Holiday 2013 – Days Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve & a bit of Thirteen

I'm back in England now. Why would I want to write about my holiday? I was wearing shorts, for Pete's sake! I packed eight pairs of socks and didn't wear any of them. It was a different world.

And now I need to cast my mind back to day NINE?! The number is meaningless. I'm sure I was still alive on day nine, but I wasn't the same person I am now. I'm wearing socks today. To not wear socks is unthinkable.

But I can't abide a tale half-told. I can't stop my holiday account at day eight. It would be improper. And would confuse future-me. He'd wonder where the time went.

So here it is. Day nine was, what, Saturday? I was probably wearing shorts and wishing I could trim my moustache. But you can't take scissors on a plane or buy them once you arrive. Bin Laden deserved to die, if only for that.

Here are some things.

We went to a place called Göcek. It's one of those yacht places. You know, with, like, a wet bit where the boats go, and then a dryer bit where there are shops and cafes and mooring posts and people staring at yachts? A yacht place.

(Do you know what the sad thing about this story is? It happened on Day Eight. But I'm so confused, I'm writing about it here.)

Apparently, the rich and famous go there. Our tour guide said that sometime in the late 90s, Sting and Dustin Hoffman visited there. In the same yacht.

I don't get yachts.

I'm not totally immune to the allure of a millionaire's lifestyle. I can see why people would like luxury cars and mansions, and why they'd like to have a diamond-encrusted George Foreman Grill.

But yachts are stupid. How can a tiny boat be luxurious? It's just a bobbing caravan. Get over yourself, Hoffman.

If you chose to get on a boat, you have abdicated all authority anyway. You can drown at a moment's notice. Every seaman is nothing but Neptune's bitch. A rich movie star on a boat is just shark food in an expensive suit.

If I was a millionaire, I wouldn't want to be robbed of my dignity. I'd stay on land at all times. People can look up to you if you're on land. Nobody looks up to boat people.

Stick with what brung you to the dance. If you're rich, you made your fortune on land. Stay there.

Unless you're Daryl Hannah. She has one fin in each camp, and a stupidly-spelled name.

When we were in Göcek we had tall frozen lemonades, with lots of fruit. They were the most refreshing drinks. Mmm. I'd like one right now.

Also, earlier on the same day (EIGHT - NOT EVEN NINE), we went to a treetop cafe in the mountains. We had Turkish tea and saw dragonflies and horses. But that's not what I'm going to write about, because I'm not a square.

We'd walked down some rocky stairs to photograph a waterfall or a unicorn or something, when our tour group started moving on. We went to join them, but an old woman was coming down the stairs, blocking our way. She was having difficulty making the descent. Her family was helping her. She had a walking stick. She was taking ages.

If this was a more interesting story, we might have found ourselves cut adrift from the rest of our group, forced to climb through the mountains and find our own way home. But that didn't happen. We just waited.

When we got to the top of the stairs, one of the Turkish cafe staff (who had been watching our predicament) said to me in perfect English, "one day, we will all be old."

He was right. It was a nice thing to say. He obviously understood the situation and didn't want us to feel angry or annoyed at the woman. He recognised that she was only human, and our having to wait a few extra seconds wouldn't make much difference. There but for the grace of God, go us.

We agreed with him. One day, we will all be old. He was right. We shared a moment of human empathy that crossed national boundaries. At that moment, we were united by our appreciation of the fragility of life.

Then he said, "one day, we will all be dead".

Now, I thought this was one sentence too far. It's true of course. We will all be dead. And it seems like a continuation of his previous thought. It's an understanding and wise statement. But it didn't really apply.

The slow woman was old, but she wasn't dead. Empathising about her age was warm and humanistic. Empathising about her death seemed premature.

"One day, we will all be old" is a beautiful and melancholy piece of language.

"One day, we will all be dead" sounds like a threat.

Of course, I agreed, and hurried off. I'd gone from moved to unsettled in about five seconds.

But the cafe worker was right. Because, as we looked back over the beautiful scenery and watched the river flow down the rocks, much as the the river of time does flow, we saw, through the dappled sunlight and the vivid forest flowers, that the old woman had fallen down the stairs and died.

One day, we will all die. He was right. It was an appropriate thing to say. As I looked at her corpse and her broken walking stick, I thought: "that will be me one day".

He winked.

Some of that story isn't true. You can decide for yourself.

Anyway, where was I...?

Oh yes. Day nine.

Nothing.

Day ten. Nothing. Some swimming, I guess.

Day eleven. We came home.

The journey was long. Our bus to the airport left at 10pm. Our flight was at 2am. Our bus on the way back was at 5:05am GMT, which would be 7:05 TMT (Turkish Man Time). We got home at about 6:30am GMT, then had to go out again.

It was not unexhausting.

The flight was strange. People were sleeping, but I was not. I couldn't get comfortable, even though there were lots of spare seats, as it wasn't a full plane.

My arm kept... being there. Humans should evolve retractable limbs. I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Humans should evolve retractable limbs.

There was an eerie light everywhere. My fatigued brain started playing tricks on me. The clouds looked like the sea. There was a thin blue line of dawn on the horizon that never grew, because we were flying away from it. It couldn't catch us, but was shaking its fist.

The soundtrack of my delirium was this short song by Adam Buxton (of Adam and Joe fame). It's about nettles:



This song played in my head about five thousand hundred million times.

Nettles - also like the band The Police...

There was a child sleeping across the seats in front of us. I was worried that my stupid non-retractable arms and knees would be disturbing her, so I was semi-frozen in shaky discomfort like a shit statue.

Lucy got some sleep, lying across the seats next to me. She had a shawl draped across her, which took on an odd luminescence in the artificial night light. The shawl rose and fell, and seemed to me to be undulating like a wedding-white jellyfish.

Nettles! Nettles!

Eventually, we landed in that land of my forefathers: Gatwick.

I slept on the coach on the way home, leaning against nothing, my slumbering head flopping around like a melon on a weak spring. I retained verticality by biting the inside of my mouth at regular intervals. It was relaxing.

By this point it was technically day thirteen, but who's counting?

This holiday journal has never been a systematic catalogue of events. It's more of a series of impressions, bound together by hyphens. If you want to give a sense of an experience, there's no point in trying to replicate it. You have to just say things like "you know how sometimes it's all a bit fleeeuuurrrgg?".

AND PEOPLE SAY YES I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN.

Oh - also we had a big bread that was like a steam-whale. That was day twelve, but who's counting?

I can't believe it's all over. It was so interminable and so brief, like a mayfly opera.

Time to put away the shorts.

Time to put on all the socks.

Time to post photos to Facebook to tell the people - who, unlike you, dear reader, are not my real friends - that we had a well good time and look at my muddy torso and don't you wish you were here? Don't you wish you were there? Don't you wish you were me?

And the Facebook people will be all like "yes, I do wish I was here/there/you. *like*".

But you, dear reader, are my real friends. And you know in your heart of hearts, that whether you're there or here is nether here nor there. The only thing you're sure of - from reading this very blog - is that you'll never wish you were me.

Would that you were.

Would that you would.

Bits

I'm doing some stand-up in a couple of weeks. I think I know roughly what I'm going to do: a long new bit, a medium sized old bit and a few short bits of indeterminate vintage.

But it can't hurt to come up with some more material. Especially as my last couple of entries haven't been laughfests.

You know me, I don't like to plan these things out, so I'm just going to think of a random word and riff on it. That's right: riff. I know all the comedy language. E.g. the "mic" is the raised platform upon which the comedian (or "heckler") performs.

I still haven't thought of my random word yet. I'm waiting for the right time. You don't know that, of course. I might have a ready made bit of material based on a certain topic that I'm eager to share. But I don't. And the quality of the material will demonstrate this perfectly.

I've just tried to think of something, but my mind went blank. Lucy suggested I use a random word generator, so that's what I'll do. I'll use this one. You can choose the word type and the complexity. I think I'll go for an average noun. I've always thought of myself as an average noun of some sort, so it will suit me down to the ground. My random topics will be in bold. That's my exciting system. Excited? Of course you are.

My first topic is...

Midnight

[compere introduces me] [muted applause]


I was up until midnight last night. Not the middle of the night. Midnight. I'm not an animal. The middle of the night is, what, 3am? Of course, it depends on how we define the middle. Are we doing averages? Is it the mean? Is it the median? (I don't remember what those words mean, but I'm sure they're relevant).

3am might be halfway through the night, but it's not necessarily the pivot point. Because night gets thicker as it goes on. Between 4am and 6am, night is like a dense slice of chocolate cake. From 11pm to 2am it's more like an After Eight.

The middle of the night seems like it should be the most difficult place to extricate yourself from. Like the middle of a Justin Bieber concert. Surrounded by screaming girls, not even enough room to tear your ears off.

[one stifled laugh]

The middle of the night is the time where the day seems most distant. The middle of night is hidden, deep in the jungle. The contrast between night and blinding morning is at its sharpest.

Which of course means that the middle of the night is... just before my alarm goes off.

[audience shouts: "TELL US A JOKE!"]

OK, OK. I've got other material. I've got a great bit about...

Duplication

Do you ever worry that there are an infinite number duplicate realities? An infinite number of dimensions? An infinite number of alternate, duplicate yous? And that you're the worst one?

Out of all of them, you're the most boring, the most out of shape, the worst cook, the worst pool player.

They'd get together. All of the other yous. They'd hold a meeting. "Well, Paul. We've got good news and we've got bad news. The good news is that you're unique in the universe."

"Ooh, brilliant!"

"Yeah... yeah. But the bad news is that your uniquely shit. You've come bottom of the league table of possible yous."

"Right... but I am unique?"

"Yes, you're unique. In the same way that a snowflake is unique. But where we're snowflakes, you're a shitflake. You are uniquely shit. There's no-one that's shit in the same way as you, and with the same intensity as you."

"Oh. But hang on. If there's an infinite number of mes, surely there can be no bottom to the table? There must be an infinite chain of mes, of an infinite variety of shittiness?"

Then the Council of Interdimensional Einsteins would come out and explain it to me.

"Infinity has to end somewhere. And it ends with you, you shit."

Then one of the Einsteins knocks my hat off, and when I bend over to pick it up, a duplicate Newton kicks me in the arse.

[an audience member's phone rings] [the compere signals that my time is nearly up, even though I've only been on for five minutes and was guaranteed fifteen]

That's nearly all from me. I just have one more thing to tell you on the subject of...

Seven

I always think seven is the coolest of the numbers. The most futuristic, anyway. So streamlined and asymmetrical. I bet the fusty old eight and the doofus six get really annoyed with her.

That's right - seven is female. She doesn't make a big thing of it. She wants to be judged on her own merits.

Seven is always on the move. It's going right. You can tell that just by looking at it. It's pointing that way > 7.

Seven is making its way up the pecking order. It used to be between three and four, you know. But she's making waves. Like an entrepreneuse. Smashing the glass ceiling of numbers, getting covered in shattered fractions, suing that pervy three for sexual harassment.

Don't refer to seven as lucky. It's patronising. But she is magnificent.

She'll be heading further up the number ranks before you know it. She'll be above the twelve. Marshalling an increasing number of dwarves and samurai, kicking that impostor Se7en in its nonsensical alphanumeric face.

[the compere gives me another frantic signal]

I'll just end on a quick joke about my final topic, which is...

Ride

What's the most nauseating ride at the theme park?

The schmaltzer!

Thanks everybody, you've been great!

[one woman claps]

***

Well. There we go.

It's good to stay polished, isn't it?

I wouldn't say any of that was usable stand-up material.

Or stand-up material of any kind.

Or even material. It wasn't material. It was immaterial.

But at least we've all had some laughs.

Some of us have. Some of me. Part of me. A small part of me.

A small part of me laughed.

I think it was my self-doubt. It was a laugh of vindication.

Sparkling Torso Quiz!

Our new broadband hub is arriving today. I'm reasonably sure it won't work.

Although I'm an optimist, I'm also a realist. Which sometimes entails altering my expectations to compensate for my innate optimism.

Some people may call this pessimism. I call it being even-handed.

One hand washes the other. They both wash my torso. My torso, in turn, washes my hands. One foot doesn't wash the other. Unless I'm wearing my sponge clogs. Which I rarely do in the shower. Are you following this? I hope you're taking notes. There will be some test questions at the end to make sure it has all sunk in (like water into clogs).

In conclusion: I'm a soapy optimist, with a sparkling torso and sponge clogs.

Right, recap time! Three multiple choice questions.

Question 1: When is our new broadband hub arriving?

A: Today
B: Tomorray
C: Sponge clogs

Question 2: What are my clogs made of?

A: Spunge
B: Today
C: Sponge clogs
D: Clogs?

Question 3: Born in December 1982, I am a human male living in the Northern Hemisphere. After a bright start, I lunged into mediocrity, writing a blog that mainly consists of disappointing rants and discussions of absorbent footwear. Who am I?

A: You (me)
B: Me (me)
C: You (him)
D: Sharon Carter (Agent 13)
E: All of the above
F: All of the below
G: Me

You can find the answers at the bottom of this post.

***

So... pff. Yeah. Man, how about that... news? The moon and all that. And, uh, Nobel Prize for... uh... Harry Connick Jr. And stuff.



***

Quiz Answers:

Q1: Four; Q2: Question 2; Q3: Me (you thinking of me).

See how you rank below:

Final Scores

3 - Well done. This is the maximum score possible from three questions. You have answered them all correctly. If you had got any wrong, your score would have been lower than 3.

2 - Good attempt. You are perceptive, but have a short attention span. Did you get distracted by a grey fox (if American: gray fox)?

1 - Poor. You are not a natural English-speaker. You did poorly at school. Your friends don't like you, but invite you to events to make themselves look better by comparison. But you're not beyond hope. One point is the same number of points as on a scalpel, used by many doctors.

0 - Zero. This is the lowest number of points. If you had been any worse, I would have had to take away points you had earned from other quizzes (eg Going for Gold with Poirot's brother)

Gargling With The Unknown

Apparently, the BBC spends £406,000 a year on bottled water. As with all the recent shocking revelations about MPs expenses, and BBC abuses of the License Fee, and duckhousegate, and pornclaimgate, this figure is supposed to raise outrage and flaming pitchforks, when the most it deserves is a shrug.

Before this story, did anyone have any idea how much the BBC spent on water? Or were they, like me, totally unequipped to make any kind of estimate?

It's a headline, so we assume it's bad. But I don't really know how much water costs. It's not something I concern myself with. So that figure could well have been plucked out of the air. If the same story told me that the BBC spent £4 million on water, I'd have exactly the same reaction: "that sounds like quite a lot, I suppose". If they spent £40,000, and it was phrased the same way, lots of people would be appalled at the sheer hedonism of this public funded company. We'd picture a decadent orgiastic feast of water: water flowing like wine; water ON TAP, people bathing in water! Oh, BBC. It's like the last days of Sodom, only cleaner.

These stories always present figures devoid of context. Or give a context so abstract, they might as well invent a fictional currency to compare it to. (£400 grand? That's equivalent to six million Bavarian guilder! Or a trillion vampire pesetas!)

"Experts say that this amount of water could fill three Olympic swimming pools, seventy-twelve times, in a drought, with pigs shovelling the liquid from colossal vats with trowels made of mercury."

Well, thanks a lot. That makes it much clearer.

If it had been a positive headline (unlikely, I know), it might have said "through a series of initiatives, the BBC have cut their water spending by 50% - now only spending £406,000 a year". And we would have congratulated them.

All news coverage is completely devoid of proportion, because they're trying to sell us on ideas that are completely outside of our sphere of knowledge. They have complete control over whether these figures are good or bad. (They always choose bad.)

For example, we know stabbings are bad. I don't want to be stabbed. If a friend is stabbed, I get quite upset. But how many stabbings are there every year in Britain? I have no idea. If someone said twenty, I'd go along with it. If they said twenty thousand, it would seem plausible.

Maybe it's my fault for not being informed. I couldn't tell you what my bank balance is to the nearest hundred pounds. I always use this ignorance to justify frivolous purchases ("Well, for all I know, I might have fifty less pounds than the actual figure. So essentially that fifty pounds is bonus money."

But I don't think the news is helping. I suppose it's in their interests to make statistics as vague as possible, so they can be modified to serve the narrative of the day. Facts can only hinder storytelling.

But it works. People get outraged by these arbitrary numbers. The thought of our tax dollar being thrown down the drain (either directly, or via throat, bladder and toilet) is beyond the pale.

I think the best solution is to put a cap on numbers. We should outlaw any number over, let's say, 1000. It would make everything much more straightforward. It would lead to no problems.

No problems.

二百五

So, 250 posts.

The big two-five-oh.

A quarter of a grand.

Two eights of one thousand.

Double 100. Plus fifty.

A landmark. A milestone. A millstone. A landstone. William Gladstone.

As everyone knows, the number 250 in Mandarin is a term of abuse: an accusation of stupidity. And yet I have confounded this notion by producing 250 blog posts that are the exact opposite of stupidity.

The exact opposite.

The number 250 has succeeded despite its older sibling (251) being a Sophie Germain prime. There must have been some jealousy.

But 250 had simpler mathematics on its side. Four of them make a thousand.

One G. 1K. 5 monkeys.

I'm a quarter of the way to having written a thousand posts.

It's not very impressive, is it? Numbers are arbitrary. Or maybe they represent the purest form of truth. One of those.

I wonder why more people don't write an entire blog post about a single number...

Oh. Yes. That's why.

***

A joke:

I went to a gay pride event the other day. Turned out it was just a load of happy lions.

Is this funny? I don't know. I imagine the joke has been made before. I think the humour would have to come from a deeper examination of the reality of that situation.

I would turn up, perhaps wearing a large moustache and a string vest (as I believe this is the homosexual uniform). I'd have a placard with me.

The lions would welcome me to join them, even though I had clearly misjudged the whole situation.

I'd try and frolic with them, but would feel quite foolish and out-of-place.

The lions would make a joke, and say this kind of thing happened all the time.

I'd gradually drop my inhibitions.

Then they'd eat me.

That's where the laugh would come, I think: the instant of my death.

***

That's the trouble with collective nouns - they're inherently ridiculous. I think they were all devised by a maniac, chained in the bowels of the OED. They could only have come from a lunatic:


a Parliament of owls
a Rasputin of stoats
a Misunderstanding of hats
a Wig of termites
a Crenellation of regrets
a Beretta of school-teachers
a Systematic Identification and Suppression Initiative of geese
It's pure madness!
It's pure madness.
I've been in the bowels of the OUP building, looking for that chained-up maniac. But when I got there, all I found was a pen, some paper, and some surprisingly well-fiitting manacles.