One from the past - The 'Excluded Bully' Incident

This I wrote when I was like 14 years old and blogger was but a distant dream....

Presented here in it's unedited form, I wonder if this piece stands the test of time, and if I can post it without cringing. It was deemed good enough to get 49/50 and was put into the school magazine at Chis and Sid. Presented today for your pleasure - The Excluded Bully incident.

A summer's day it was sometime near the middle of June, I think. I'm tired from a game of football. My best friend and I sit by the side of the pitch to joke and watch the rest of the game. As we speak in the glaring sun, the bully pulls himself from the back of our minds to the forefront of our conversation.

"I heard about the fight yesterday. Heard the other kid didn't stand a monkey's chance.”

“No, he barely put up a fight. I would have at least got a few hits in", I reply. "Not the type of bloke I'd like to meet down a dark alley on a Saturday night."

"In Brixton", I add.

The acorn caught my eye at this point, or was it a chestnut. Crikey, this is five or six years ago, it's sort of hard to remember. It was the size of an acorn but brown like a chestnut. Maybe a small chestnut. I'm no tree expert myselt but I'd say a small chestnut. I picked it up and felt its unique, slippery, round shape in my hand.

"What's that?" "A small chestnut, I think."

I sighed as the sun streamed blissfully on the game of football and its spectators. I tossed the chestnut carelessly over my left shoulder with a simple flick of the wrist.

CLUNK!

"Oops"

I turned round and caught sight of the bully! The sun raged down.

"Oops"

"So which of you threw this?"

It wasn't a nice tone. He wasn't a very happy man.

"It wasn't me."

Thanks. I thought you were my mate. Well all's fair in love and war. Please ground, open up and swallow me. No response. Perspiration. The sun eats some sweat from my brow. More perspiration.

"Who threw it then?"

He knows it was me. He's just trying to scare me. Well he can't scare me. I feel a lump in my trousers, and I'm not pleased to see him. Even more perspiration.

"Was it you?"

Of course it was me but I'm not going to admit it, am I, you fool? Well of course not or he'll beat me up. The sun's at me like a wild dog. Perspiration is accumulating into my own personal lake. I hear a voice say, "No" in a defiant, yet sarcastic voice, with somehow pleading undertones.

"Okay, who's the joker who put superglue on my shoes?" I look down almost hoping to see a ball and chain on my legs to explain why they're so darn heavy. If I'm this scared, can't I just turn and run. I read somewhere about the "Fight or Flight" hormone. It is now that I begin to doubt its existence. If it did exist I'd be above Canary Wharf and the resident Thamesmead swans would be jealous. Fight doesn't seem to be an option anyway. Why is it that my mind says the famous words of Monty Python, "Run away", but my body insists on staying right here to make sarcastic comments until he beats me to a pulp. A car goes by carelessly on the other side of the fence as I look over his shoulder I shout out, "0i! You! You in the car! Can you stop and help me please. This kid's gonna beat me to mash!" But nothing emits from my mouth. My voice box is gone. Who stole it?

"Go on, was it you?"

Oh, my voice box is gone so if I say something sarcastic it won't come out. My mate stands back in the shade of a distant tree to avoid getting blood on his clothes. It's quite hard to get out of your clothes, you know. Especially when it clots and forms black pudding on your shirt. My sarcastic comment comes forth from my 'silent' voicebox.

"Yeah, it was. What you gonna do about it, eh?"

I didn't say that. Who said that? Come on, own up. There's a ventriloquist in the house. I've been framed. My head turns to my mate in the shade whose face has turned an odd shade of pale. I wonder why that is. Maybe he's cold. He should come out into the sun; this scorching hot sun. My sweat reservoir cracks and spills everywhere. So does the bully's temper.

Oh, oh! Don't like the look of that fist. Ow! That hurt. So did that. And that. My shoes become unstuck from the floor and I fall backwards, or forwards, or to one side, diagonally maybe. The ground finally answers my call and swallows me with a big gulp. I'm in the darkness away from that sun at last.

Isn't it peaceful here? The semi-darkness is comforting. I'm alone. I swim, fly, dip and dive. It's quite fun here, isn't it? I want to stay here forever. My head feels cold. A light. The light expands and I can feel its pull. I swim the other way with everything I learnt for my bronze certificate. My head's cold. The light pulls. I spin round and round, my head whizzes above and below my ankles, then above again. Then I'm out.

The first thing I notice is the headache. The ice bag on my head doesn't help and, if anything, it seems to worsen it. I think I'm sitting in the hall leading to reception. Of all the six years I've been here I've never known the floor to spin like this. My "mate" says something to me. I can't understand a word of it. The world takes a 360 degree turn in no particular direction and my head pounds away like an overworked piston. My stomach aches and I can't tell the bruises from the indigestion. My head whirls around in search of my shirt. It creaks upward to one side. I'm unsure which way I'm facing. The ice bag slips slowly downward so I know I'm facing downward. Now I've got to find my shirt. The earth rotates faster than usual. If this continues the day will get immeasurably shorter and I'll probably collapse on the floor.

My eyes drift past the loosened red tie with diagonal white stripes to the white shirt below with bizarre polka dot red splashes. I know that's not the shirt I left the house with this morning. I could have sworn it was plain white. Oh no! What's dad going to say if I've lost my white shirt and come home with this one on? Still, it's not a bad colour. The world slows down its sickeingly fast pace but doesn't stop entirely. My neck creaks upward and my eyes focus on my 'friend' next to me. Then he says the legendary meaningless sentence.

"Are you airight?"

My temper boils. The world heats up and ice cubes start melting in the bag on my head. The world begins to stabilise as my eyes focus furiously in his general direction.

"Well of course rm not airight. I've just had my internal organs beaten out of me for throwing a chestnut over my shoulder, I've got more bruises than hair and Fm bleeding like a haemophiliac on Warfarin, after a fight with Jack the Ripper!"

"Oh", I hear him mutter, "Sorry I asked".

After three minutes painful silence (more for me than him obviously), we start talking again. The headache recedes into the distance for a while as fresh conversation settles in. I can't fully recall the entire conversation but I can imagine it had something to do with pain, fights and chestnuts.

Then the bell rings. The end of lunch and the beginning of solitude. The bell summons the headache back and my friend leaves with a slight wave. I can't stand to suffer in silence.

An uneventful half-hour passes. The world is stabilised and the ice bag is now a bag of warm water. My eyes can focus again. I hear footsteps coming down the stairs. It's probably just another teacher off to have a coffee in the staff room and give me a pitying glance in passing. I arch my back and look down, then give an audible sniff.

"Andrew" says a familiar female voice, I'd like to talk to you"

I look up and sniff again. The blood has cleared up and clotted all over my shirt to black pudding as anticipated. "Sure." My teacher sits on the seat vacated by my friend. "So, what happened?"

"Me and my mate were sitting on the grass, right, and we were minding our own business and then that bully fell over a chestnut and accused me of throwing it in his path. You can ask anyone you want. Then he beat me up."

"Thanks Andrew, I'd better talk to him and get his side of the story. " Then she left, just like that! Then I heard her angry voice upstairs. She'd obviously taken him out of the class. She had her say, then he attempted to squeak something. My ears tried hard to focus on the sound.

"... threw it in my face. He aimed it he did. You can ask anyone. Then, I didn't want him to endure the pain, as I'm one who doesn't bear grudges, so I kicked it the other way but it went backwards and hit him on the head. I didn't mean..."

Liar, what a liar! I hope she's not swallowing any of this. "... then he fell back into the goal and got jumped on by the goalie. So then everyone thought it was a bundle and jumped in." Lies! They're all lies! Lies I tell you". Then I realise that she's seen through them. Ha ha! I knew it. Honesty is the best policy. Ha! That should teach you. I won.

Then Miss arrives again and asks me if I'm fit for any more school. I say no politely and she explains that Dad will soon be here to pick me up. Whoopee!
A week passes. The bruises heal and scabs form. The bully avoids me like a rabid dog to water.

Then I'm called to the Headteacher's office. I walk in. The atmosphere feels like a slick movie. He's on a brown, fluffy swivel chair facing the other way. He turns round to face me and I notice the absence of the compulsory fat cigar that they have in the films. That doesn't surprise me, he's not a smoker.

"Take a seat."

I trudge with surprising confidence for one so scared. People have been known to go in here and never come out. I sit in the offered seat.

"You know what this is about, dont you?"

I'm innocent. I'm being accused of a crime I didn't commit. I nod knowingly.

"There's no need to be scared", he reassures me. Yeah, you could fool me! "We know of this bully's behaviour and this was the final straw. He's excluded as of tomorrow and his parents have been informed. I just thought you'd like to know." I close the door behind me and jump for joy. The news spreads like wildfire through the year like he had just announced it in assembly.

mischief 10FE

Kuwait in recall - The Mosque

One of the reasons I came to Kuwait was to learn about Islam and to try and figure out what it was that the West hated so much about the Arabs/Islam/The Middle East, and to find out what these people were really like. Most places I've been to in the past I've found that the locals are a helluva lot friendlier than in the UK and I figured that if I went out to Kuwait I would see that too and I would come back all liberal and say that we were giving the Arabs far too hard a time. Well we all know what happened next don't we...

Without much research at all I had come to my conclusion based purely on geography, Kuwait being placed precariously on the arse end of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, two countries that I figured by proximity would have a great influence on it. With only a tiny bit of reading, I would have known that the influence that they had was all pretty negative, the Saudis pretty much owning the country and hating the Kuwaitis because of their US sympathies and Iraq hating the Kuwaitis cos they are a loathesome race (well both of them are actually). In fact, in my travels around the middle East I found out that in fact EVERYBODY hates the Kuwaitis, from Israel to Dubai and everywhere in between for some reason or other and that my choice of going to Kuwait to find out about Islam was about as well informed as walking in to a bank and asking for a copy of the Bible.

But I figured it was a country with lots of people in long white dresses so it had to be at least slightly Islamic, and with all the mosques about I may as well get out and about and do what i came here for.

So one day I told the ex-pat teachers that I was not going to be at their illegal home-brew drinking party (pathetic) and that I was going to go to a mosque. The looks of utter bewilderment on their faces is something that to this day I will never understand. Fancy that - someone in Kuwait and he wants to not drink and go to a mosque?! Whatever is he thinking!?! Kuwait being a dry country and Islamic. I can't imagine...

So there I was walking around the outside of the mosque, shortly after the prayer call went out at around 5PM, wondering whether or not I should go inside. I didn't want to step on any toes, so I waited to be invited in. When the Imam came out and saw me, I removed my shoes and left them outside and he showed me around. I explained as best I could to this man of limited English that I had come to learn about Islam and what it meant to be a Muslim but I had no intention of converting.

I think that some of this information may have got through as the translator relayed my message. The imam seemed suddenly delighted and jabbered something back in Arabic which came slowly through his translator.

"He says that if you come back on Thursday for prayer he will be only too happy to give you your own copy of the Koran, some robes, your own prayer mat and a baptism."

"I'm sorry," I replied, quite sure that something had been added in translation, "could you repeat that?"

"Well he says that if you come back on on Thursday we can give you the Koran to study, some robes and a prayer mat and we can change your name to something more appropriate like Mohammed"

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...

Suffice to say I am still the same man you knew before this incident. Any passing resemblence to dead prophets, beards, skullcaps and rucksacks full of explosives are purely coincidental.

New look mischief

Sorry Lesbian-lovers but it's out with the old and in with the new look today. Incorporating blogger's own comments it also means that it's much easier to use for commenters but it means that all old comments are gone in the mists of time. Sorry about that folks.

For those of you who can't get over losing the lezzas, and I know it can be hard to let them go, why not buy them as a poster on http://www.megacalendars.com/product_info.php?products_id=339 or even a duvet cover on http://www.realitybedding.com/images/kissbytanyachalkincomforter.jpg. No sleep or shags for the latter...

Hope you like the new features and if there's anything else you want to see on the site just say in the new and improved comments below.

China in recall 5 - 11 August 2006 - How to make friends and influence people

Sometimes I wonder why I'm such a hit with the ladies and I think this one will probably explain a lot.

It was my penultimate day in China, I had just come back to Sim's from Songpan and JueZaiGo up in the north of the Sichuan Province and was looking to get in the quintessential day trip that everyone in Chengdu has to do. I had to go and see the pandas at the panda breeding research centre.

The flight to Shanghai took off at 2PM from Chengdu airport. The plan was to get up in the morning at 7am and go to see the pandas, as feeding time is early in the morning and they tend to sleep when it gets hotter and the place fills up with tourists after about 8:30, then get myself on the plane. So I put myself about the hostel and tried to find out if anyone was going my way.

I was told there was this American family of 10 heading there in the morning on 2 buses so I paid the fee and went to the bar to chat to Scott, Itay and the Aussie guy Brad late into the night. It was Sim's daughters birthday, so beer was free and I had been gone a long time so we chatted til the early morning, knocking back the beverages until I finally fell into a drunken stupor at about 5:30am. This was a disaster in the making...

In the morning I woke up still drunk, the bar spinning around me, my stomach feeling a little distended with liquid. I felt like a panda with a sore head.

Then the Americans came out.

A whole family of overweight, VERY loud, whining American tourists with a camera and 3 screaming children. It wasn't the usual chilled backpacker crowd I had thought. In the gift shop of the panda reserve they spent $200 on souvenirs. I took an instant dislike to them.

I realised that this was no longer a trip to the zoo; this was about survival. It was the vastly outnumbered Viet against the Americans. Heck it was 'Nam all over again. How I was going to keep these people away from me was a matter of life or death.

It didn't take much effort for the first half of the bus trip. I disguised myself as a local, sticking my head out of the window of the van and falling asleep. The second half was somewhat more difficult though. With a stomach full of beer I was really having a lot of trouble.

As soon as the bus stopped the solution to both of my problems became obvious!

I ripped the door open, jumped off the bus and promptly puked all over my shoes.

Suddenly I felt as right as rain and the Yanks didn't bother to come anywhere near me for the rest of the day. It's not quite what Ho Chi Minh would have envisioned but I'm sure he'll be there (pickled in his temple in Hanoi) smiling down at me. Chalk one up for the Viet boy!

China in recall 4 – 8th August 2006 – Gam Bay! A cock and horse story

It was nearly 3 weeks into my China experience. The Chinese cities that I’d been to; Wenzhou, Chengdu and Shanghai had been humid and sticky and bathed in pollution. Every night I would come home and shower to turn the water murky. When I hocked, I saw that the thick smog had turned my boogas black and I realised that I had to get out of the cities and towns.

Songpan, in the north of the Sichuan province is a quiet, understated town. It sits on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau and the locals are mainly of Tibetan descent, speaking a local dialect, Songpanhua as well as Tibetan. Not all of the locals speak Mandarin and, as usual in remote Chinese towns, there was only one place you could reliably be understood in English. Emma’s Kitchen took all the tourist business in town and was a lesson in the importance of learning foreign languages and cultures.

When you pull into the town, Emma comes out to meet the buses and coaches personally with a friendly smile and a business card. I’d survived 8 hours on a bus with an obnoxious American guy and his two adorable daughters, all of whom just wouldn’t shut the hell up. I needed a stiff cup of tea. I booked my 4 day pony trek up the Ice Mountain and went straight to Emma’s for food with every other tourist in town.

There I met Joseph, a fantastic American politics graduate, who had lived in Taiwan and spoke fluent Mandarin. He had booked onto the pony trek too and we hit it off straight away. I later found that he was a comics fan too and we spent long hours on horseback predicting the outcome of various superhero punch-ups. Finally I had met someone who opened the conversation on Alan Moore with me! Some days as dusk fell we would recite lines of Watchmen and discuss the plotlines of our favourite stories ever. Sometimes I forget how good it is to be a nerd.

Joseph has a Taiwanese girlfriend, a fact that is very useful to bear in mind for later on in this story.

The next day we were headed into the mountains on horseback with a crew of Tibetan guides who spoke no English whatsoever. The crew of tourists on the trip was good. There were 2 couples and the American family of three. Father was a physics teacher dammit, and insisted his daughters brought up their violin into the mountains. Every night as we tried to relax, they would scratch their bow across the strings in the communal tent. Wolves screeched their discontent to the stars.

American fatherman saw himself as a bit of a cowboy. Originally from Ohio, he had done a bit of horseriding when he was in America. He had moved to China because he wanted his kids to grow up open-minded and to learn Chinese, but after 2 years they didn’t seem to have got very far. I quickly nicknamed him Cowboy because he wouldn’t stop complaining about the state of the horseriding experience.

He had a good point mind you. As we waited outside the horse-trekking place to mount up I remember thinking “So these are the packhorses. What are we riding then?” when my guide motioned that I should climb on board the fully laden pack horse! Cowboy wasn’t happy at all.

On day two we were all sat around the campfire. Joe and one of the guides, a guy nicknamed Big Brother Chen had hit it off and they would chat in Chinese all day and Joe would translate the best bits. As we sat around the fire, the story turned to everyone’s favourite subject (except mine obviously) of sex.

Big Brother Chen was under the impression that Rudi, a Dutch fella with us was a sexpert and asked him a few questions. Joe was on the translation and nothing slipped through the net. Joseph had a good in-depth knowledge of Chinese anatomical vocabulary.

Big Brother Chen had been drinking a large bottle of this cheap-looking liquor all night. The night before he had also knocked a bottle of this stuff back. Joseph translated the writing on the bottle.

“It’s called Strong Man’s Liquor” He said

We passed the bottle around and knocked a bit back each. It was foul.

Big Brother Chen explained that Strong Man’s Liquor was in fact not a bottle of grog, but was a Chinese herbal medicine concoction. Since he had started drinking Strong Man’s Liquor his performance had gone through the roof and now he lasted at least 40 minutes a pop with his wife and now done it 15 times a week. His poor wife was exhausted and he wanted to ask Rudi if this would be considered normal behaviour in the West. I threw in that he done it more times in a week than I had done it in all my life. Silke, the fit girl from Amsterdam said that my lack of a sex drive was an illness in men that needed to be cured. I said I was the only one who was well. Now that I write it down I probably missed a shaggin again. Doh!

In Chinese they say “Gam bay!” which means “Bottoms up!” and the next night we Gam-bayed Strong Man’s Liquor over the camp fire at the base of Ice Mountain as the moon watched over us.

Halfway through the night Joseph checked the ingredients on the bottle. In Chinese many words have more than one meaning and I think that he must have had a mental block on what he read, and perhaps thought it said something else. He didn’t tell us what was in it. Apparently if you drink it and you’re single, you will get up in the middle of the night and go out looking for a woman. I am very scared of women, so I thought this was fairly unlikely. There was only one female horse on the trip.

When we got back from Ice Mountain, where we swam in a freezing cold lake at the summit, Joe and I booked up another trip, this time to some hot springs in the mountains and his Taiwanese girlfriend turned up. Around the campfire on that second trip, after gam-baying a bottle of the good stuff, Joe showed his girlfriend the bottle. He wasn’t sure that it said quite what he had read.

“Guys I had better mention that the stuff you’ve just necked was brewed with a horse’s penis and a dog’s penis”

*Splutter*

We looked very closely at the empty bottles. No sign of a horses cock in there. I looked out of the tent to check I knew what a horse’s penis looked like. It nearly took my eye out. It was explained to me, in my limited mental capacity that you don’t see the barley in beer or the potatoes in vodka. And you don’t see the cocks in Strong Man’s Liquor.

Oh well, it was too late to do anything about it now. I passed my glass over to Joe and asked him to dip his cock in for me. Might as well have it fresh.