Comedy Timing

The most important element of comedy is timing, and on Friday night the most perfect set of circumstances and timing ended in one of the funniest things that any of us had every seen. We were sitting around in the pub drinking and telling stories. To understand any of what follows you have to know:

1. Cameras used to contain photographic film, and your pictures were printed in a laboratory.
2. I had to be circumcised as an adult (painful and inconvenient).
3. I was once fellated in public on the street in Mutley Plain (It was New Year's Eve).
4. I'm not immune to embarrassment, but my threshhold is much higher than for normal people.

The story that they were telling was about me and a photo that the young woman on Mutley Plain took. She thought it would be funny for the owner of the camera to find a picture of male genitalia a week later when he got his pictures back from the chemists.

"...and that was the only picture of my cock before I had my foreskin removed" I said. At that second I realised that the young, pretty, and sober barmaid was standing at our table collecting glasses. She had obviously heard what I'd just said and she was staring at me in horror. I was so embarrassed that I would have happily disappeard through the floor - even if I'd been standing at the gallows with a noose around my neck. In fact I just said "Um, Pleased to meet you."

Birthday Party

This weekend my friend and ex-rock-star Troy Tate celebrated his 60th birthday. It was a fairly self indulgent party with 3 bands playing, he played with every single band. I played, and was part-time soundman. 3 snippets of conversation have stayed with me from the night:

Sad but true
The scratch band that Troy put together just for the night was completely wonderful, I could have listened to them all night. Our own Barry "Fender Precision" Fender joined them on bass and did admirably for a man who didn't know all the songs. Troy was 60, most of the rest of the band were pushing that. I was watching rapt with my friend Paulo, we're both sneaking up on 40. I said to Paulo "do you think we'll be this good in 20 years?". He looked back at the stage and listened for a few more bars and turned back to me smiling and said "No".

Sage advice
When I was being the soundman a man came up to me and said "That advice you gave me, that was the most useful thing anybody has ever said to me" which was a surprise because I had no recollection of ever having met him before. Instead of "Who the hell are you?" I managed to say "You'll have to remind me what I said". It turns out that he sings in a band and I'd given him a very quick lesson in microphone technique. I can now just about remember talking to him, and I fear that what I actually told him was "that mic doesn't work by the power of the fucking mind - you need to sing right into the front of it".

Poetry
Vocal microphones have a tendency to pick up moisture, saliva, and even food particles out of the breath, and can, over time develop a certain odour. As she left, the girl singer out of my band spoke the most wonderful sentence. Note the playful use of a proper noun as a verb, the brevity, the expressiveness, the wonderful simile, and the imagery: "this week can you Dettol my mic, it smells like arseholes."

Richard "Dettol" B

Passes

This weekend I went to Guidford to visit my friends there, and to help with some DIY. As I arrived I was issued with a pass and a small piece of cheese.

The jokes are that, according to my friends, I shouldn't be allowed out in public by myself, and that I have a habbit of planning what I'm going to eat several meals in advance. When I went to an all inclusive destination resort in Corfu, I found it liberating and relaxing that there was a huge notice board advertising what activities would be available at different times of the day. I completely switched off my brain for the whole holiday (with the help of the self-serve red wine dispenser) and just did what the notice board told me. [1]

Late on Saturday night, after ceremoneously listening to Nirvana's 20 old 'Nevermind' we noticed 2 large tour busses[2] struggling to make their way up my friend's road. We went out to see what was happening, and met some of the entourage of american rock band Wheatus[3]. Their support band and their crew were struggling to attach a horsebox to each bus's tow hitch. The crew said they were trailers full of gear, but they looked like horseboxes to me.

It didn't seem like a big deal to me, but my friend Redacted was deeply starstruck when one of Wheatus' support band's crew came into the house to wash his hands (after manhandling the dirty horsebox).

I asked the support band (who's name I have now forgotten) for a card or any merchandise with their name on it, they had none, and were too ashamed to go and tell their manageress that they weren't carrying any merchandise. Instead he gave me his pass for the venue, but it still didn't have his band's name on it.

Obviously I gave him a card for my crappy little covers band.

[Note 1]

I didn't participate in "Morning Stretch 9.00-10.00" which was a very gently form of yoga lead by a very beautiful and flexible young woman, but if I was up that early I'd go to the same poolside area for "Morning Letch"

[Note 2]

Neoplan Starliners with 11litre cummins engines.

[Note 3]

Yes you do remember them, they did "Teanage Dirtbag"

Scissors

One of my more obscure interests is sharpening, I'm proud to be able to bring a cutthroat razor up to a shaving edge and to be able to shave with it. Yes I have cut myself. No I've never opened an artery. Last Christmas I bought myself a low speed water-cooled grinding wheel. Sharpening knives and chisels is now so routine that I decided to learn to sharpen scissors, and I can bring dress making shears up to a perfect edge.

The highest office in the scissor world is held by the hairdressing scissors, and they are very hard to sharpen. My barber has been incredibly indulgent and let me practice on a few pairs of her scissors. The first pair that I did weren't up to scratch, but this weekend I had my hair cut and received the verdict on the last pair of scissors that I had sharpened for her. I thought nothing of it at the time, but the rubber stop between the finger rings was missing and the blades closed so far that the points were crossed and the edges protruded past the backs of the other blades.

"How were the scissors?"
"Well the edge is good, they feel really nice, cut really well, everyone here is impressed, but then...... I wiped some hair off them with my hand and cut myself really badly."

I have repaid my barber for her trust and help by giving her what was essntially an unsheathed knife, and expecting her to work with it in her hands for hours at a time.

Richard "'Nevermind' can't be 20 years old this week, that would mean I was almost 40" B

Welcome to Bolingblog

The fondest wish of my old friend (and inveterate douchebag) Haynes-Brown, was that I should be followed around by a BBC camera crew for a year, and then the funniest things that I had said or done could be broadcast. He still laughs about me giving a running commentary of the gifts that I opened at my 30th birthday party, ("Ah excellent, this is a ten inch flat bastard file made by CK in Germany. A printed cotton Ben Sherman shirt, short sleeves, and the yoke is cut on the bias, thank you very much....." ) and the time that I found a wallet and mobile phone and left messages for all the saved contacts trying to locate its owner. I couldn't see it myself, but apparently the messages were comedy genius.

In retrospect it sounds like he'd have liked not to have wasted all that time hanging around socialising with me, and would have preferred to just watch the highlights show.

Anyway I haven't got a BBC camera crew following me around, nor one from channel 4, nor a journalist, but the forth next best thing has happened. I'm publishing my blog. All the emails I have sent to the lottery syndicate, all the first date reports that I have written, the news letter articles, and the quizzes. They are all published right here on http://www.bolingblog.com/. I will continue to add articles every week as I send emails to the lottery syndicate, and when anything funny or interesting happens to me.

Diary

This weekend I bought a diary. Not a diary as in "Dear diary, today I was full of pointless self-important angst which makes it feel worthwhile to record the minutiae of my meaningless life so I sat down and wrote this diary entry" but a thing like a very small folded up calendar with no pictures. The idea is that it will tell me what I'm supposed to be doing on different days. I'm already part of two google calendars which tell me when I'm supposed to be playing in a band or helping another band but as I don't have an internet connection, or a computer, or a tablet, or a smartphone, my access to them is somewhat erratic.

When something really bad happens, it's quite common human nature to overreact and try make sure that it can never happen again. The last time my washing line fell down I replaced all the pulleys and chain plates with chandlery for ocean racing yachts; they started the League of Nations after the first world war; they started the United Nations after the second world war; and on numerous Sunday mornings I have declared that I'll never drink again.

Last weekend I stood my friend Redacted up, and had she not rung me to ask if I was on my way, I would have been exactly a week late. Never again! I'm going to write all my appointments in a diary and check it every single day. At least until I forget.

Richard "techno-luddite" B