Asian kid attempts the longest ever yeaboiiiii and passes out.
Respect.
Category: Bitesize
12th September 2019 10:35am Epicerie Quintin
I sit in a little square of the village of Quintin, surrounded by stone. The village was a centre of the linen cloth trade in the 17th and 18th centuries and its prosperity shows, a large chateau affiixed to a church towers over fine streets and stone buildings and facades that feel creepingly sinister in the manner of the more important towns we have passed through. As if the townsfolk now live hesitantly in the shadows of a past where the building and inhabiting of these towns made more sense.
The morning cannot make its mind up. Light drizzle replaces beating sun. M is walking the streets learning her monologue from Romeo & Juliet, I am stood upright with my book pressed against a wall writing in an alcove out of the falling rain. I am happy. Happy to be sharing that which I love with the one I love, to see the world from the seat of a bicycle, the winding roads, the copses, the little villages we coast through and whisper goodbyes to in our rear-view, unlikely to come this way again. The out of the saddle sweating uphill. The breath-catching heart-easing cresting of them, the wind-on-our-faces free-wheeling glee of the descent.
On our first morning we flew down through a field of sunflowers to the river Rance by Dinan, I turned back to see M free-wheel the whole hill and shriek and reach me with a look of wowed disbelief, and a smile she struggled to contain. The freedom the bike gives you, to see her experiencing it, to begin to love what I love. Show me what you love, so I can love your love for it, and love the thing also.
The sun is out now and beating down on the right side of my face. Today is the third morning of our adventure, but already the dark rain of Portsmouth feels weeks ago. We sat on the ferry eating cheese and drinking wine watching the tos and fros of the passengers, feeling like it was just her and I, just the two of us on our ship, on our planet. Out on deck the moon was making an aisle of light on the waves towards its altar, M laughed half in fear at how hard it was to fathom us on this vessel out in the dark black ocean, alone.
Last night as we got into the tent at the Camping Municipal she said again ‘it’s almost alarming how alone I am with you right now’. The boat drew into Saint Malo just after dawn, we were the first off the whole ship, reaching out with our wheels onto a new landmass stretching unbroken further than our imaginations could contend with, past a disinterested gendarme, with paper bags full of fruit and croissants from a covered market we sat on a bench looking out at the bobbing boats glinting in the light of the morning breathing salty air waiting for the café to open.
Two days now it has been, but feels much more, just her and I, this is all I had imagined, M is strong on the uphill and hardy and rolling with the punches of the contours of Brittany. She is teaching me to slow down, to be calm, to get my fill of being present and learning that on a cycle tour life off the bike sets you up for life on it. All things in opposition. She worries that there is nothing in it for me, and this is not true at all. Slowing down is lovely, the gnawing yapping terrier in my ear needing to move move always move is muzzled and I am peaceful.
We are finding our favourite food in the supermarchés, carrot rappé, tarama, fruit for M, chocolate for me, emmentale, jambon, sometimes together in a little brioche – n a u g h t y – yogurts and muesli, put the cutlery in the box bag, no, why, because there is a system, forget your system.
At night we lie together in the tent breathing within cms of one another, sleeping intermittently, dreaming much, and we cuddle for an hour in the mornings. We pack up the tent, wash, clothe ourselves, load the bikes and find breakfast. Today we head for the coast and a room and a real bed and a view of the sea.
Autumn.
If one season had to play the metaphor for life, autumn would take the lead.
Autumn is last call for drinks. Things that spring gave life to have reached old age. It’s everything coming to an end. It’s a signpost with a question mark asking how it got so late so soon. And practicing what it preaches, the season itself is fleeting. If it didn’t have so much purpose, like summer that just chills, autumn might blink and miss itself.
But Calvin is way off. Autumn isn’t melancholy, it’s a part of life. The leaves had to fall at some stage. It’s silly to jump for joy in spring without filing away somewhere in the back of your mind that what goes up must come down. Only the old can know if death is scary when it comes around the corner. One thing it shouldn’t be is surprising.
We all rolling on that dust2dust tip.
Autumn packs its bags fast. But one moment is all you need. Last weekend my brother and I went for a pootle in the park and locked onto one of the most beautiful autumn days I can remember. It flashed us in all its glory. A proper autumn day, to take stock of, and become one of those artistes pointing cameras at trees, lowering the camera by degrees but maintaining their gaze treeward, before looking down… slowly, sincerely, in a maze of contemplation.
P G Wodehouse, the guy who wrote Jeeves & Wooster, was also a golf obsessive. Amongst a multitude of references to his favoured pastime, he wrote the below.
The man who will go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only the eyes of God are on him, and play that ball from where it lies, is the man that will serve you faithfully and well
Quite asides from golf, the interesting thing about this is the idea of how we act when we know nobody is watching. With the knowledge that only the eyes of God are on us. And whether what we do in these situations differs from how we might act if we knew we were being watched. What do we let ourselves get away with. Would we play the ball from where it lies, or would we shift the ball to an easier spot, from where to lift it seamlessly onto the green.
All human interaction is an act of sorts. If you didn’t bend somewhat to the situation in front of you you’d spend your life hitting metaphorical walls at 100mph. There are people who do this but they tend to have extenuating circumstances like autism. People who bend too far tend to be slightly creepy. When someone is telling you everything you want to hear, you don’t believe a word they say. At the end of the day all we want is honesty and something real. Someone telling you every word you want to hear might be nice, but is slightly confusing.
There used to be an old function on Sky Sports called Player Cam. It gave you the option to ignore the game and just follow a single player of your choice running around the pitch, most of the time nowhere near the ball. It got boring after about three seconds but it did give birth to an idea.
The idea of Player Camming people.
People in the street. Your friends. The idea of watching them when they don’t know they’re being watched. To keep on recording after they think the cameras have stopped rolling. To keep your eyes trained on them when they think only the eyes of God are. Because this is when their guard is down and their act is over, when you get them at their most real. And you see the really weird shit.
Stuff they would never let you catch them doing in any social situation. Watch them while they wait at the bar getting a round of drinks in. Watch them watching tv. Next time you see them in the street stop yourself from bounding up and saying hello. Stalk them for a few minutes. See what they do and how they act. By the end you’ll have a pretty good idea if you still want to bound up and say hello at all.
This is one of the benefits of good friendships. And the greatest benefit of relationships. How they are under God’s watchful eye and how they are with you, become one and the same. You’re let into another person’s world where that person no longer gives a fuck, and is just one hundred per cent themselves to you, day in and day out. No longer trying to impress you, no longer trying to hide themselves from you. They’re so comfortable in your company you might as well not be there, in this situation you really are the equivalent of the eyes of God. Which means you get them all, the whole of them. The bravest and most generous gift they can give. What’s more, the gift is yours. No-one else’s.
What Robin Williams called the good stuff.
Cycling through the rain yesterday morning I saw a whole load of children in school uniform walking down the street, some languidly, some upbeat, some in sibling troupes, some chaperoned by parents, some in the company of just themselves. I couldn’t figure out why I was paying them attention, and realised it was because there hadn’t been any for what felt like ages. Casting his mind back to the early 90s Einstein does some maths and makes the connection. This must be the first day of term then.
Back to school yo.
I was like sheeeeeeeeed.
Remember what it was like going back to school after the life-time of summer holidays. It was a huge deal. The self-importance of being in a new year, itself with a new name. You couldn’t be the same cat. You had to have a new flex. Who had the new football boots. Who had the new haircut. Who had the new Sony walkman.
The assembly hall lined with newbies, scared shitless first-years styling out an alien universe you felt sorry for, but made feel even smaller because that’s what the older ones did to you back in the day, and now it was your turn. Which kid had broken his arm and was in a cast. Which kid had changed schools and wasn’t coming back. Which kid sat there, cross-legged, looking like a ghost, as the headmaster announced during the holidays his little sister had died of leukaemia.
Recently I got an old passport photo blown-up and framed and stuck it on my bathroom wall.
My thinking was if that little guy was looking down on me every time I reached for the Colgate, it would be a positive influence on my day to day. I don’t want to let that little guy down. Look at his innocent expression. He’s a good little guy. He used to burst into tears if he got in trouble, he used to share his chips in the canteen. He was brave, he had a big heart. He deserves good things.
The theory is working semi-well. When I’m in a bad mood I look up at him between gargles of Listerene and tell him to stop gazing moronically back at me, so wide-eyed and expectant. Quit piling on the pressure kid. It’s harder than it looks. But the missing piece of the jigsaw, the thing I really need, is one of those phone apps to render a photo of me and what i’m going to look like when i’m 75, if I ever make it that far. If I frame old man Domingo on the other side of the mirror, on his rocking chair, styling it out in his cardigan, I can have him looking down on me too. A life-time apart, they’ll have one thing in common.
They’ll both be saying don’t fuck this up for me.
But old man D will have edited the refrain slightly.
Calm down, I think he’ll be saying. It’s easier than it looks.
Time Out this week had a piece in it about Mayor of London Sadiq ‘I went to fabric when I was younger, I don’t want it closed down’ Khan, and how when walking around town he has to field a constant barrage of selfie requests from the baying populace.
Hey, it’s a nice problem to have rallies Sadiq, a clear contender for another top position, Mayor of the chill-out zone. But it got me thinking about selfies. And that the name bestowed upon them, now listed in the Collins English Dictionary, is more apt than might initially be obvious. Selfies aren’t just a photo taken of oneself, by oneself. In the current day’s oversharing electronic interconnectedness of everything, the purpose of selfies are resoundingly for oneself. Gettysburg shit.
The people clamouring for selfies of Sadiq aren’t in the hunt for a framed 10″ glossy to adorn the mantelpiece. They’re doing it to seek immediate validation from whoever might see the photo once its uploaded onto the internet. Likes are the new gold stars on the board at prep school.
Food-blogging I can tolerate, selfies with Sadiq, but the thing I can’t get my head around is the following. If you’re having brunch with friends, out in the beer-garden of a gastropub on a sunday for example, what possible need do you have to tell two hundred other people about it. The truth of the matter is this. No-one, nobody, looks at the photos of your brunch and thinks how nice.
Everyone looks on at that brunch and thinks shit.
My life is deficient. They must do this every sunday. Why don’t I ever do that shit. They look like they’re all having a great time. Hey, I know a few of them. Why wasn’t I invited. But they didn’t think of me. Maybe there’s a reason they didn’t invite me. Maybe they don’t like me. What did I do.
*
Why this need to interrupt an intimate setting with friends to take a photo of it, with a view to publicising the setting and its intimacy, therefore rendering it anything but intimate. I’m mystified. And the only explanation I can come up with to justify this behaviour, is that folk are posting these photos of their brunches to counter the fact that everyone else is telling you about the brunch they’re having with their friends that you‘re not at, and you feel the need, nay the pressure, to keep up appearances.
So what emerges is a thinly-veiled one-upmanship that in its essence makes you feel inadequate, out of control, and unhappy. Longing for a less loaded time, when you could sit there twiddling your thumbs in blissful ignorance of anything going on anywhere other than the place where you might find yourself in that moment, bathing in the calm of merely being present, and looking forward to seeing people and learn what they’d been up to straight from the horse’s mouth, because they would tell you.
This is well trodden stuff and way too boring and depressing for a Friday afternoon, but like my Turkish electrician Redjeb told me on Thursday morning, The End of Days is closer than we think.
Watterson wrote this in ’94.
It gets worse bro.
Oh it gets a whole lot worse.
I remember picking this up and being like.
Who is Michelle? And why is she devastated. Why does Mark need rescuing, and from who? What’s Lauren got to do with it all? Do I know who Ferne is? Did she used to have blonde hair? Wasn’t she in Big Brother? I definitely know who Cheryl is, but isn’t that the dude from 1D? Isn’t he like half her age? Are they seeing each other? I thought she got married to that built dude.
And feeling superb I had no idea about any of it.
The Godfather of Profiteroles aka Greg Wallace aka Greggy 2 G’s has been absent from our television screens for too long. Thank the Lord then that in little under a week, a new series of Masterchef is back to remind us why Bake-Off is an overrated bunch of turd.
Annoyingly Gregg has reigned in terrestrial tv’s most famous sweet-tooth and has discovered the joys of a morning run, and is managing to look boringly svelte these days.
You know it my brother.
But we all need reminding of the good old days, when the mere mention of puff-pastry was enough to turn Gregg into a gurning wreck. Nights-in as the creeping winter mist enveloped the world outside were never better than when watching Gregg react to each and every desert menu the budding chefs stuttered in his direction, in the way only a man with two g‘s at the end of his first name can.
*
Calvados parfait with mocha tuile
Vodka and buttermilk panna cotta with seasonal berries
Chocolate fondant with green olive and coconut meringue melt
Black treacle tart with spiced ice cream and roasted crab apples
Shitloads of snickers bars dipped in maple syrup
Mary Berry is three hundred badrillion per cent incapable of providing this level of entertainment.
This happened again.
This morning I absent-mindedly bit into the nail on my right thumb, removing a sizeable chunk. One of those ones where you lock-on, achieve pretty good purchase, get a third of the way along, assess, then close your eyes and drag on through. I didn’t reach the quick, it wasn’t painful. But it was pretty schoolboy.
Cutting your thumbnail a little shorter than normal shouldn’t normally warrant a lengthy bit of reportage. But things get interesting when I throw in the curveball of owning 2021’s most retro mobile phone.
Not something the tap-screen populace have to take into account anymore, but for complete manoeuvrability, a phone of this size is one hundred percent reliant on the maintenance of average to full length nails at all times. When you tamper with this paradigm, the phone’s user experience jumps straight off the 58th floor. The buttons are just too small. Having long nails should be the focus of the first chapter in the nokia 310’s freaking phone manual.
Basically I’ve screwed myself.
This is how I’d usually use the phone, sending a text to a broad.
This is me this morning trying to press the exact same buttons.
On a particularly memorable raid during the Blitz in World War II, the Luftwaffe succeeded in bombing a key munitions factory by the London docks, whilst absent-mindedly taking out the whole of Lewisham and Deptford.
It’s a situation I’m newly familiar with.
Using my phone this morning is a total shot in the dark. With thumbs my size and no nail to focalise my aim, I have to press five buttons blindly in the hope one of them will be right. That’s a 80% probability I’ll screw it up. I have no choice but to blanket-bomb my keypad with the surface area of a bratwurst. Imagine how long a text message is going to take. It’s no wonder nokia went under.
So yeah if today’s text repertoire isn’t up to scratch, channel some empathy and feel my pain. It’s a freak predicament. I mean, imagine someone with fingers as fat as this deciding to take up one of world’s smallest and most fiddly musical instruments, like a ukelele or something.
Ridiculous.
Oscar Wilde once remarked:
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
In the last few years as I’ve watched my parents lean inquiringly over the parapet of their own mortality, it’s like they seem to be trying their damndest to be more and more down with the kids. My mother’s fondness for abbreviated txt spk annoys me in an adolescent way I should really rise above, as does her newfound need to walk around everywhere with her iPad strapped to her forehead. I thought my old man was faring a bit better, but no.
I got this email from my mum on Saturday entitled.
Pops watching Grease on lovely summer afternoon.
And the attached photo.
On one of the balmiest Saturdays to hit rural Buckinghamshire in recent memory, with the mercury pushing 32, it’s a photo of my old man, inside, chair pulled up to within 6 inches of our 2003-model Hitachi, hypnotised by the hit musical Grease. This is a man who chastises my brother and I as idiots, who can hardly bear to have a conversation with us because we haven’t finished In Search Of Lost Time, and who has about 0.4 friends because it takes him all of half an hour to declare anyone he ever meets a bore.
Not so intellectual now are you pops.
Annoyingly the case for my father’s defence is being aided by my mother’s obvious ‘mastery’ of the technology at her fingertips. The photo is that size because my mother sent all 12KB of it.
Would the below stand up in court?
That could literally be a vase with some pussy willow sticking out of it. I sent her an email telling her it was possible to send photos as well as just their thumbnails and she went mental.
*
Then again, this is all good news.
My mum being in the throes of an unrequited love affair with her iPad and my father watering his unhealthy obsession with John Travolta is actually the best thing ever. Because what kills us faster than old age is loss of enthusiasm. And as much as all this makes me want to roll around on the floor and moan like a twelve year old, it’s also proof my parents aren’t throwing in the towel any time soon. Which means I don’t have to take any responsibility for my life. None whatsoever. Not yet.
My old man isn’t self-portrait photography’s number one fan. To say he’s got beef with having his photo taken is an understatement. I don’t know if this is out of vanity, or because even in these twilight years he still needs to max out on security because of the coke racket he’s eyeballs deep in. He took me aside once when I was four and with a look on his face I’ll never forget said, remember this hijo mio, it’s not getting in that’s the hard part, it’s getting out. I thought he was talking about the front door, which was confusing. Now it all becomes clear.
I shot the below straight from the hip as I pointed to the right and screamed WHAT THE HELL IS THAT at the top of my voice. He never saw it coming.
Anyway, I was hanging out with him the other day in his study at home, and told him I wanted a photo of him to take back to my flat and put in a frame.
He turned, and looked at me in the manner of someone placed on the earth for the sole purpose of answering a question they have waited their entire life to be asked. His lips trembled. He held himself together. Claro, he replied in the porteño of his youth. And reaching down to the second draw of the desk he pulled it open and fished something out, his voice cracking imperceptibly.
Take it.
Are you sure?
I can’t take this one I protested, it’s such a great photo, I don’t want to take your only copy. He shook his head gravely and insisted. No, I want you to have it.
It was a moment. It felt like a symbolic changing of the guard, my father giving me a photo of himself – that rare thing – and one he was evidently proud of, I mean with reason, he looks great. Who doesn’t cherish that kind of photo of themselves. One that evokes more than the person you are, the person you want most to be. It was a little faded and clearly old, with a lovely quality to it.
And yet it felt like I was taking something away from him. It saddened me. I couldn’t help imagining it as something he would keep close to him always, in the second drawer down, as a testament to his youth, a memento, to clutch onto as the dark clouds of old age drift across the horizon. It’s not like he knows what the hell a scanner is.
But he insisted.
Take it.
And as I descended the stairs it was remarkable how touched I felt.
I vowed to find a frame worthy of it, so whenever my father came to visit, it would be there, in pride of place, shining out like a beacon for all to see.
On the way out I saw my mother, and opened my bag to show her.
Look what papa just gave me.
A peculiar pained recognition traced its was across her face.
Oh God, she said.
And she groaned, and I watched her eyes roll alarmingly far back inside her head. That photo. About thirty years ago your father, for the only time in his life, set foot inside a photo-shop, and had 45 copies of that photo made. Forty five. Your father has had a thirty year love affair with that bloody photograph. Our marriage has suffered because of it. The bloody profile. That wistful look. That yellow coat, it comes to me in nightmares. He hands them out like sweets. He’s trying to get rid of them. There are drawers full of them.
In their droves.
In fondo…
è un trucco.
Sì, è solo un trucco.
Every 20 minutes…
Pride of place.
He copied me.
Damn that was a good look boi.
Spot of guerilla marketing.
Old St roundabout, 2015
