Registering your Coffee Club Card

It’s easy, and only takes five minutes of your time. Once you become a Coffee Club Card member you are entitled to free purchases, but only when you spend your life savings and donate a kidney. Payment protection is not included and you may be required to submit all of your details at least twice to confirm you are a moron in giving us all of your information. Please note, in the interest of data protection, we will not share your details with any other parties or companies.*

            

*This do not include any member of the Coffee Club team, our sponsorship and partner associations, the data collection agencies, scamming corporations, salesmen of any description, the Royal Marines, anyone imitating a Government Official, hackers who regularly steal our information, the Post Man from next door, Joseph Noseybottom at 33 Inyourbusiness Road, and any other entity deemed worthy of sharing your information with.

Great, you are almost registered. Please now enter your details according to the field that is required. Please note; only enter the field that is required into the required field. Failure to comply with entering the field required into the required field will result in a complete malfunction of our webpage, and you may be charged up to, but not exceeding or including £1.2 million pounds.

            

Now, please choose a password, and carefully repeat this identically but not exactly into the box adjacent but not on screen. Please be aware, all passwords are case sensitive and must contain at least one upper case letter, no symbols of any description, no gaps though spaces are allowed, passwords must not be the same as your name but can include parts of your name that are not in your name, must include the ins key, and at least two digits – preferably from your left hand. Failure to comply will result in Government agents arresting your grandmother and the loss of a big toe, as well as a fine that may exceed £5 million pounds.

            

Super, now please enter all of your details with the asterisks marked. This includes your forenames, surname, date of birth, address lines, height, expected weight on 24.05.2045, your credit card details, your mothers bra size, your best friend’s mother’s maiden name, an approximation of the level of ineptitude for the person who is sitting next to you (marks out of ten but ten not inclusive ranging from zero being highest and ten being lowest but not inclusive), and any other relevant information that we may require in order to process your Coffee Club Card ineffectively.

            

Failure to comply with entering these details could result in you being decapitated, and imprisoned for the rest of the 21^st century. This is not an obligation.

            

You’re almost there! Please take a moment to review our terms and conditions below, alternatively, please enter the four hundred and seventy two digit code we have supplied you with on the back of your card, and press submit.

Terms and Conditions:

Coffee Club Cards can be used in selected participating stores nationwide but must not be used if not participating or selected. The card is not an identity card but please provide us with all information we ask for so that in the event of a lost card, stolen card, or temporarily mislaid somewhere near the third drawer in the kitchen card, we can identify you most slowly and painfully. Our Coffee Club partners and associates may contact you and reserve the right to come to your house and eat lunch with your wife without warning, and may in some cases abduct a child (the least favourite is preferred.) They also would like to congratulate you on behalf of Coffee Club’s management team for being a valued and continuing customer of the Coffee Club and you will now be entitled to benefits that may include; a cup that is not broken, staff that get the order correct, table service without spillage on your lap, a coffee that is hot, amongst many other fine bonuses. Please note; this only applies at selected and participating stores

           

When you have noted the error in password box that appears upon your screen, please re-enter your password again, as we have reset this to protect your identity against fraud. Please be aware, the notification box will not disappear

            

Please repeat this for the Email box.

            

And again for the password box.

            

That is not a valid Date of Birth.

            

Perfect. Now you have entered all of the details we require, please confirm you were born after 1743 but not later than 2185, and click submit again, if you are still breathing.

            

Now we have returned you to the top of the page without warning, you will not be sure if your registration was successful. You will receive an email shortly but not imminently that will tell you the many great benefits of having a Coffee Club Card, most notably, that you do not need your Coffee Club Card to get Coffee Club Card points. You can download the app for free. To do so, please provide the details on the back of your Coffee Club Card, then for future purchases, you will not need your Coffee Club Card, expect in the event of a lost, stolen, or temporarily mislaid somewhere near the third drawer in the kitchen, so that we can identify you. May we please just confirm and repeat your Coffee Club Card is not a form of identification. Thank you for taking the time to attempt registering your card.

            

Great news, you are now signed up to the Coffee Club Card. To complete your registration, please login. Once you have logged in, log out, and then back in again, repeat this twice, and you will be notified of how many Coffee Club points you will have.

            

Well Done! You have now got three Coffee Club points. You are almost at enough points to purchase a free seat. Please note, points are not valid until validated and your Coffee Club Card is required to be presented upon purchase. Failure to do so may result in a huge explosion somewhere close to your naval and a fine of up to but not exceeding or including £100 Quadrillion pounds.

            

Thank You for registering your Coffee Club Card.  

Coffee Shop Mayhem

Now, as you may be aware from an earlier article, I often frequent coffee shops. Notably, this is so that I can find a nice spot to open up my temperamental machine with buttons and commence writing things – after the contraption completes a years’ worth of updates, and manages to wake up properly, of course.  

            

Upon my many and varied visits to many and varied coffee shops in my local area, I have noted, for all of their little differences and unique seating positions to each other, that virtually, they are all the same. It’s not just the day-to-day operations, it’s the patrons; the many, disgruntled, strangely, perversely, and unequivocally unusual patrons that seem to daily frequent these places as an almost temporary daylight residency. I cannot simply talk about just one person, though, in honesty, I could fill a library with accounts of each individual that I have come across at various points in these places, but I would just like to quickly and concisely (if this is even possible) condense a good proportion of these into a good few pages of self righteous good old fashioned complaining. It’s what I do best, sorry.

            

Firstly, I would like to ask why parents, mostly, on their own, or meeting in groups (not always middle aged women – I don’t want to get into a sexism debate here) believe that frequenting a coffee shop with an infant is at all a good idea? Here are just a few reasons why it isn’t. A child has sweet French explicit gesture to do in a coffee shop. Even these Babychino’s or warmed milk – effectively – is not a good enough reason to take a small child that should be in the outdoors, or at very least, somewhere where they can gain some form of education (after they’ve been subjected to the endless mind numbing that is the morning television programming schedule), either by playing games, eating mud pies, dissecting worms, dressing up or down (depending on their level of perversity) dolls of some description, or doing anything remotely more pleasurable that being sat down on a seat by a parent in a place entirely occupied otherwise by ladies at lunch or professionals sat lapping up a newspaper with a skinny latte or some other accompaniment that they believe makes them appeal sophisticated and youthful, and is the general societal equivalent of having a form of education these days. ‘Ooo, I’m dribbling at the sight of this young chap reading The Daily Pictionary News’ (i.e The Daily Mail) ‘he must be ever so sophisticated and dashing. I’ll divorce my husband immediately.’

            

If the sheer presence of this chronic moronic person and their ineptitude is not enough to deter you from having any kind of relaxing enjoyment upon drinking a hot foamy liquid, then potentially, this changes when the infant that they have brought with them is placed into a chair and asked in a dire tone ‘Now, do you think that you can sit here quietly and behave for Mummy whilst I sit and play on my mobile device for a good proportion of our time in here until I make conversation with that dashing young chap over there?’ to which the infant replies ‘yes mummy’ but in its head is thinking ‘ha, not a chance. You made me miss In The Night Garden this morning, you crazy bitch. The first chance I get, I’m going to throw my drink on the floor, then I’m not going to stop screaming until you swear profoundly in my face, thus rendering yourself a hopeless and horrible parent, and human being come to think of it, and if you’re still reluctant to remove me from this horrible seat so that all of these old grandmas stop staring at me, and calling me a lovely little thing, I’ll do something really repulsive such as have a little bit of sick come up onto the table, or at the very least, have a really large excreting upon this ridiculous seat you have placed me upon, which, by the way, I keep slipping off on account of me being under two feet tall, and the chair is made of polished wood. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather skip all of that and leave in a really stinking mood and go somewhere more desirable.’

            

This of course doesn’t happen, and the infant does indeed carry out its master plan, potentially, if you’re really lucky, two or maybe even a large group of these are all in occupation at the same time, which is quite simply a marvellous sight to behold, a series of parents losing their stuff with little children because they didn’t want to sit still in a coffee shop of all places. How positively rude and inconsiderate of them!

            

You can sometimes see all of the children conspiring together, unbeknown to the parents, planning a great disastrous showing of rebellion all in unison. It’s a simply wonderful experience.

            

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the grey haired wonders of society that find all things about going for a coffee together positively pointless. (I hope you’re picking up on this alliteration.) From the moment that they walk in together, or as close as together as being as far away from each other as possible is, they sit down, silently, after deciding after a lengthy discussion which one of the four hundred and seventy three seats available would be best to sit in, to which when they decide, on the verge of sitting down, to change their minds and opt to move to the table closest to yourself with a sharp glance of hatred towards you as they park their buttocks after careful manoeuvring of furniture and complaining about how distasteful everything about the place is. Continuing to adore all things silent and repulsive, they stare at the table with glumness and utter obscenities to each other under their breaths which neither of them can hear on account of them both being ridiculously deaf. After a short period of complaining about the coffee being cold even though they virtually gulped it as soon as it hit the table, they disperse after a short decisive comment, something along the lines of ‘come on then’ and with that they depart leaving room for another couple of geriatric bundles of joy to take their place, but not before they stare at you with sheer discontent on their way out.

            

Then there is everyone else in the coffee shop. So, this may come as a bit of a shock to you, but everyone else in the coffee shop is doing something that doesn’t require them to actually be there. Sure, you’ll think, with an assured confidence, people just want to go for a coffee. But they don’t. Not in the slightest. They arrive unsure of what it is they came for, unsure as they survey their surroundings either with amazement – because let’s face it, a place that has tables chairs and customers is a pretty unusual sight – or with assured persistence to make this the most dissatisfying and unconformable experience they will ever endure. They get to the till to order their drink, or if it’s table service they sit and wait indecisively whether this was indeed at all a good idea, and then when happening upon being served they ‘umm’ and ‘err’ for what seems like an eternity and mumble things like ‘gosh, I really don’t know what to have, I mean there’s so much choice.’ What they’re really thinking of course is ‘But the thing I do want isn’t on the menu. I just came here because it seemed an appropriate place to spend some time in the day and so that I could gain free WiFi to update my social media status about what a lovely time I’m having ‘tagging’ myself and ‘checking in’ to the place, because, let’s be honest, that’s what means something in life, right? I mean, if I don’t let people know that I was here then what will they think I’m doing with my day? No, this is all too important, and is such a huge distraction that to be honest, I never actually considered that I never really fancied a coffee in the first place. In which case’, they then speak ‘I’ll have a skinny latte please.’ 

            

With that they sit in glum solitude conferring with a newspaper or a handheld device so that they seem occupied enough to warrant sitting with their coffee. The truth of it is, of course, as I observe when I sit there, researching, reading, or doing anything else that makes me blend into the furniture of the place for as cheaply as possible without being asked ‘excuse me, sir, but I notice you’ve finished your tap water, would you like something else?’ (‘Err, to be left alone would be quite marvellous, thank you,’) that none of these people have a real purpose for being there at all. I mean, how many of them are sitting there for an afternoon’s session of writing, of something? Clearly, unless nappy changing and updating social media in a coffee shop constitutes doing something remotely pleasurable and worthwhile with a day, then really, I just want to say to these people, please, for all that is sane and right with everything, stay away from coffee shops. If nothing else, you’re giving me too much writing material.

The Power of Smiling

Recently I have been quite simply amazed by the number of people that I can pass on a daily basis that seem to be disgruntled, or at least, are suffering a severe case of IFS (irritable face syndrome). When it comes to remembering to do the simplest of basic human responses, smiling (the art of moving ones lips in an upward curling position, potentially showing a little bit of teeth in the process – this I should point out is not the Oxford Dictionary definition, although I would say this is a far more accurate description, wouldn’t you say?), is a gesture that seems to have bypassed many people in their respective lives. Take for instance this very morning. I happened to be driving along in a very normal and usual manner indeed when upon coming to a very slim piece of British road network, cars at either side must give way in order for the routinely deft continuation that is life – more prominently, driving to work – can be carried out without the need for a nuclear air strike upon 22 Myboringface Road, Hull.

            

I stopped to let a car squeeze through a gap on my side of the roadway, and then commenced to set off again, until coming to another gap only sizable enough for one car to pass through, and so, with noticing the slow reactive impulse of my opposite number, I commenced to set off through the gap, only when I reached the point of passing I found I was halted in my progress by a woman with a large trident who had stood atop her vehicle possessing a countenance that may have been borrowed from a wild animal. Her eyes vindictive, her brows furrowing in a straight bushy line crossing over the majority of her upper face, her attire; a dark cape of doom that flapped in the wind revealing a car and crossbones, and then, she spoke; ‘No car shall pass by me: for I am Thunderbitch.’

            

I covered my face with raised palms. How could it be?

            

I quickly dipped my head under the steering wheel to avoid her deathly gaze, and donned my quick change outfit to fight the darkness that is Thunderbitch.

            

What I am about to tell you is top, top secret, and my identity will be revealed (meaning you are very privileged to know this and have to keep this to yourselves or I shall inform the Superheroes council and render that you be destroyed by Doomface at once.)

            

Thunderbitch couldn’t believe her eyes as I stood atop the car, my mask angled slightly to the left to support my lazy right eye and slightly bumpy nose; Smileyguy was ready.

            

‘Oh no. It’s you’ Thuderbitch growled.

            

‘Yes, it is I, Smileyguy!’ I replied, teeth all showing. 

            

We exchanged glances for a few moments, the other car drivers dipped behind their steering wheels, peering over in intervals, the on-looking crowd of passersby hiding behind lampposts and fences, taking cover where appropriate. I summoned my hand up to the sky and struck to make the first move. I waved.

            

Thunderbitch couldn’t believe what was happening. Her gloomy face scowled further into an irritable convulsion somewhere between constipation and snubbing a toe.

            

My hand was still waving, my mouth gazing widely, teeth penetrating her cloak of scowling, in a gleaming white shine. I could see she was weakening, as she went to one knee, I used my ultra happy power of fist-pumping party motion followed by a short burst of jazz hands and thus, with a thud and gloomy cloud passing over, withdrawing into a small metal heaped shell, the dual was over.

            

We motioned towards each other, her countenance a mixture of shock and disapproval, but her scowl had lightened slightly, as my hands gripped the steering wheel, and I manoeuvred past, and continued my shining gaze to the queuing patrons behind who were susceptible to my power, as Thunderbitch was defeated.

            

When I left the house this morning, I never expected it would have come to this. But you see, I am forever sampling a series of unsmiling, seemingly, miserable people en route to almost any destination; to work, the gym, the Post Office, dentist (though I am sympathetic to this one). I cannot alleviate all doom alone though, for the power of Smileyguy is only as strong, or strengthened by the smiles of those who surround him in the wider world. It is up to you, reader – and now, with your wider contextual knowledge of superheroes powers that are possessed upon this Earth – to dispel and create positive smiley faces upon your own countenances to defeat Thunderbitch and Moaningman. For I cannot do this alone.

            

So today, as you take upon your journeys to respective destinations; whether on foot, in your metal living quarters, or even the dreaded public transportation, take it upon yourself to smile. And smile widely too. For all of those thunderclouds out there that pass us by, remember, there is great power in smiling.

Child Vision

Recently I have been working odd days here and there at a school helping out with general office duties, and being an all round smiley person to greet disgruntled parents. As it was a primary school the children ranged from age four up to eleven. It is such a shock to see masses of little beings running around, talking about nonsensical topics, exercising their right to be inept and confused about everything, and being conscientiously small.

            

I was rather taken aback by this.

            

As I looked back upon being that age myself, I found my brain had to work very hard to understand and remember just how different life is when you are at an age where height restrictions still apply at fairgrounds. Well, if I couldn’t remember, I was about to get a crash course in current-child-affairs as I sat there clicking away happily (I use that term lightly) at my desk, I was asked if I would be able to, at lunch time, vacate my desk and current duties to become what is now labelled as a lunchtime supervisor (that’s a dinner lady to you and me.)

            

How I was welcomed into the role immediately (luckily I didn’t have to wear one of those green aprons that all dinner ladies seem to be compelled to wear) and I was transported to the clear concrete jungle of a playground to ensure no child gets transformed into a human bowling pin or at the very least to deal with multiple requests of ‘please, ca ca ca ca can I go to the toilet, please, Mr?’

            

I was soon bombarded with questions by the General Small Person’s Republic of Dimwittedness, most poignantly I was asked my name, to which I was unhappily obliged to answer or else face death by salivation drowning with the seventeen children that had climbed aboard my vessel poking their fingers and tongues inside my eyes and ears respectively.

            

‘My name’, I said with confidence ‘is Visitor,’ pointing diligently at my unpeeling sticker upon my shirt. Well, this was a sad error on my part, as my tact to disinterest them from my entire person was mis-communicated and they took this as a sign to engage sugar-rush-kill-the-new-man mode and commenced a level of excitement before unseen in the territories of first greetings and I was being dragged by the shirt in either direction – sure that any moment there my beloved was going to receive a call saying something along the lines of ‘Yes, hello. I’m sorry to report that there has been an accident. Yes. Mr Russell expired on the playground today. He was torn in half by a child who is behind in Mathematics and a girl who has a severe adoration for Snickers. Despite the children’s best efforts to stick him back together with saliva and chewing gum, Jason was unable to be glued back together.’

            

I changed tactic and told them that I was Mr Russell.

            

Well, this only exited them further, and several other children ran away to whisper under giggles to their friends behind a cupped hand that the strange new man with a torn shirt has a name.

            

I observed any escape route possible, but found that I had a following of at least seven thousand children now glancing up expectantly, until one of them, a tubby little thing with curling ginger hair squealed ‘Your name is Mr Brussels’ which brought raptures of laughter for miles around. This then started another game called Name the Man Something Remotely Stupid, to which I was then observed to be: Mr Muscle, Mrs Brussels, Mrs Guzzle, Mr Puzzle – anything that ended with the phonetic sound of ‘el’, really.

            

Escaping humiliation by whimpering into a corner, I watched the game of football which was taking place, with two sets of jumpers placed poles apart from each other, unequal in their distances, and a flock of varying sized children commenced rushing in charges after a ball which had less bounce than a breeze block.

            

As you may be guessing, I was checking my watch almost split-secondly to see just how much longer I had left to endure this eventful displeasure. I was soon crowded again by a small group of children who were unimpressed by my inability to engage with their antics.

            

‘Do you wear pink dresses?’ One asked.

            

‘Why yes, I just love to,’ I replied.

            

‘I thought so,’ this tubby little girl with fingers like tree stumps said, positively serious. ‘Are you a baby?’ she continued.

            

‘Yes, can’t you just tell by looking at me? I have a huge dummy at home, this big,’ and commenced to stretch my arms as far wide as possible, thinking this may deter her from asking more questions but this just seemingly made her more inquisitive.

            

‘Do you sleep in a cot then too?’

            

‘Yes, it’s as large as this playground, so I can roll in it all day. Just like this.’ I then wrestled her to the ground, rolled her up tightly and gave her a gentle nudge with my boot to which she screamed as I watched her skittle all the other children in the distance. I never really, of course, she was way too heavy.

            

But I was getting ready for a whistle or whatever they used these days to summon children to stop licking the floor and take their fingers from their noses.

            

I was approached upon manoeuvring my way behind a wall where I could stand in hopeful peace, by two small girls that observed me with discontent.

            

‘Do you work in the nursery?’ they asked.

            

Exasperated by trying to sound enthusiastic, I replied ‘no, but don’t tell me, I look like a baby?’

            

They looked at each other pulling a curious face but shrugged off my indignation with a reply of ‘you look like Mr Adams.’

            

‘That’s wonderful,’ I replied, ‘Thank you.’ I wasn’t sure who Mr Adams was, but I guessed he must be a real handsome chap.

            

‘You’ve got the same shoes as Mr Adams,’ they both said, and nodded to each other in agreement, before continuing, ‘yep, and you’ve got the same trousers as Mr Adams. You’ve got the same belt as Mr Adams, and the same shirt as Mr Adams.’ They kept nodding sequentially. ‘You’ve even got the same head as Mr Adams!’

            

The more observant one interjected at this, ‘well, he’s got the same hair as Mr Adams. But he’s not got the same face.’

            

‘Yes,’ the other one agreed, ‘you’ve got the same hair as Mr Adams, but you’ve not got the same face.’ They both smiled, and then ran off to skip, portraying mannerisms belonging to The Wizard of Oz.

            

I dealt with a couple of children who had ran over to me to say that they had been pushed over by somebody, to which I resolved by telling them to go over and push them back harder, to which a brawl then broke out somewhere near the back bench and a woman in a green apron went to split it up with a harsh shout of ‘STOP’ and a playground of little people then soiled themselves simultaneously. 

            

Me too, if honesty is the approach were taking.

            

I was delighted to note that just a few moments later – half way into dealing with an enquiry from a girl who had lost all of her friends in a space no larger than, well, a school playground – a mighty blow of a whistle sounded, and all children stopped, freezing upon the spot – some mid air, others balancing upon one hand upside down (impressive in most people’s book.) When the second sounding of a whistle went, everyone manoeuvred from their stationary positions, collapsing in heaps, and landing with thuds, then commenced to rush into parallel lines, to which I almost felt myself systematically copying until I realised all other people within my vicinity were less than five feet tall.  

            

If only, I thought, as the hour dispersed with sudden alacrity. I entered my realm of normality again, clicking a computer keyboard for the remainder of my day. But, even for that short, feverous natured capsule of time that had elapsed; I was glad that I had been in the world of Child Vision.

Why You Should Never Prompt

A rather interesting encounter I once had with a chap taught me to never prompt. I was sat with a towel wrapped around my modesty inside the sauna in the gym changing rooms. A man entered shortly after me and said ‘hullo’ before taking a seat. He too was modestly garbed, in an orange, well, flannel would be a more appropriate description, and as he was at retiring age, he was only too considerate when it came to flashing a duvet of greying mesh in my face (and his nuts and bolt occasionally too). I find that men of this age know no bounds when it comes to intimate skin exposure, particularly when surrounded with other men of the same nature. It must be a kind of comforting, I feel, maybe even lawful (who knows?) display of manly affection, a requirement, when in a gym changing room to flash your jingling jangles for a few moments in spurting intervals to perfect strangers – particularly whilst reaching one leg up onto a nearby surface and drying the more delicate parts of the anatomy, caressing them with a soft towel rub. That is customary, it seems. Believe me, as much as it is a pleasure to have a conversation or listen to a conversation of two greying cobblers whilst they compete in the daily reach-around contests, testing just how flexible their arm with a good bundle of towel will be and seeing just how much scrub they can give to their derrières, it would be nice to at least once, I say, at least once, walk into the gym changing room and not see two men square facing each other discussing their fence perimeters or how to appropriately fill the blue dustbin with contents, or any other life absorbing contextual discussion, whilst comforting their nether-regions with a hair dryer or even worse, standing hand on hips completely starker’s in the middle of the direct path to the lockers.

            

But anyway, my point wasn’t about the display of genitalia amongst elder folk, it was more about this chap who I was in discussion with in the sauna in the changing room. He was telling me about how he struggles with bronchitis on a regular basis, or rather, that he used to. Upon discussing how he doesn’t use the steam room facility in the pool area for the reason that he struggles with breathing afterwards, he then went on to say how he was just about done in the sauna. This is when I prompted.

              

‘Oh, you don’t smoke do you by any chance?’ I said harmlessly, so I thought.

          

‘No, no. I don’t smoke, but I’ll tell you this,’ he then commenced to sit back down and I, almost immediately, understood that I had just given him an excuse to converse further about something completely irrelevant to my day, or indeed my life, ‘I used to have trouble going to the toilet,’ oh boy, ‘and a friend of mine, also used to have trouble going to the toilet. It happens when you get older you see.’ You didn’t see that coming did you? He continued ‘but then my friend said he started using this thing called Kelp. Since then he’s been able to go to the toilet fine, and so I thought, well, I’ll give it a try and start using it. This was five years ago.’ Oh goodness me, I’ve got to sit here for another five years worth of this story. He does realise the recommended time for the sauna exceeds no more than ten minutes? He flashed me with his towel. ‘Well, I tell you, since then, I’ve never been ill. Not once in five years. I started taking it all the time, everyday. And I can go to the toilet fine too!’ This was all useful information, but I was now melting into a puddle and so got up to take my leave accordingly, covering my modesty with my towel when he said ‘is that your key?’

           

I looked puzzled at the floor. ‘No, no. It’s not my key. Where do you mean?’

           

‘There, on the floor. No, not out there. In here!’ He stressed.

           

‘Erm, no.’ I thought disparagingly, it’s a puddle of water you old fool.

           

‘Ah no.’ He laughed, realising his confusing senior moment. ‘It’s just water, it’s just blooming water.’ He laughed again. Then, miraculously, he got up to leave, his towel flopping by his side revealing his cuckoo’s nest.

            

‘Hey, I’ll tell you something though,’ he said laughingly, ‘that Kelp, it doesn’t do anything for your eyesight!’

            

No, I thought. And that towel clearly doesn’t do anything for your modesty either.

Clumsiness

            My clumsiness as a child could not be underestimated. It has haunted me all of my life, in fact. So to say I have grown out of it would be not be much short of a lie, though I have to say, clumsiness has turned from a physical thing, a verb for Jason’s current activity (‘Oh Ja’s just doing a bit of clumsiness at the moment, he’ll be finished shortly,’ I’m sure my mother would say) into something of a series of events that just seem to happen. When most kids would be out on their bikes, skateboards, and the like, I would be content with standing at the sides and watching, or running alongside. It was much safer. You may not believe me when I say that, but take for example, my first attempt at riding a skateboard. I can’t quite recall how old I was, probably around aged ten I presume, and I had always been intrigued with how, not only can you manage to make the thing move, but also, direct it. I stood with the strangely new apparatus in front of me, a grey and plain, slightly worn platform, with the four luminous green wheels, all belonging to a friend. I put one foot onto the platform, then slowly, the other. Unsure of what to do next my friend prompted, ‘you’ve gotta kick off the floor with your foot, and then just stand on it.’

            ‘And that’s it?’ I asked, unsurely. Of course, when it was confirmed all that I had to do was push off the floor, I commenced to give this a try. Not only did I fail to move; of course, only I could manage the events that followed. I took my left foot off the platform, and, as I put it to the floor and pushed, I brought the foot back up, catching the underneath of the board on the way. I fell horribly, slowly, in a kind of freeze-frame motion, backwards, hands wailing at the side of me like I was floating in mid-air. The board, flipped up; my left foot underneath it still, my right leg was currently flipping out to a side. I straddled hitting the floor, coccyx first, then my elbows braking the fall of my back. It was too late for me to move, it all happened so fast. The skateboard, had of course, travelled with me, flipping in a kind of acrobatic state. I, to this day, am still unsure how something so regularly shaped, so long and heavy could have managed to float the way that it did. The skateboard travelled in-between my right and left leg, and, as I hit the deck, flailing down on my back to rest, the skateboard landed with a thud, and hit me, directly in the dick.

            

I must have had a real curse on hurting myself in this way. I remember being about aged nine or ten (this was, as you can tell, prime age for my clumsiness – the age of where my utter clumsiness knew no bounds) and I was playing football in the front garden of the three-bed semi I lived upon my council estate. It was before school, and I was, it must be said, never at one with the foot and the ball. I could run, yet in a space where three strides would lead you from one end of the front garden to the other, this was not possible. I was often nicknamed ‘spoon foot’ in my local area, for when I kicked a ball, children would stand with hands making a visor in front of their eyes, and watch as the ball would disappear out of the Earth’s atmosphere which gave me just enough time to run inside and avoid the heckling of curses and obscenities that would follow. I often practised whenever I had chance at perfecting my spoonish feet, and so this was one such morning. There was a fence at either side of the garden setting the barrier of the neighbouring houses. It was a fairly small fence (still is, of course) and I was kicking the ball against it, running from one side to the other, never often looking up for fear of twisting my ankle in the guttering edges which my dad created for no apparent reason other than to increase the possibility of this happening. It wasn’t long until the ball ended up over in the next door neighbour’s front garden. As the effort at this age was too great to go out of the gate of my front garden, walk the four steps to the neighbouring front gate, open it, walk inside, and collect my ball, and return the same way, I would often just jump over the fence. It is, at adult height, an average of waist height. As a small child however, it was probably up-to my middle chest or thereabouts. So to get over the fence, I would have to raise one leg up, place a foot onto the one inch width of the black iron fence, push up with this leg, and with the leg that would be on the floor, and with that, put both feet on the fence and jump down, or if I was feeling really acrobatic, just jump straight over with a twist. This morning however, I did neither. As I raised my leg up, the fence was still wet from the previous night’s rain, and I was eager to continue playing ball, and so rushed the manoeuvre. I pushed up with the left leg, my foot unsteady and slippery on the black rubber soles of my school shoes, and as my ground leg came up, my supporting foot slipped. Mid air, again, my hands supporting my balance, I fell, vertically, and with great force down onto the black iron fence, landing on my right testicle, then with elegant grace, sliding down the fence, my left leg in the neighbours garden, my right leg hanging over into my garden, I fell, and cracked my head and shoulder on the concrete ground below. Crying in what must be described as the worst pain known on this earth, I rolled around on the floor, comforting my slug of a dick and his round friends with an academy award winning performance. Only, I wasn’t acting. The pain still haunts me now, as I write this, you must know, I am squirming inside, my right testicle (which I was sure I had lost at that point) is twitching in pain, telling me off for reciting such a horrific moment in its life. Of course, I grabbed my ball, and climbed back over the fence properly, then went inside to scream to my mother who examined me with conscious empathy ‘oh you’ll be fine it’s just a bit red. Come on, you’re late for school.’ Telling the teacher in front of all the class when I arrived to school late that the reason for this was that I had just had an accident where I slipped and shagged my bollocks on a fence at 8:25 a.m. was most wonderful.

            

I can hear you screaming ‘I want to hear more, I want to hear more.’ Okay, just one more tale about my clumsiness. This, bear in mind in light of the other two incidents, was probably the worst of them all. Luckily, my penis wasn’t involved, which was great relief for him, as I think he may have opted for impotency in retaliation. (Though convincing him to get a hard on was quite difficult for many years ‘I promise; this won’t hurt.’) I was on my bicycle with a friend down what in Hull is referred to as a ‘Ten Foot.’ This is a little like an alleyway that usually surrounds the back of houses, as kind of an extra long walkway, driveway, entrance point, to people’s back way. It is called a Ten Foot, because they are ten feet wide (though there are a few people in Hull who don’t know this fact, and I myself was afraid to ask this up until my teenage years.) Hull is known as ‘The Ten Foot City,’ and is quite famous for them. So, as I was down this Ten Foot, or ‘Tenny,’ as we call them locally, I was en route to the friend’s house that I was with when I decided that this would be a great time to try riding no-handed. I remember, I was eight years old, and in Hull, if you couldn’t ride no-handed by this age you were exiled to somewhere like Lincoln. I had to master it. I took my right hand off the handlebar of the red bike, steadying my balance. I had mastered one-handed earlier that year, and was fairly confident. My feet were pushing the peddles at a  good pace, my friend was way behind me, as I had rode off in a confident splurge of energy that I often had before doing something stupid. As I took my other hand off, I was going along, no-handed, quite confidently. I could often manage about ten seconds or so like this and often one hand would say hovering close to a handle bar, just in case. I had often seen people riding with their hands behind their backs, or eating food and drink (one kid I saw once hand both hands in a Happy-Meal and wasn’t even looking at the road and managed to turn a corner.) It took some skills to do such things. Skills that I, unfortunately, failed to ever possess. After a few moments, I grew confident, and put my hands up in front of me. This must have slightly off put my balance, particularly when I tried to look behind me to see where my friend was, and then, in those split seconds between doing those actions, my demise had begun. You must be aware, this is awfully painful for me to recall. My bike, angry with my ineptitude, decided it would turn the front wheel sharply, which caused the bike to skid. I put my hands towards the brakes and pushed them both sharply. It was all too late. I was thrown over the handlebars, and I kid you not, I flipped over, somersaulting catching my handlebars with my feet as I went which threw my cycle up into the air – unbeknown to me. I landed face first, sliding on my chin, Klinsmann style, and then flipped one more time for good measure, rolling in various directions. My bike came down hard, landing on top of me, the handlebars precariously close to my nether-regions, landing directly in my upper inner thigh. Eventually, I stopped, motionless. I bawled, my face bleeding from various places, my bike crushing my lower half. I wouldn’t know the extent of the damage yet, but as my friend rushed to the scene, he said ‘shit, shit, shit. Fuck me Jase, fuck me! I’ll go get my mum.’ I lay there, unmoving, just crying. Then, I felt it. The sensation in my mouth, as the blood trickled down my lips, and I put my tongue up to my top lip to lick it, as all children do. I staggered up, pulling the bike off my leg slowly. I assessed my groin, which had a lump the size of a golf ball emerging in a yellow and black circle. I stood, dazed, as my friend’s mother came out with him, towards me, and I put my arms out searching for no-one that was there. ‘Ohh, shit!’ she said when she saw me. ‘Come on, let’s get you inside.’ It was a scorching hot day in the summer. It was almost the end of school term, I remember. I felt myself burning, but had just enough clarity to realise the sensation in my mouth wasn’t normal. I put my tongue to my top front teeth. They were unbelievably sensitive, not least because they were only half there; the nerve endings hanging loosely in the strands out of the crooked and jagged things that were left. My teeth had cracked in half. Both front top teeth had broken in shards as I smashed my face against the concrete. My leg, in as much pain as my face, throbbed, and I couldn’t walk properly, I realised. I had never known pain like it (until I would fall on the fence a year later.) I went to school for three weeks with half of my teeth missing because in the nineties, that’s how long a dentist on the NHS would take to see you if you had just lost half of your teeth and your nerve endings were sensitive to everything you ate and drank. Just so you’re aware when I am writing this part, my teeth are throbbing with a reminiscence of pain, however, I can feel my right testicle laughing in his pouch.