I am the Walrus

It is a univeral fact that nothing is funnier than a friend's drunken antics... unless you're somehow detrimentally affected by your (ex)friend's actions. This is the story of Seb.

Our then-new housemaster (I go to a boarding school) had decided to host a Christmas Dinner for all members of my house's sixth form in order to win our affection and discipleship. Upon initiation, he had belligerently left his mark on all aspects of our school life, like a dog urinating on every lampost on a street. I guess the dinner was to compensate for his needless, and often whimsicle, modifications. In any case, it was guaranteed to be a disaster the moment he decided to let us regulate our own alcohol consumption.

I was seated next to Seb (a rather eccentric friend with whom I've shared a love-hate relationship for years) and it wasn't long before he'd managed to hoover up all the available alcohol on the table. The evening may have still been uneventful, however, had he not also quaffed a whole bottle of port before the event. It was obvious from the off that Seb would make the night unforgettable.

Initially, it was hard to determine whether Seb was hyper or drunk. It began by him leaning over and sniffing (loudly) the rather attractive teacher next to him, it steadily progressed to him practically shouting to me about how "hot" and "fit" she was, it culminated in his sudden disappearance from the table. After ten minutes, I decided to track him down before he insisted on sniffing any innocent members of the public.

It wasn't difficult to track him down, he was confusedly ambling around the building whilst humming tunelessly to himself. My immediate instinct was to remove him from the vicinity of our Führer before he landed himself in any trouble. However Seb was seemingly determined to cause as much chaos as physically possible. In fact, his instantaneous reaction was to drop down to the floor, wallow and flap around on his face and shout out "I AM THE WALRUS". Unsurprisingly, this strange outburst attracted the attention of a nearby teacher. Sadly my first reaction was to tell him that we were playing charades, something not abetted by Seb's denial of this defence. However Seb decided this wasn't quite enough.

No, Seb wasn't quite pleased enough with himself until he'd managed to throw up a whole lump of chicken on our Führer's shoes and asked him to inflate his newly acquired blow-up girlfriend (which was duly confiscated). His mother was eventually called to pick what was left of him up.

How it made the journey twice is anyone's guess.

Valentine's Day

As promised, my blog is the most inconsistent pile of crap ever composed but I'm going to add another incoherent post nonetheless. Valentine's Day came and went, like it does every year, and just like every other year I decided to compile a load of piss-poor poetry for my dearest friends and parents. Just like every year, they dutifully gushed at my poetic distalents (you're right, that isn't a word) and I decided that some of it was worthy of a blogpost.

Things went off to a good start. I compiled the following piece of crap literary genius for my best friend in under five minutes (the time probably would've been spent more productively if I'd been doing the grammar exercise my Spanish teacher asked us to do) but write it I did:

 I wrote you a poem,

To show you I care,

It's no Wilfred Owen,

(So scoff if you dare).

You call me a skank,

I call you a poo,

We pretend to be frank,

But neither claim's true.

Sadly I like you,

You're a rather good mate,

But you belong in a zoo,

Behind a huge gate.

 I was so excited by my scribblings that I didn't even bother to give her a nice copy, so now she's forced to keep a piece of partially chewed paper in order to prove she loves me... Happy Valentine's Day "best friend". You can observe a hint of our abusive relationship in the second stanza, I'd like to believe the hostility was initiated by her but that would most probably be a lie.

Things started to get pretty desperate when a friend unexpectedly gave me the longest poem I have ever read. Feelings of guilt and panic immediately ensued. So much panic and thus swearing that the first stanza may seem somewhat familiar XD

It says : I penned you a poem,
To show you I care,
I'm no Wilfred Owen,
So scoff if you dare.

You're my amazing maths mate,
You're nice and you're kind,
You help me integrate,
When I'm confuzzled by 'sin'.

You're one over cos c,
You should get the joke,
Let's meet up for some tea,
Or maybe some coke.

In fact, I was so proud of my Wilfred Owen line that I even used it in my boyfriend's valentine : 

It says: We both hate the mush,
(The Valentine slush),
That dictates I write
A poem tonight.

So here is a poem,
(It's no Wilfred Owen),
You better enjoy it,
Although it's quite shit.

I love you like tea,
(You better love me),
Or I'll look somewhat silly,
Like a skirt round a willy.

I'm lucky to have you,
(Not a day do I rue),
I'll not carry on,
Or else you might vom.
Word.

I'm not sure what that's meant to mean either... His response was "That is the best poem I have ever seen. Word" so I count it as a success nonetheless...

I was on fire, nothing could stop my poetic spewings. The manic poetry culminated in compensation for some really shocking artwork for my parents:

I felt that the front of the card (having taken me an hour to create) was just so incomprehensibly rubbish that I had no choice but to write the following : 

It says: Dearest Parentals,
(Mummy and Dad),
I attempted a card,
But it looks pretty bad.

I used the wrong glue,
It got stuck to a box,
But you're both quite polite,
So just pretend that it rocks.

Valentine's Day,
It's all bother and faff,
And this stupid card,
Is really quite naff.

Know that I love you,
Know that I care,
Make fun of my art,
Go on, if you dare!

Disclaimer : I don't normally refer to my mother as mummy, I did it purely for the rhythm. (and this disclaimer is not here to preserve any of my non-existent street-cred...)

New Years Resolutions, a Formula for Disappointment and Failure

So... New Year came and went, and, as per ever, I had an optimistic view on the year to come. This was going to be the start of a brand new me, it was going to be the best year of my life so far and, as a starting point, came six resolutions. Well, as predicted by my close friends,  five of these goals have failed dismally and the remaining resolution, judging by my maths report, is likely to meet the same fate. 

Considering my malcoordination in simple tasks such as transporting a glass of water from the kitchen to the room next door, it will come as no surprise that I am no good at sports. In some instances during my school career I have had specific teams created just for me - whilst everyone else was happily partaking in games of tennis, I was trusted with neither the ball nor the racket in fear of me beheading someone, running was also deemed too dangerous, as there was always the risk of tripping over my own foot, and so I was set the task of doing endless starjumps - this constituted the training of the G-team, i.e. me. This is precisely why four of my resolutions were all health, exercise and coordination related. However, whilst my weekly one-mile run started off well, as the weeks grew on the distances became less and less until they finally stopped. It has come to the stage that walking inbetween lessons counts towards my mile-run...

Resolution 2 was similarly atrocious - healthy eating went gone down the pan with me justifying each item of food I consumed irrespective of whether my point was valid or not -chocolate is made of cocoa beans, beans are healthy and so chocolate must be healthy too; chips are made from potatoes, my mother always encouraged me to eat more vegetables and so therefore I was being healthy, crisps could be argued similarly. The list of justifications is endless, my failure at simple tasks and rationalising of each has become so intense that I may as well create my own term for it, I shall call it Stephodicy (derived from the Greek word "dike" meaning "justify" - I have too little imagination and too much self respect to randomly making up complete words).

Resolution 3 was to manage 10 press ups in a row. My best friend, knowing my Stephodic nature, decided to assess all attempts at this resolution to make sure I did it properly. The shame and destitution I felt when she burst out laughing at my failed first press up will forever be implanted in my head, alongside her description of how I looked like I was quote "humping the floor". I have since concluded that careers of an athletic nature are not within my limits unless that career is labelled "sports coach", as from personal experience, all that is required for such profession is a loud voice, a sadistic nature and a penchant for lycra.

Resolutions 4 and 5 weren't ever going to happen either - I don't know what I was thinking when I decided that teaching myself to ride a unicycle and juggle (albeit not necessarily at the same time) would be an effective use of the year to come. After a week of lobbing socks up into the air (some of which I am still finding in the cavities between my desk and wall) and failing to catch even one pair, I gave up on the juggling. The unicycling lasted but a day - I fell off ten times, got my foot stuck in the wheel and somehow twisted my thumb which resulted in a unanimous decision from my family and I that the best place for my unicycle dreams would be deep within my head and that I should never enrol in clown school. Something I can't say I've ever aspired to do, but to have that option cruelly taken away from me by my incapabilities at life in general is of deep distress to me.

Alas, I have since thrown myself into making sure that resolution 6 (to get straight A's at A level) will go ahead as planned. However whilst my other teachers are happy with my academic capabilities, my maths teachers do not seem to share my confidence in my mathematic abilities. Something displayed on a bi-termly basis through the consistent writing of "solid yet unremarkable" in my reports even though these three words remain a mystery to me - what do they mean? If I'm solid at maths, surely that means I'm keeping afloat and understand it which arguably means I should be getting higher than a 3 out of 5 in my report. Also by extension what constitutes a remarkable mathematician? Surely they don't expect me to spew out new mathematical theories in lessons when it is widely acknowledged that no-one in my year fully understands all these supposed useless facts we are meant to blindly parrot on an exam paper? In any case I will agree that I have little mathematical talent but I will keep strong and continue on my mathematical odyssey through the waves of polynomials and hyperbole crashing down upon me.

Musical Mishaps

Performing on stage is amongst one of the most terrifying things you can do in life - there's no real escape (unless you refuse to feel the audiences' eyes burning through the back of your head as you leap across endless rows of chairs to the back of the hall) and there's little margin of error (you know that the little old lady in row three is counting every single mistake you make); so there you are, pitying yourself for having signed up for the stupid concert in the first place and completely trapped in the confines of accuracy and the hall itself. This fear can only be intensified if you're insanely malcoordinated.

Piano

One of my first performance recollections on this instrument involves me tripping up on the way to the stage, falling off my seat and playing every single note wrong because somehow the thought of transposing the whole piece up three notes was more appealing to me than admitting I started on the wrong one. Aside from personal mishaps, there's also been times when the piano itself was not up to par - most prominent in my memory is the piano that lobbed its keys at me in a way similar to if it were hurling ninja stars. All I wanted was to practice on a real piano for half an hour before a concert, what I didn't expect was that the 200 year block of wood was set up to be home to 88 keys all set out to kill anyone with the misfortune of touching them. My recollection of this event is somewhat like this :

but being brutally honest what really happened was somewhat more like this :

Violin

There's been far worse misfortunes with the violin - there's more components that can go wrong. I've had strings snap in the middle of performances (I now have a massive fear of ever touching the E string), I've had catapulting bridges, exploding shoulder rests and there was that one time that I accidentally let go of my bow and watched it fly off into the first row of the audience. Sheet music has flown off, music stands have toppled over as if they've had far too much to drink and a couple of times I've managed to destroy chairs - no-one knows how it happens, it just does. I'm the thinnest person imaginable so the only logical explanation for such occurrences is that the chairs in the music department in my school have conspired against me, along with the piano.

My attempt at fixing the remains of my shoulder rest

Saxophone

For once, I believe that this was through no fault of my own and thankfully I never performed on the sax so only my teacher was there to witness the following. It was 1:50 on a Thursday and I was running late for my sax lesson, I ran up the stairs to my teacher's studio, barged in and upset a bucket of water that was by the door (apparently it regulates the humidity in the room but I know it was a trap), having righted up the bucket I set about constructing the saxophone and was ready to prove to my teacher that his efforts in making me a top saxophonist weren't futile, I was ready to conquer the world - for once I had practised my saxophone and I was determined to take his breath away. However... no matter how hard I tried, the measliest little squeak would come out the metallic lump in my hands, the harder I blew the more high-pitched and squeaky it'd get, after five minutes laughing at me, my teacher finally mustered up enough breath to tell me to stop playing and dismantle my saxophone so he could see if there was an obstruction. I checked my case - I'd taken out the cloth and pipe cleaner so what on earth could be obstructing it? It was then that I felt something hit me on the back of the head - a little finger puppet version of Cinderella lay on the floor all crumpled up, I recognised it as belonging to the demon-child of one of my mum's friends but I was far too embarrassed to have thoughts of revenge. I packed up my belongings and left the room, my teacher was kind enough to put the incident in my report much to the exasperation of my tutor...

I'm not sure if there are any morals to the above stories or tips to hand out - don't play musical instruments? but then the world would be boring... so I'm going to settle with - take care of your instruments, they can bite back...

Squirrel Nests and the Like

so... this is a visual representation of what I normally get up to, aside from terrorising orange cats in weird trees I also play violin and piano, attempt to speak several foreign languages, read (mostly books on which English Language teachers would spit on i.e. Harry Potter or the Terry Pratchett Series), watch films and wander aimlessly around town. This wandering gives me an endless supply of opportunities to make a fool of myself, unfortunately my town is pretty small so if I do manage to make a fool out of myself in front of someone, not only will they remember but chances are they'll see me the following day.

I'm phenomenally crap at art, for which I am sorry, the pink blob is me, in the top left picture
I'm running away from a squirrel, in the top right picture I'm fending off jedi squirrels :)

I should probably elaborate on the above story considering it's actually based on some truth. It was dusk, I was innocently walking through the graveyard outside my school with a group of friends; laughing, talking, stamping on and eating the walnuts which had fallen from the nearby trees when we spotted the Goliath of walnuts. I'd never seen a nut that big, it was massive, I had to have it. The only issue was height, I was about 5 feet tall at the time and no amount of jumping was going to get me to the nut, so I did what any rational person would do, I scoured around for a stick. Upon not finding aforementioned stick I decided to throw a rock at the walnut so I could bludgeon it off the tree. Thoughts of treasuring the walnut forever were in my mind, what I did not anticipate however was the squirrel nest. Within seconds a group of irate squirrels flew out of their bundle of sticks, running in all directions. Panic ensued, I told my friends to save themselves, that I would remain behind and fend off the angst-ridden squirrels, however when I turned around I found that the bastards had already thought of this plan for themselves. The next part is a haze but I can just remember watching the squirrels eventually returning to their partially broken home from on top of a park bench (- for some reason I had thought that these expert climbers who could jump from tree to tree with such grace and ease couldn't get to me if I curled up in a ball on a bench made up of rotting wood), and as I peered up, I saw one of the grey terrors pick up Goliath from his resting place and make off with it. The only thing I had then to remember my plight was cold, cold shame and constant reference to it for the next few weeks :(

The moral of the story - don't throw stones near squirrel nests, especially if your aim is amongst the worst in the county.

A note of explanation

I'm clumsy, really really clumsy. There's nothing I can do to control it - chairs, tables, feet just fly out at me and the only thing I can do is to close my eyes and accept the inevitable - I'm going to trip and reunite with my old friend, the floor. After an (admittedly brief) lifetime of such eventualities I've been encouraged by a number of friends to write up my experiences. They claim my clumsiness will somehow diffuse from my persona into the words I write and thus my affliction will disappear, I may be gullible but that's just stupid. However I will write in an attempt to possibly brighten up someone's day ever so slightly :)

Love,
Smellfunny
xxx

N.B. all posts will (sadly) be drawn up from personal experience albeit exaggerated at times because that really is the way I feel they happened...