Hymn

Pinch

The evening in the club was notable for reasons other than our miraculous escape.  In unexpected outbreak of Dadaism, a girl pinched my bottom.  A girl.  A real girl.  And my bottom.  Three times.  Three times.

Now, I’m not a young man anymore.  In my youth, in the 1860s, I could cut quite a dash but now warts and wrinkles have replaced my Marty Feldman good looks.  Nowadays any form of female attention is quite a surprise.  Unless it’s abusive.  Or medical.

At first I thought I’d made a mistake.

I was dancing, you see.  That I could be fondled while strutting my funky stuff is remarkable for a number of reasons.  One, I have no coordination or rhythm so my movement is entirely unpredictable.  Two, my flaying arms can be lethal to anyone in a three metre radius.  Three, I look like a twat. 

The first time, I wondered if I’d been punched, albeit somewhat pathetically and a little low for Queensbury rules.  After all, in the drunken Stag do circumstances, I was expecting violence to erupt any second.  But no.  As I wheeled around, there were just two girls.  Not even looking.  Although they were trying hard to suppress a smile.  Or it might have been wind.  But they didn’t look aggressive.

It happened again a few moments later.  Naturally I assumed a different culprit, someone stumbling off the dance floor, a random collision, an accidental bum bump.  Those two girls were still the only ones around.  As I looked round, one of them peeped at me.  It’s not something I’m used to.  It was definitely a peep.  Perhaps it was an eyelash in her eye.  Or a dodgy contact lens.  No, it was definitely a peep. 

I looked around for the gang of friends howling with laughter, handing money over for some hilarious wager but the rest of the world was oblivious.  Drunk and oblivious.  I began to wonder if perhaps I’d had too much Dirty Digger.  If I’d started to hallucinate.  In a psychophysiological way.  Or perhaps I had simply lost my marbles.  I knew it would happen one day.  All the signs are there.  And the medication.

I rubbed my eyes fully expecting to see turquoise rabbits in stripy raincoats skipping around an upturned VW camper van or a number of anonymous men in surgical gowns when I opened them again.

But it was just those two girls.  My God.  They were flirting with me.  Making eyes.  Teasing.  I was in uncharted territory.  Nothing like this had happened to me since, well, ever, as far as I could recall.  Not without some drugs or a legal document, at least.

I wanted to alert my fellows that something utterly astonishing was happening but they were too busy dancing the Okey-Cokey around a bunch of legless teenagers in rugby shirts.  So I did what years of paramilitary training and a stint with the travelling circus had taught me: I studiously ignored the coquettish girls.  By far the best strategy for dealing with something unexpected, I’ve always found – do nothing and hope that it goes away. 

It, they, didn’t.  They pinched again.  I knew that I risked looking like a gauche insensitive fool.  I am, after all, a grown man.  A man swinging his arms wildly and attempting to move his legs in time with a tune of one hundred and sixty beats a minute.  What greater embarrassment could I fear?

I swung round, attempting to stay in time with the music, a manoeuvre so violent that it almost decapitated the girl nearest to me.

‘You pinched my bottom!’ I shouted above the strains of the Techno.

I’m not sure what surprised them most: my sudden attention, the bellowing or the fact I had used the word ‘bottom’ without any hint of irony.

“Would you like to dance?” the blonder one asked after the deafening silence became almost unbearable.

I was utterly flummoxed.  My flum had never been more oxed.

‘Erm...’ I shouted back with my usual eloquence.

They looked at me.  Dry ice appeared right on cue.

‘I’m a married man.’  I said blandly.  I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. But enough was enough.  They had pinched my bottom.  There could be no greater accolade.  I was already a conquering hero.

I tried to remember the last time someone pinched my bottom.  1973.  And sadly dinner lady-pupil relationships were frowned on at the time. 

Still, I am a Love God.

No-one would listen. 

I came home and immediately told T. 

She patted my head.

Clubbed Goers

What a night.  Utterly terrifying.  For all concerned.

Well, it is a Stag weekend, isn’t it?  You’d expect a bit of revelry.  Some high jinks.  I don’t think it was what Illfracombe’s only nightclub expected.

I began to suspect we were in for an interesting night when we started negotiating with the barmaid over the house cocktail.  In my experience, you might as well just lie down on the floor and save yourself the trouble of falling over as soon as you jump on the Cocktail Caravan.  There’s no way back.  It’s only going to get messy.  Yet here we were haggling over the cost and concentration of the Devon Dirty Digger.  We succeeded in halving the price and doubling the strength.  Of course, success is an entirely objective concept.  Our prize was a bucketful of lime green liquid.  Now I think there are all sorts of things that shouldn’t go together: Banknotes and Washing machines, Eggs and Pockets, Slippers and Swamps.  I think it’s also self-evident that any combination of Alcohol and Buckets is asking for trouble.  Likewise with Green and Liquid.  It’s never, ever, going to be good.

I spilt a drop from my pail and watched it burn a hole through my shoe.  The others finished theirs with gusto, failing to notice their smouldering sleeves as they wiped their lips.  It unleashed monsters.  What little social grace and elegance we possessed simply wilted in the fumes.  Tact and decorum ran screaming through the door.  If there was one consolation, it was that those virtues were already strangers to this North Devon venue and most of the revellers had no honourable intentions for the night, even if their pace was a little slower.

I watched in horror as the party lurched towards the unsuspecting females nearby determined to engage them in some jovial banter. 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  At heart, these are good and faithful chaps and meaning no harm, seeking nothing more than a good night out and expecting only a shared sense of fun.  Indeed, as soon as the boyfriends appeared, as inevitably they did within moments, my fellow stags retreated full of apologies and explanation.  But the clear air of inebriation, the obvious lack of intent and glaring lack of capability, did little to pacify these slighted lovers.  In fact more than once, the only factor preventing an outbreak of fisty-cuffs was our superior numbers.  Even bruised peacocks can still count and, to an outsider at least, we represented a formidable platoon.

The Best Man, bless him, revealed himself as a creature of cunning.  He had only pretended to sink his gallon of green goo in order to keep watch over his ward.  He and I, rapidly sobering up, attempted to shepherd our band of playful profligates out of harm’s way.  But they’d already moved on.  On to the dance floor.

Marvin was on his back.  I feared the worse.  Then I saw Our Stag start to spin him by his foot.  It was assisted break-dancing.  In a fashion.  Clearly not a good fashion or one likely to catch on.  Thankfully.  Marvin’s interpretation did make it look rather like an unfortunate medical condition. 

They bored quickly and embarked on what can only be described a Gay Waltz.  Clinging tightly to each other and alternating gender roles, they rampaged across the floor as if possessed by the combined spirits of Julian Clary and a bulldog.  Cheek to cheek and careering blindly around.  If it hadn’t been so brutal, it might have looked quite sweet.  There was clearly a lot of something going on between them.

Now, there is a point when one believes that it can’t get any worse.  That point came.  And went.  The waltz transmogrified into The Net of Love.  Or, I’d suggest, more accurately the Chain of Chaos.  I begged quietly to leave.  To emigrate.  For plastic surgery.

Our heroes reeled wildly around, enveloping anyone in their way in a rough Farmer’s in the Den sort of way.  It didn’t seem to matter who it was, their aim was indiscriminate though their successes favoured the less the mobile/ more intoxicated targets.   They managed to trap eight unsuspecting dancers in one audacious manoeuvre that required a wide sweeping curve around half a dozen disgruntled couples. 

Then something unexpected happened: a few sports playfully entered into the spirit of the Net.  After so much abuse and rejection this was quite a shock.  In fact it was so unsettling that it wrong-footed the group - quite something when one considered the rhythm and physics-defying choreography that dominated the dance floor for so long.

With the level of debauchery equalising across the club-goers, it was clearly time to leave.

Rock Cake

Consuming enough alcohol to sink a Cross Channel Ferry is not the main activity of the Stag Do.  Surprisingly.  In fact after last night’s encounter with the Adams Family and friends, I’m so determined to keep my wits about me, I may never touch another drop. Or indeed ever close my eyes.  No, the focus of our weekend isn’t alcohol but water. 

We’ve spent the day jumping into the sea.  The old Briny.  From the cliff.  Then swimming around the coast being dashed by crashing waves, climbing out over barnacle-encrusted rocks and jumping in again.  A perfectly reasonable thing to do on any Saturday, I’m sure you’ll agree.  Our guide makes a living from it.  What a life!

Needless to say we celebrated our manly pursuits with a hearty meal.  Actually a scone with cream and jam.  And nice cup of tea.  Like I say, it’s an odd weekend.