Maturation

I'd better make hay while the sun shines. I'm going to be busy for the next couple of weeks on a super-secret mission (which rhymes with "jury service"), so may not be able to blog as often as I'd like. Afterwards, I'll tell you all about it, in coded language so as not to be held in contempt of court (ie. the verdict rhymes with "binnocent"). Not really, Her Majesty's Court People! I'll be extremely tight-lipped and even tighter-fingered.

I'm not just writing this on the off-chance that it will be read and I'll be disqualified from being a juror. Honestly, I'm not. Besides, I can't imagine any background checks would involve reading the candidate's blog. There's no salary in the world high enough to make that a reasonable use of an employee's time.

Just in case someone is reading, I just want to make it clear that I definitely hate all Asians.

Oops! Silly me. I meant to include the words "do" and "not" in between the words "definitely" and "hate", but I forgot. Oh well. It's all water under the bridge now. Dirty water. Washing away the filth and scum that sullies our poor city.

Just to clarify: at school I was voted Most Impartial.

I didn't even have a noun attached to the honour; that's how impartial I was.

Let's move on.

Yesterday, I had an email conversation with Lucy. This is a common occurrence, but this one resulted in some poetry, so I thought I'd copy it below. That way, yesterday's work is today's reward. I give with one hand and... uh... hold an apple in the other. (I'm typing this with my tongue)

Background knowledge for this conversation: Lucy works on a famous dictionary.

_____________________________________________
From: FUNG, Paul
Sent: 21 June 2012 15:33
To: STONE, Lucy
Subject: RE:

How’s it going, Jeffries?

I’m sleepy, I can tell you that. Perhaps a coffee shall I seek…

_____________________________________________
From: STONE, Lucy
Sent: 21 June 2012 15:36
To: FUNG, Paul
Subject: RE:

If havoc you wish to wreak,

Perhaps a coffee you should seek…

I was going to go on, but I don’t have a rhyming/ rhythmic brain today.

Yeah, I’m sleepy too. Roll on 4:30, man!

I’m doing the file-sorting for crown, n., and all the senses are science senses that I don’t know about. Bah!

_____________________________________________
From: FUNG, Paul
Sent: 21 June 2012 15:48
To: STONE, Lucy
Subject: RE:

You’re a tremendous rhymesmith! Well done. I’ve just wreaked (wrought?) some havoc.

Crown sounds interesting. Are they all related to the various particle kings and queens?

Boh.

_____________________________________________
From: STONE, Lucy
Sent: 21 June 2012 15:50
To: FUNG, Paul
Subject: RE:

No, it’s the crown of a tree (you know, like the leaves and that – except that it also means the place where the stem rises from the root, which is rather confusing, I can tell you! When you’ve got two places on a tree called a crown, you need to start widening your vocabulary!)

_____________________________________________
From: FUNG, Paul
Sent: 21 June 2012 16:01
To: STONE, Lucy
Subject: RE:

Yeah, people need to get more creative. It’s not hard.

Slirnter.

There. Just invented a word. That can be the stem root place.

“Most woodworm can be found in the vicinity of the slirnter”

_____________________________________________
From: STONE, Lucy
Sent: 21 June 2012 16:04
To: FUNG, Paul
Subject: RE:

Well, we don’t already have it in the dictionary, so I think you can be called the official coiner of that word. Let’s make sure it catches on!

‘I was lying at the slirnter of a tree one day, when a strange happening befell me’.

_____________________________________________
From: FUNG, Paul
Sent: 21 June 2012 16:13
To: STONE, Lucy
Subject: RE:

We lit a campfire

And kindled desire

With both of us perched ‘pon a slirnter

But the flames rose much higher

And to Jessica’s ire

They licked speedily trunkwards and burnt ‘er

***

There. Aren't we adorable?

I know one of us are.

That's just a sample of our communication. We might compile it into some kind of book. People can be impressed by our made up words and fatigue.

I thought of something else this morning. And that thing is:

I co-wrote a pantomime at university. I've probably written about it before, but I can't track down any record of it.

Normally, I'd just paste the whole script into here to save on effort, but A) I don't have a copy of it, and B) It will be full of terrible student humour, obscure in-jokes, and references to 2002 that won't have aged well.

The main thing about it was that it was full of offensive humour. We were proto-Frankie Boyles (but with different accents). My co-writer Andrew and some of our other friends used to make lots of appalling jokes about sensitive subjects.

When I look back, they make me feel a bit uncomfortable. I don't think I'd joke about the same things now. It's not that any of us genuinely harboured offensive opinions, it's just that we were in a constant game of one-downsmanship to see who could sink lower.

We'd joke about tragedies and racism and recent bereavements. But I suppose university is the time for experimentation. It's just that mine was comedic experimentation. I probably should have been sleeping with men or trying heroin, but I ended up just sitting in the college bar making off-colour remarks about Ian Huntley.

By our second year, we'd sunk so low that we'd need a pulley system to winch our way up to rock bottom. So the writing of the pantomime (thrust upon us by necessity and desperate show-offs) was an exercise in depravity.

I'm probably exaggerating. It went down quite well in the end. But I wouldn't want to re-read it with my current eyes.

Anyway, the thing I thought of today was that one of the elements of the pantomime was...

Hang on, that sentence was getting too long, but I couldn't be bothered to retype it.

A running joke was a repeated abuse of the upcoming college ball.

The college ball was a huge event, which happened (and still happens) every... three years? I don't know. I'm not going to check. But it was something like that.

It had its own committees and a budget and big planning meetings. It was a huge undertaking. People wanted a night that they'd never forget, so were intent on making it magical.

And we spent the whole pantomime suggesting that it was going to be rubbish.

I think the organisers of the pantomime (some of whom were also organisers of the ball) were confused about why we were seemingly sabotaging what was supposed to be a communal event. They were doing their best to promote it, and we were slaying that sacred cow like it was Thatcherism.

The reason we were abusing it was... we thought it was funny.

One of the only lines I remember combined this derision of the ball with our offensive humour. One character remarked (topically at the time):

"The College Ball? There'll be more people at Myra Hindley's funeral!"

The best part about such remarks was that they were read by the actors, who were for the most part enthusiastic and earnest, and probably weren't too keen on being bile cyphers.

Good times, good times...

(As it turns out, the ball wasn't very good. Vindicated.)

I think I must have played some sort of softening role in the writing of the pantomime, as the following year Andrew wrote it on its own. Though I didn't see it myself, I later heard that people complained that it was anti-Semitic.

Andrew is by no means anti-Semitic. But knowing him, I don't reckon the complaints were entirely without merit.

I've moved on since then. I'm much more sensitive. But the folly of youth is a valuable thing. From idiotic roots do mighty slirnters grow.