» PE Lessons

There is some corner of a field which is forever England
Deep in darkest Somerset, a yellow-eyed headmaster peered through his tobacco-stained windows and noticed that, for the first time in three hundred and eleventy years, it wasn't raining. His brow furrowed atop his wrinkled head as he picked up the phone, dialed an extension, and breathed a single word into the receiver. A word which would change history, alter destinies, and cause more death than he could ever have imagined.

"Aerobics."

Plans were put in motion. A matter of hours later the entire school, all one thousand pupils, teachers, assistants, administrative staff and the creepy old goblin who ran the tuck-shop gathered on the largest playing field and stood facing two scaffolding towers topped with an enormous PA system. A crude stage sat between them, assembled from wooden planks, gym mats and old benches. Some of us nervously joked that we were about to witness a public execution. Hah! Today was not to be the end of just one victim. Instead of a hooded hangman there, stood on the stage, was Miss O'Leary, school Head of PE.

Miss O'Leary was, naturally, a raging lesbian with a red-cheeked love of physical excercise that made a Hitler Youth leader look like, well, a typical B3tan. Looking back, she resembled God's first, rejected attempt at creating Ellen MacArthur (who was fresh from completing the first solo circumnavigation of her mum's womb at the time.)

With a nod from proto-Ellen, Mr Armstrong (the music teacher) handed her a microphone and pulled a huge lever. Giant speaker stacks sizzled and hummed and her voice, electrically enhanced, roared at us:

"Just copy me!"

Kylie began singing The Locomotion. Miss O'Leary begain doing star jumps and slowly the rest of us began jumping too. There we were, over a thousand of us, bouncing away in an ungainly parody of communist state mass public excercise. It beat double maths, anyway.

The occasional laugh and shreik came to our ears over the deafening chart pop. Strangely the laughs grew louder and more frequent, despite the excercise. I could see ranks breaking as I looked around me. Something wasn't right, I could feel it, but what could I do? I could see no escape, nor any obvious sign of danger. My sense of unease grew.

Then, with a mighty, wet SMACK, the first worm hit me in the face. Lured to the surface by the rhythmic pounding of two thousand pairs of feet, earthworms covered the ground. The mud and grass was barely visible, we were star jumping (this is the only move I know) on top of a writhing carpet of slimy, brown worms. Pandora's box had opened. Hell's gates were breached, and battle was joined.

Raising my head as if recovering from shell shock I looked up to a sky filled with countless flying annelids. There was no laughter anymore, only terrified, disgusted female screams. Children running for shelter, diving behind other children, crying, shouting, desperately flinging squirming invertebrates to cover their retreat, scrabbling in the mud for more ammunition; it was Guernica with living bullets.

I saw heroism that day, true, but it's the horror that haunts my sleep now.
(Tue 24th Nov 2009, 16:02, More)

» Festivals

Antifestival
I attended an event in July of 2006 that would make most b3tan's blood turn to powder in horror.

It should have been ace. All the right boxes were ticked: Knebworth. The Who. Hottest day of the year. Best of all, it was not only free but I was being paid to go.

It was not ace.

This was no festival. It was a corporate trade show for the hedge fund industry, organised as a chance for everyone involved to come together, sell eachother their services and forge high-value-add synergistic relationships in a relaxed atmosphere of friendly co-opetition. The twist was the festival theme, the highlight being The Who playing later in the evening.

The day started well enough. Hundreds of monumentally overpaid hedge fund managers parked their Aston Martins on the lawn. Bankers and brokers left their Ferraris alongside. I, mere pond scum of a junior software vendor monkey, carefully attached crook-lock on my girlfriend's 15 year old Fiesta. We set up our company tent as the sun started to get hot and amused ourselves trying to flirt with the models in sundresses that the bigger companies had hired.

As the day wore on a growing sense of just what we were involved in was nagging at me. My inner 18 year old was in tears. Everything about the event makes me cringe. The refreshment stand in the field called the "Nine Bar". The Bentley dealer who'd turned up to raffle off a couple of cars for £1,000 a ticket. The old VW campers painted up in what appeared to be psychadelic patterns but on closer inspection turned out to be highly stylised logos of major banks. I was in danger of drowning in pure wank. I was getting sunburned at an event called, I can barely write this now, HedgeStock.

I did my job manning our stand. When 5pm rolled on I broke out the beers and got ready to watch The Who with my fortunately very cool colleagues. They played a brilliant, brilliant set that lasted well over two hours. It was loud, tight, we were pissed and right at the front, really getting into it and just loving watching an incredible band at a beautiful venue outside on a summer's evening. You can't beat it. Yet, when I turned around to take in the atmosphere, I was bought thudding back to earth. Here was a crowd of about a thousand people, with maybe twenty of us singing along and dancing like loons at the front. Everyone else, to a man, was either on the phone or emailing on their Blackberries. I saw one chap in a polo shirt and pressed chinos with a sunhat (bank logo'ed, of course) with his arms folded and a severe expression on his face, just standing there - during Baba O'Reilly!

Roger Daltrey summed it up perfectly about three songs in. Clearly underwhelmed by what must have been the worst crowd he has ever played in front of in his entire career - a crowd so bad it made the Jazz Oddessey audience look like whizzed up moshpit nutters - he shook his head sadly and said into the microphone in a bemused voice, "Who the fuck are you?"
(Fri 5th Jun 2009, 15:57, More)

» The Boss

Headhunted, bit long but it's painful
I used to work for a pretty cool company. I was hired young and the job looked like a dream: lots of business travel, good tools and kit, even trust and respect from senior management that meant we could largely get on with the job without much interference. My colleagues were fantastic people; the workplace was so diverse it made a mobile phone commercial look like a Klan meeting and there was a really amazing team spirit there. I knew I was happy. Obviously placing such trust in a new hire was a risk for the company, so I was paired up with a more senior contractor for the first couple of years. He acted as a mentor to me, showing me the ropes and helping me sort out any trouble I caused. Unfortunately, that's where the trouble started.

Being 21 and in such a position I am ashamed to say that I got a bit arrogant. After a year or so I began to resent my mentor's constant interference and advice. I thought I knew it all and I didn't want his help. I also suspected him of taking some of the credit for work I'd done with a particuarly difficult client. I'd got to know the industry pretty well by then and I knew the competition were always on the lookout. I wasn't about to approach them directly, but if anything came my way I knew in my selfish heart that I'd happily jump ship. My ego was so great that I actually believed the company would collapse if I left! I cringe now.

Months passed and no word from the competition. I grew more resentful of my present company (I was a massive, egocentric shit at the time.) One day my mentor and I got the job to go and represent the company at a major conference. While there, a chance meeting with the owner of our biggest competitor changed everything.

He flattered me. Courted me, almost. He made it crystal clear that I was exactly the sort of chap he was looking for; I agonised about my overbearing mentor. He reassured me that I was "clearly ready" to be cut loose; I began to see that his operation wasn't as bad as I'd been led to believe. Eventually I agreed to work for his group for a massive raise and a position of power right from the start.

I didn't tell my employers straight away. Rather disgustingly I agreed to do some industrial espionage for my new boss. I did more work, hoping to please him, but I wasn't happy. His flattery and charm was changing, too, warping into something darker. I began to realise I was getting out of my depth, quickly. I knew I could turn to my former mentor for help, but in my hubris I thought I could extract myself. How wrong I was.

By the time I was ordered to murder the younglings there was no way out. The emperor really is a bastard of a boss.
(Mon 22nd Jun 2009, 13:01, More)

» Puns

My dad tortured us with this, my turn now
Erik the Viking was ruthless, brave and above all extremely rich. A long career of pillage and plunder had engorged his coffers to the point where he felt able to retire and enjoy his loot. He had more than his wife, Erika, could concievably spend and as all men know that is the very definition of success. He was happy.

He'd accumulated a few decent scars along the way but by far his worst injuries were his two sightless eyes, courtesy of a particularly brave fishwife whom he'd taken a shine to on a raiding trip in Grimsby.

After hanging up his raiding axe and returning his open-crotched raping pants to their shelf for the last time he decided he needed a project. So, beginning a long tradition of rich bastards with time on their hands (and providing the foundation of Kevin McCloud's TV career) he commissioned a mighty house.

Bricklayers, architects, stonemasons and carpenters toiled for years under his refreshingly decisive project management. Aesthetic aspects were left to Erika; shouting and punishment beatings were his department.

Then, after ten years (and more than a few avoidable accidents) the house was completed. Truly this was a building that both challenged, and sat in absolute harmony with, its environment.

Erika toured the building with the lead contractors to make sure all was well before allowing her hot-tempered husband in. Stepping over tools, buckets, pallets of bricks and other construction detritus the team made their way through the house. Upon coming to the kitchen Erika immediately noticed some work unfinished!

"You bloody oik, you've left the sink out!"

"Ah, sorry miss E, but you wanted this fancy Poggenpohl jobby and it's not like Germany's next door you know. Will be here in a few weeks. I'm sure you can manage."

"No I can't sodding well manage. Think of something quick, he'll be round soon and although the bastard's got no eyes he'll notice soon enough if he turns the tap on and his feet get wet!"

The contractor, thinking quickly to avoid an axeing, grabbed a brickie's hod propped up against the wall and, sure enough, it fitted the gap perfectly. He got out a hand drill and cut a drainage hole. A bit of silicone sealant and a lick of varnish later and the job was done.

"How about that then miss E? That do you? I mean, everyone knows that a hod's as good as a sink to a blind Norse."
(Thu 5th Mar 2009, 16:31, More)

» Hypocrisy

Me, the dead-eyed sell out.
Because I'm sitting here seething inside at all these boring bloody students banging on about vegetables, politics and the environment, how the biggest hypocrite of all is the corrupt capitalist system, "Maggie stole my milk" and all the crusty old hemp-shirted, Levellers-soundtracked, weed smoking, cycle riding, plane avoiding rest of a chasm of self-righteous QoTW answers.

Sitting here, that is, being paid a generous salary to occupy a plush office with a comfy chair - perks of a job I only got because of my three years smoking weed, cycling and railing against capitalism at university.

I genuinely don't know whether I am more disappointed in my current self or the young me. Looks like more coke and hookers needed tonight to drown out the nagging voices.
(Fri 20th Feb 2009, 10:24, More)