but sadly I was too pissed to stop the next question slipping out.

"What mum, you mean to tell me masturbation wasn't invented then."

At this point is a black hole in the ground had opened up my sister would have slid into it with nothing more than a grateful whimper.

"No," mum replied.

Then, the final piece of TMI.

"But I tell you what – I've had more since turning sixty then I've ever had in my life before."

Pass the brain bleach please.
(Fri 7th Sep 2007, 11:10, More)

» Pubs

Dealing with problem customers
I spent a couple of happy summers working behind the bar in a Devon resort. Great job in many ways but made all the better when you could take revenge on a problem customer or four.

Back in those days you could smoke in pubs and the bar had a separate children's area where smoking was barred, but as a consequence kids weren't allowed in any of the other sections of the pub.

Now most people saw the sense in this but there was always one family a week who didn't get it. Either they tried to light up in the children's room or they brought the kids into the main bar. Once the error of their ways was explained most backed down.
Some didn't, at which point Pete the landlord would have to be pulled away from sinking pints of Directors with the locals in the main bar - an event that would mean days of slightly sarky comments from him about staff 'not being able to get laid in a brothel' or an extended rant about the poor quality of sperm that had dribbled from my father’s undoubtedly insubstantial penis down the chunk of lard my mother called a thigh – depending on how late into the drinking session he was.

Pete, being a six foot eight ex-Marine with a face that looked like it had been dragged over the rough end of the Falklands* and biceps not dissimilar to relief maps of the Himalayas had something of an advantage in negotiations with customers. Sadly he tended not to see that others not blessed with the same advantages might have a tougher time with it.

So instead of disturbing him we'd be polite but firm and get the families to shift their precious little snowflakes into the children's room where they couldn't run around without their clothes on, play catch with the vintage horse brasses or vomit down customer's legs**.

99% of people were fine with this, or chose to leave, but for the really arsy ones got a special gift. We'd throw in a round of drinks for the kiddies.

Now you might think this was rewarding someone for being a gitwizard but the dilute orange juice the pub, and I understand most pubs at that time, used had an important quality, besides looking more disturbing that Robert Killroy-Silk's skin. It contained ephedra.

Ephedra, sadly banned since 2004, occurs naturally in bitter oranges and used to be added to crap dilute orange juice to give it a tang. However, its effect on small children was a joy to behold, being roughly the equivalent of giving them Kate Moss’ daily dose of nasal supplements while applying slight electric shocks to the motor response centres of their brains.

Before long the little bastards were deep in the midst of a speed crisis, particularly if they’d gulped down the free drink as soon as possible, which they invariably did. They'd find it impossible to keep still, the hands would start flapping and food would be an anathema. Inevitably they became completely uncontrollable and could legitimately be asked to leave the pub.

We’d take side bets as which parent would lose it and hit their snot-covered little charges before the end of the lunch. As an additional bonus we knew the parents faced an afternoon of sheer hell until it wore off.

The moral of the tale, be nice to your bar staff. The wages are shit, the hours are long and we have to take our amusement where we can find it.

* It had
** All real examples
(Thu 5th Feb 2009, 23:57, More)

» Bullies

Sage Scottish advice
Growing up I was the killer combination of being short, bespeckled and crap at sports. It’s as though the bullying fairy had shat in my crib at birth.

At first things weren’t too bad because almost everyone’s short and weedy at first (with the exception of William Dale, who was nearly six foot by the time he was 13 and built like a brick shithouse – lovely chap mind you). But when puberty hit life started to get very miserable indeed.

To compound things I was stuck in a boarding school so it went on all day and all night. I assembled a motley collection of bruises, wrist burns (and one breakage) endless shattered specs, far too many ‘Deep Heat on the bollocks’ sessions and a broken tooth by the time I was 14. I’m only glad I didn’t live in a country with easy access to guns otherwise I’d have been stalking the school halls with an AK47 in one hand and the scrotums of two or three of the worse perpetrators in the other*.

Now parents will tell you to just ignore the bullies and they’ll go away. After several years working towards my PhD in the school of getting the shit kicked out of you I can attest this is bullshit. “Just keep out of their way,” is also not good advice when you’re sharing a dormitory room with them for 30 weeks of the year.

The school chaplin suggested prayer, which I tried as well. Either god doesn’t listen to prayers or he takes active pleasure in watching gangs of kids beating up their peers – and after many years of thought and a thorough reading of the bible I suspect the latter.

Thankfully it was my great uncle Jim who provided the answer. I’d gone up to Scotland to stay with him for the first time in years and he’d noticed that the ‘bonny wee lad’ he’d last seen five years ago had turned into a quivering lack of self confidence in a perpetual state of fear. After some patient questioning and two large whiskey toddies I unburdened myself to him and he thought for a while, puffing on an unfiltered Senior Service, before giving me the answer.

“It’s going to hurt for a wee bit but ye’ll have to hammer the cunts.”

He explained that he’d had similar problems in the army in the Second World War. He had joined up in 1940 and, being bookish sort and a homosexual to boot, had suffered similar torments. In the end he told me it drove him almost insane but he got the advice he had given me from a corporal and it had worked. He fought back, fought dirty and never backed down unless unconscious, which had happened more than once.

He then spent the next week inculcating me in the art of fighting dirty. I learnt the value of bollock grabbing, instep crunching, long fingernails and elbow strikes to the face. It was kind of like Karate Kid without the boring 'wax on, wax off' rubbish and substituting a wizened Asian man with a gay, perpetually drunk Scotsman (which to my mind would have made a better film.)

As the next term started I used his advice. Once the bullying started I hit out and didn’t stop hitting, biting and scratching until they ran off or I couldn’t get up again. Yes, there were many times when I got the shit kicked out of me, because all the fighting in the world won’t help you when it’s five to one, but I didn’t mind it so much. There was none of the sick misery I’d felt as a victim before, more just a stoic acceptance that it was needed and a sneaking pride in my ability to pick myself up and go out and do it again.

It’s remarkable how quickly the bullies faded away. Most of the scum who bully are cowards deep down, that’s why most of them do it – to prove to themselves that they aren’t, and if there are other kids out there who won’t hurt them they’ll move on to new and easier game. By the end of the term it had stopped all together and I was well on the way to getting some confidence back.

I’ve never had to fight since, apart from one incident on my 29th birthday but that was self-defence, and have grown up to hate bullies and all they stand for, be it in schools, the workplace or wearing a policeman’s uniform. If my goddaughter ever has problems I’ll pass on Jim’s advice with pleasure, just as I’ve passed it on here, and I urge you all to do the same.

Apols for the length but it’s a hot button issue for me.

*The day after Columbine I said as much in the pub and was surprised at how many people agreed. Thank goodness for gun control.
(Thu 14th May 2009, 0:03, More)

» Heckles

The truth about Budweiser
A few years back, on my first (and hopefully last) trip to the manicured hellhole that is Orlando I found myself at Seaworld. There they have the Budweiser museum, which offers free trusting. Result thought I, having done similar things at the Carlsberg and Heineken breweries, and so wandered in.

After sitting through a thirty minute presentation on how the beer was made the presenter held a quick quiz before the tasting, something that pissed off the liggers even more than watching the extended Bud advert we'd just snoozed through.

Question 1, Why should you always serve Bud at below 12 degrees?

A cry from the back of the room (and undoubtedly from a Brit) "So you can tell it from piss!"

The length of his ire was the best thing about the visit.
(Mon 10th Apr 2006, 12:20, More)