The randomness of guilt

An estemend blogger wrote about the ‘drama of forgiveness’… he injected lots of god mumbo, and yes, some jumbo but the sentiment was an interesting one.

Guilt is a funny thing and from my experience, quite random. I’m sure (know) I’ve done lots of bad things and hurt people along the way but for most of these incidents I feel only passing guilt and in the most cases I would imagine I don’t remember. But there are somethings I’ve done which stick with me and fill me with genuine guilt.

I’m gonna lay them out before you here not as a confessional, but to show you how random and quite puny these things are.

Both are things which I did or was involved in when I was in primary school, at the age of about 7-8. I wonder if there are any psychologists out there who can make some assessment of me based on this. It’s gonna come across that I was a goody-two-shoes as a boy, which I suppose I was… but I did ‘bad’ things like lighting fires, chucking crab apples at peoples windows (windys), once pulled a pen knife on someone during a fight (seriously)… zero guilt attached.

These are the things which I find myself thinking about occasionally on the bus to work

The first is the most puny I’d say… simple as this… stole a fiver from my mum’s purse and spent it on loads of sweets then scoffed them all. Back in them days a fiver was ‘something’ probably equivelent to a £20 today… I was able to buy a carrier bag full of sweets and treats. I think the guilt is made worse because my mum asked me directly if I had taken it, and I lied through my teeth. SERIOUSLY I’ve felt guilt about it since then, so much so that on my mother’s death bed when I was 25, I had to tell her, she laughed and couldn’t even remember.

The other thing is a wee bit worse, all the females reading this are gonna think I was a orrible little boy. It all involved a girl whose name I remember well but will call her Kate… she was my ‘best friend’ when I was a 5 yr old. Crucially she was the first girl in the class to get boobs - not her fault, and some would also jump to my defence and say it’s not my fault. All of a sudden the boys in the class decided that they were supposed to ‘love’ her. No one was quite sure why and what exactly we were supposed to do. About 5 or 6 of us started to hang around outside her house to see her (I think her dad actually did come out with a big stick one time). Kate didn’t really know what to do with all this attention, she remained friendly and one fated afternoon she agreed to kiss us all. Very nice of her, but ill advised. There was an actual queue, I think I was toward the end of the line so I could make sure everyone else was actually gonna do it.

This is when it all changed. I’m not sure who it was, I don’t think it was me but it might have been, that decided to call her blubber lips. We were suddenly all very ‘aware’ and embarrassed - like Adam and Eve in the garden of eden, if you will. We all ran for the cover of mockery and made her life hell. We all decided we hated her… that she was fat, ugly and had blubber lips (which she hadn’t… she was just a normal little girl, who’d been early to develop). For a few months it was our sport… mocking her, laughing at her, refusing to stand beside her in line-ups. She moved school. I was 8 years old, and still I feel bad.

There you go.

In a New York minute

[greatist 'hits' redux] 

As mentioned in an earlier post, myself and GrumpyMan spent the millennium on a pilgrimage to New York City. We maxed out the credit cards, jumped on the last Aer Lingus outta Shannon, dodging a few millennium bugs on the way and landed in the Big Apple with woolly coats and big hearts. People forget now, due to the events a year later, but there were serious Islamic terrorist threats on Times Square - the news was doing a ‘countdown to carnage’ rather than countdown to new years. At one point it was rumoured that it would be called off, but in the end it went ahead so as not to ‘give in’. During the actual ‘standing around’ in Times Square bit a middle eastern looking guy who was standing in front of us was thrown to the ground by police who dragged him away (probably to father of Guantanamo).

GrumpyMan and I often used to get into a reckless game of egging each other on to do things, which sometimes led to excitement, but more often led to feelings of ‘hmm that wasn’t the best idea in the world’. On our first night there we were looking for a great NY Bar to go to, so we looked up a nightlife brochure we found in the hotel (hotel was of course one block from the Empire State Building - I say again, nothing by halves), anyway, bars… we found one we liked the look of, it was the Korova Milk Bar, based on a Clockwork Orange theme. We jumped on the Subway and emerged near to were it was, which of course, turned out to be downtown Brooklyn. Dodgy empty looking streets, no cars, dudes standing on street corners, us walking around in the cold for 30 mins looking at a map (jeepers). Eventually we came of a hidden doorway, walked in (expecting to maybe die soon) and arrived in the blacked out pub/club. If I remember right - it was actually a tad rubbish, but we stayed there for a couple of drinks anyway due to the hassle getting there.

This picture was taken by GrumpyMan from the Staton Island Ferry. Good uh!?

The next day we went to the World Trade Centre towers, I remember it like yesterday, leaving our coats in the lobby, getting in the express lift of Tower 2, up to the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floor. It was an awesome sight and chilling to think what happened there a year or so later.

That night we decided to make sure we went to a bar that was packed and happening. “Hogs and Heffers” was the choice. To give you an idea, this bar was the inspiration (in 2002) for the movie Coyote Ugly. The blurb said “the barmaids dance on the bar to country hits, try the dentist chair, for a great night out”. Must be said (to wives and such who are reading) there was no hanky panky sought or had - we just thought - this is bound to be a good story to tell.

Again - the rule should be to check out where the bar is before you jump in a taxi. The taxi driver gave us a ‘look’ when we told him where we wanted to go - then promptly dropped us off behind some scary warehouses down by the docks… the kinda place you expect to see cop cars chasing bad guys, knocking over fish crates and boxes. When we saw the bar we hung outside for a while, having decided not to go in, it was just too scary looking. Problem was there were no taxi’s around… so we bit the bullet and headed in. I can’t quite remember the rest of that night.

Next day was New Years Eve, and seeing as we were going to die in a terrorist attack, Grumpy and I decided to get tattoos in Greenwich village. Ok, this is heavily disputed by Grumpy who said he never intended to get one himself. He certainly encouraged me to anyway, we spent a while looking round for a good ‘parlour’ and we eventually found a guy with a spiders web tattoo on his face and thought - he looks nice, lets ask him to do it. So Grumpy told him what I wanted (yes), which was something to commemorate the date and the place… he spent a while drawing it out in pen on some paper, so it would have been rude to then say no. So, the rest is history, except its not, its present on my right shoulder - and I’ve just heard that these things actually don’t wear off!

There are other tales from the american odyssey - but sometimes a blogger has to know when enough is enough.

Paisley, the pope and me

[greatest ‘hits’ redux]   

 

School was boring, most of the time I wanted to be doing something else and the worst time was always from after lunch to home time. I used to sit beside a guy called Mark, whose dad was the assistant Minster at Ian Paisleys Martyrs Memorial church. He was good craic and we usually spent the time chatting and drawing silly cartoons to while away the hours until the bus came to take us back to the Gilnahirk ‘hood.

Occasionally he’d tell me that Big Ian was round at the house/manse for dinner the previous evening or that he was joining Paisley and his dad protesting outside some den of iniquity (or something or other). He even roped me in one time to going door to door with DUP European election leaflets - im embarrassed at the thought.

One Monday afternoon, after a double PE he told me that his dad was off to Brussels today to kick the pope (exact words). I enquired further and discovered that his holiness John Paul II was addressing the European parliament, so his dad and Paisley where heading over to voice their disagreement with some of JP’s theological musings.

I turned on the six of clock news that night to see Big Ian being dragged out of the chamber by his ankles, shouting. I RENOUNCE THEE THE ANTI-CHRIST… I RENOUNCCCCCE THEE THE ANTI-CHRIST!! There standing beside him was Mark’s dad, holding his papers - he was dead proud in school the next day.

It’s NYC baby!

Mid 1999, everyone was talking about what to do for the millennium. I think new years is always a bit of a let down, I always feel that I should be doing something more exciting than I actually am, so the millennium bought added internal pressure. As is usual, by early December I’d still no idea what I was going to do, bars were charging massive entry frees, anything remotely different and exciting was already booked up, so it was looking more and more like we were going to be ‘going around to someone’s house’.As soon as this realisation had set in, my mate Grumpy Man decided to lead a last ditch effort, “let’s just go down to the travel agents and see what there is, just to see”. Neither of us had any money, but we did have newly minted credit cards, which is as good as money, right?

Our first thoughts were to go somewhere obscure, Eastern Europe, Africa or Russia. Right from the off the nice travel agent lady was strangely open to the idea. We’d assumed she’d laugh at us and say ‘don’t be silly, everything was booked up a year ago’. But quite the contrary, she said people assumed everything was too dear and booked up, so no one asked.

There was a flight to Moscow on the 28th returning on the 2nd for about £300 (I think). So we thought ‘what the heck! Let’s do it!’ we didn’t book right away, we went for a walk around town to chat about it and phone people to see who would go (we were thinking 3 or 4 of are mates would definitely be up for it). To our great disappointment, no one seemed interested.

It was disappointing, but we decided we’d just go ourselves. We went back to the travel shop and right away we noticed something about an Aer Lingus deal to New York. We joked with the lady about it, saying phew, I bet that’s dear, millennium in Times Square! She nodded and looked up the price for the laugh - £400!

£400, 5 days in New York for the millennium! We couldn’t believe it. We’d heard of people spending thousands on things like this. (It goes without saying that neither of us HAD £400, but when you’ve got a credit card what’s the difference between £-300 and £-400… right?). New York, Times Square, for new years, for THE new years, too much to pass up.

[Coming soon "what happened in New York"... including ill-advised Greenwich Village tattoo story - possibly with pictures]

We Fins luv your soft rock stylings ya?

OK, it’s come to this, im going to have a roll out an other ‘when I were a rock star’ tale. Reason being that two of t’other legends have got blogs and are likely to mine this story soon if I don’t get in there first. Truth be told we were small fry, we managed to cultivate a reasonable close-to-home fan-base who would buy enough of our CDs to pay for the next one, and a great slap-up Christmas dinner. But one thing our illustrious manger did well was to publicise us in European countries who frankly didn’t know any better.

There was a period of two years or so when approx one long weekend a month we were jetting off to Scandinavia, Holland or Germany to rock the socks of the unsuspecting locals. Best part of it was without doubt, the fact that it was a free weekend away with yer mates. Most times we’d stay in hotels but some times we’d be sleeping on the floor in some random house of a promoter who looked like Ringo Starr. In retrospect those were the most craic - ‘getting in amongst em’ as our manager liked to say.

The venues would vary greatly, sometimes it would be a festival in a holiday camp near Eindhoven, next it was a youth meeting in downtown Düsseldorf, next it would be a wee pub is the snowy hills around Essen, or a beach hut along the Hague sea front or a summer festival by a late in mid Sweden. We never really knew what to expect until we got there.

One February weekend we were booked to play at an unpronounceable festival in Turku, Finland. We usually flew to Amsterdam then on to our location, this was a particularly cold weekend and when the plane landed in Helsinki it was minus 16 degrees. As we walked from the plane to the terminal the wings were being de-iced for take off (I wouldn’t have fancied the return journey). We got to the luggage carousal and waited as usual for our instruments and our bags to come around, as we always did hoping they hadn’t got damaged in transit (as was common). Fifteen minutes later we noticed that the bags had stopped coming, and the horrible realisation set in that we we’d been de-bagged!

Vox came to the fore, and marched up to the KLM desk to let them know that we were world renowned recording artists and we needed our bags by 11am the next day for a sound check. This seemed to do the trick so we made our way to the hotel, finding it all quite an adventure.

At the hotel we had a bit of banter at the bar, meeting up with a crazed fan (crazed seems harsh, but he was a bit of a mentalist). He was Finnish and had travelled to gigs in other parts of Europe to see us, and he was really proud to have us on his home turf.

We were still wearing the clothes we’d travelled in - I have an awful feeling that I opted for casual slacks and a polo neck sweater. We’d no wash bags or night attire, other than the wee wash pack KLM had given us on the plane. So when the morning came we were dying to get at our bags so we could have a good shower and change before the gig.

But yes, you’ve guessed it, the bags hadn’t arrived. At this point we started to get a bit concerned. The cavalcade arrived at the hotel to bring us to the gig venue and seemed uninterested in our story and more interested on getting us there in time. ‘Don’t worry we’ll sort it out’ seemed to be their favourite phrase. So in we got, still wearing the clothes we put on the previous morning and smelling like angry Swedes (that joke slays them in Finland).

As with all these trips we still had no idea what to expect. In my mind I was thinking it would be a little town square festival, where we played on the back of a lorry while some people listened and others wandered around the stalls. When we pulled up at the biggest ice hockey arena I’d ever seen we were convinced we were just using the car park.

As we got through the doors we realised that it was a 20,000 seater arena and they were hopeful of filling most of it. We started to get that pit of the stomach feeling of oh oh, we’re soooo out of our depth. They obviously think we’re something we’re not. Think about the stage at Live Aid, but indoors, massive screen each side of the stage, excited teenagers everywhere

THEN it hit us, oh my word, we’re wearing the clothes we travelled in, oh crap, we’ve got no instruments. The hunt was on scavenging and begging random punters to see if we can borrow a few guitars - eventually it paid off and we got what we needed (though I ended up playing this Level 42 like 5-string poncy bass). We jumped on stage trying to look like it was the kinda audience we were used to - shouting things like     Hello Finland!

When it was over we were euphoric, taking pictures of everything that moved, chatting non stop about the gig, but even as we were manning the merchandise booth, servicing a queue of enthusiastic Fins,  it was tempered with the melancholic thought that we would probably never play to this many people again. We never did, but we’ll always have Turku.

Tuesday lunchtime’s alright for fightin’

A conversation stirred up recently about fighting as a kid, and whether I’d ever been in a decent fight. I’m not sure if it was an lead-in to try and convert me to some Fight Club esque underground cult or more of a general conversation starter - can never be too sure . I was transported back to high school, it was circa 1987, the Dukes of Hazard was on telly every Saturday evening, Aha were all the rage and Liverpool FC still won things.

I wouldn’t describe my self as a bully or a bullyee, I was one of the middle ground kids, not a complete sado and not in the really cool groups. Ok, I did play the flute in the school band… and ok you’ve forced it out of me, i was in the computer club, and ok I did… nope, enough!

There was one guy who decided to have a pop at me, take me out for a spin as it were, see what I was made of… he decided to concentrate on one thing, and stick to his game plan. I have/had a bit of a stammer so he just kept calling me M-m-m-monkey (substitute monkey for my real second name - I bet you’re shocked that I’m not Mr Q Monkey). He kept at it… all the time.

Lets be clear, even then, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass, but you know how these things work, he was taking a liberty and I couldn’t have that now… could i? So I went for a few counter punches… the you’re sad head shake and tut …. the boooooring jibe… the ignoring and pretending I didn’t hear him… even the your ma’s your da! (only makes sense in N Ireland - in fact, it doesn’t even there) … I then dealt out the pièce de résistance I know you are but what am I routine …. I kept this up for about a day - even though it made no sense in the context.

Then he escalated maters, in retrospect he probably regrets it, just as those Serbs who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand in 1913 probably… anyway… sorry … he stabed me in the arse with a compass. I jumped to my feet in second period English to deliver a soliloquy worthy or the great bard himself, im gonna kick your head in at lunch time! That was it, I was tied in, he was tied in , neither of us wanted to be, but there it was. Next stop Somme, Ypres, Paschendale (ok, I’ll ill leave the poor WW1 metaphors).

To set the scene, the bully in question (yes, bully! Lets call evil by it’s name!) was reasonably well built and I knew for a fact he been in a few rumbles before. I had no delusions that this was gonna end with anything other than me being beaten up - my only hope was that the dinner ladies steped in and saved me and I could summon up a look of phew, you’re lucky they were here or you’d have been in trouble.

When lunch time came I tried my best to play it all down, fight? What fight? I’m just having my lunch   was my line. But to no avail. A crowd was gathering in expectation and they wanted action. I was pushed to the middle of the circle as was he, strutting around looking relaxed like Ali in Zaire, I was more like rabbit in headlights. I figured one thing out - I needed to get out of there with at least one good thing to talk about, one good ‘did you see when I ….’ story even if I’m telling the story from my hospital bed. I resolved to get in one decent punch in his face, if I could mark him I could claim victory quickly before I was pounded to the floor… maybe even claim ‘fight over’ and run like flip! (rules like this DID sometimes apply).

First up we were pushed together, the crowd roared in excitement… come on , hit him… then the lull when they realised we were really just engaged in close hugging the occasional dead arm and nip. Then we broke up, I had my chance, I took a swing and caught him right on the nose, really, really well. He fell down and the crowd feel slightly silent. I don’t think there was any blood but I’d obviously really hurt him. It was great! But then, it all got weird, out of defeat he managed to successfully scramble for the moral high ground saying awww, what you do that for, flip sake we were only mucking about… then his friends joined in, then everyone did, tutting at me saying… what a physco, can’t even take a joke. To this day, I don’t get it, but sometimes it’s only fair to look at ones opponent with respect and say, I may have landed the only punch but he won the battle for hearts and minds.   A good lesson learned.

I got me a Tiffin!

One of my best friends left Bristol this weekend, which is sad in some ways but great in an other. She donated me her Tiffin!

A ‘tiffin’ is, in this case a metal container with 4 layers, which i can take to my favourite Bristol eatery, The One Stop Thali, they fill it up with what ever goodness they’re serving that day, all for about £6. And there you go, a nice healthily tasty evening meal for two, with zero effort.

You might ask why i haven’t got one before, well, they cost £20, and I’m a bit lazy, and it seemed an effort to actualy go and buy one.

boring post? nope, interesting and informative i think you’ll find!

The pool playing fools

Something I feel a little guilty about, is recanted in the following chronicle, please feel free to assess my guilt in this mater.

I took the attitude to university life, that it was something with which to alleviate my parents concerns, while I spent my life socialising, trying to ‘pull’ and most importantly trying to ‘make it’ as a rock god. To that end, the mater of actually attending lectures and passing exams was very much secondary.

I had a mate called Jeff (name changed to protect the not quite so guilty), he, like me studied Computer Science, and he, like me had more important things to do with his time than passing exams and the like. So, most days, when we both deemed it appropriate to attend at all, we would bugger off and play pool in the Students Union and drink a couple of pints as soon as the bar opened.

When it came to our final year, we both, of course failed like billyo! The thing being, I failed by marginally less that he did, thus allowing me the dream ticket of having to re-sit the year (perfect for that one more chance to tour Europe with the band and keep living the dream). Jeff, who passed and failed as many exams as I did, was booted out on his ear.

I now work in a pretty good job in the computer industry, he works in a warehouse.

Wherein lies my responsibility?

Miss Teen Singapore

Well, I have a small pantheon (if that’s not a contradiction) of stories, which, when I run out of post ideas I slowly whittle down - this is one of them. Lets call it Miss Teen Singapore - bound to get some hits aren’t I ?!

A few years ago I spent a year living and working in the beautiful island state of Singapore. My friends were mostly British and Australian ex-pats, along with their local wives, girlfriends and a couple of locals who played in our football team. One of the wives was a bit of a minor local celeb, she did some promo work and presenting at events and the occasional TV slots. I’d only really been there for a week or so when I was invited to one of the events she was hosting, I was told it was a fashion show. So I thought its a Tuesday night, I’d nothing else on, and a load of the guys from the football team were going might be a bit of craic.

We arrived quite early to the nite club where it was taking place, and by show time I found myself part of a group of pissed up pale skinned blokes who’d had 6 or 7 Tiger beers and were looking forward to checking out the ladies (if you know what I mean).

To be fair to us (at this point in the story im still referring to US rather than THEM and I), we thought it was a fashion show, in a nite club and that it would be perfectly ok to be a bit lairy and photograph everything that moved - you’ve guessed the problem here haven’t you.

It was more than an hour or so in until we realised that we were actually watching (and a-whooping and a-hollering at) 15-16-17 year old girls parading around in sometimes not very much. I few of us started get back our peripheral vision and notice that we were the only ones making any noise, and that everyone else was looking at us (possibly parents).

If memory serves me, I was actually at the loo when the police arrived. Now, in Singapore the police don’t take any nonsense, I don’t mean they might grab you by the arm a bit tightly, I mean if you give any lip you can find your self with 10 lashes, and a month in Changi Prison on bread and water.

Fair to say I was reasonably concerned - it was miles more trouble than I’d ever been in before, but through the alcohol and the adrenaline of it there was part of me was quite excited. It wasn’t until afterwards I thought to myself,  this is the kinda thing could end up with me on the sex offenders register!

No one was actually arrested but we were told to leave, and it made the dammed news the next day! I learned a lesson about gradual escalation of jeopardy until you’re some where you don’t want to be. Similar to the frog vs. boiling water parable.

Happy for your friends?

Gore Vidal suggests that with every new success of a friend, another little bit of him dies. I’ve always thought that this is, if nothing else, a stunningly honest quote. Are we always genuinely happy for our friends or is there part of us that thinks, oh dear now that so-n-so is married/happy/rich it means I am less so in comparison. I think I have to admit that there are times when I feel that. It can’t say anything good about me - at least im in decent company, with Mr Vidal.

What business is it of mine?

I have a friend, who is shall we say, a “glass half empty” person. I think its quite an extreme case - since I’ve known him/her, her/his life has gone pretty well, they live a very comfortable middle class family life, and he/she doesn’t exactly have to work a 10 hour day down ‘pit to afford to buy bread for the family. Recently her/his moaning has started to annoying me - to the point were I have to stop myself saying ‘come on, it can’t be that bad! you lead a pretty easy and fulfilling life! It could be so much worse!’

Conversations sometimes don’t stray far from this template.  How was your week? sh1t. What will you be up to this week? sh1t stuff. you’re doing something nice the week after that though arn’t you? yeah, but it will be sh1t because of a,b,c.

The aim of this post is two fold (three if you count - QMonkey is struggling to find interesting things to talk about) - is this person actualy unhappy, or does he/she just enjoy a good moan? Will they ever wake up one day and think - oh, things aren’t so bad. My life is probably in the top 10% of ‘comfortable/happy’ in the country! Today is a new day woohoo!

Secondly, it’s none of my darn business in the slightest, why do I think it would ‘help’ for me to tell them what I think?… actually, I don’t for a minute think that it would - I just think it would make me feel better - maybe superior - maybe its me who has insecurities and I want to put her/him down to make me feel big. I will continue to fight the urge, and as the bard, Micheal Jackson said… start with the man in the mirror! Jamone!

His boots were a-made for walkin…

Lee Hazelwood 1929-4th Aug 2007

Singer and songwriter Lee Hazlewood, who wrote These Boots are Made for Walkin’ with Nancy Sinatra, has died at the age of 78. He was a charismatic and influential performer who also produced Duane Eddy and Gram Parsons as well as Nancy Sinatra.

A pioneer of country rock, his admirers included Belle and Sebastian, Nick Cave and Lambchop.

I’d never heard of him till a few years ago, when some friends of mine were asked to cover one of his songs for a tribute album. 

They were playing as the support band for him, in Dublin and they needed someone to drive the van with them from Belfast. I was only too willing, as i knew it would be great ole craic - as it always is with The Amazing Pilots ( i have a feeling the venerable Duke Special was there too, but in a non performance capacity).

When Lee started his set, i was breathtakingly underwhelmed … he sat there in an armchair with a little keyboard and crocked out this songs in the manor of someone not long for this world (one song was cringingly chorused ‘i’d like a BJ or a POA for my birthday!’). But then, he seemed to hit his straps, and the soul and emotion started to flow, as if he had suddenly decided to let us in - he left the stage to a standing ovation.

Lee Hazelwood  (1929-2007)

Worst game show ever?

A mate of mine, SW from Clevedon, was recently chosen to be on a Channel 4 game show! The show itself is a complete car crash - how it’s managed to get beyond 5 or 6 episodes is beyond me, but SW made a great fist of it. He had a 1 in 3 choice at the end to win about £40k, by deciding who of the three random punters in front of him earned the highest wage … and as the Crusader Knight said to Indiana Jones, he choose poorly.

Still if you’re gonna be on tellie, its good to at least get out of there with out looking like a tit! With his tongue in cheek jibes about ‘odd’ contestants and dramatic ooooo’s and aaaaaah’s to build the tension - he could join the pro game show circuit (if such a thing doesnt exist, it should!). I think it was for the best that they edited out the rant about his right-wing political views, all things being equal.

He does have an idea though , for the next series. Instead of wining the the monetary value of the person’s wage… the person should have to swap wages for you for a 5 year period. Now, that would be high stakes, and give the viewing figures a boost.

Annoying Arguments – any examples?

I love nothing more than a good ole debate. No holds barred, avoiding personal insult, but relentlessly trying to probe for holes in your opponent’s argument. I have a number of good friends who are of a similar vain, which makes for interesting discussions.

With one friend in particular, there have been all too numerous occasions when we’ve gone to far and one or both of us has had to break out the ‘tail between legs’ apology the next day. In spite of that, he’s one of my best friends and I don’t see that changing. It’s something we both enjoy, like lion cubs on the Serengeti honing our fighting skills ready for the ‘real’ fight (all too often we find out that actually we agree with each other, and were just sussing out the strength of our own argument! Let’s call that annoying argument No.1!).

As I said, I love a good barny! But I hate it when people use cheap predictable techniques to hide a poor argument. Here’s some of them.

Scrambling for the intellectual high-ground.
“..Voltaire totally rubbished your argument in his Treatise on etc etc… oh!  You haven’t read it?…   well how about you go and read that and get back to me”

Even people who agree with you on everything else disagree with you on this! 
This is a hard one to describe, because it’s subtle, but is often used.
“I’m not even going to argue with you, because I know someone who is ‘one of you’ who even thinks you’re wrong”

I used to think that, but now I’ve realised I was wrong. Often used, and quite powerful.
“I used to be an atheist too, but now I’ve realised god exists maybe in time you will too”
“I used to be a Christian, but now I’ve realised it was all in my head, maybe in time you’ll realise too”
“I used to be an idiot too, like you, so i can relate to what you’re thinking… let me help you take your blinkers off”

Any more examples for me?

Is friendship like a cricketers batting average?

I’m a cricket fan. Not to the extent that I go to all the home  games or know obscure statistics from 1956. But I watch every England test match on TV and usually go to The Oval one day a year with my dad. And I tend to go and see a couple of county 20/20 games, whilst sipping pimms on the village green.

Batting averages are generally taken as the telling statistic when judging a players quality… a good test match player will have an average of around 40, a great one will have an average over 50.

The average, of course, starts to mean more as time goes on. Sometimes a player will burst on the scene and score 3 hundreds in his first 5 games, and have an average right away of 60+. People will love him, and think he’s the next Bradman, but inevitably he has a bad run of form and his average dips. As time goes on though, he can afford to get 3 or 4 low scores and his average won’t be effected too much, and 3 or 4 high scores won’t make him out to be a genius.

(I used to go to church where the preacher would tell a completely random story then at the end say ,  ‘and that’s a bit like Jesus’… and it was all wonderfully make sense!)

Well, that’s a bit like friendship. Sometimes we make new friends (especially of the opposite sex) and they are wonderful right from the start, you love everything they do, it seems like you’re going to be best friends for ever (BFF!). Then you start to fall out with them, they do something that annoys you, really annoys you – and if you haven’t build up enough of an average then, that could be the end of it.

Whereas you have other friends you’ve known for years, with whom you have a decent average. If you, for some reason are a really good friend to you a couple of times, its not going to move them too far in to ‘brother’ status right away… similarly if they upset you or do a few stupid things  they will have built up enough average to still be a good friend.

(this is my worst and most obvious post to date, sorry )