Friday 20 February 2009

On Being 18

The worst thing about being 18 is not that you're spotty and you sweat a lot and you constantly worry about what other people thing of you and whether you are cool. Its not that you are purely a product of your hormones and you can swing from dark moods to glorious happiness to anger in the space of minutes.

For me the worst thing about being 18 is not that you are naive and inexperienced in the ways of the world - and lets face it, a little stupid. the worst thing about being 18 is that you don't realise that you are naive, stupid and inexperienced.

In fact you think you are rather clever and that all of the lessons of thousands of years of civilisation don't apply to you. You have better, more clever ways of doing things that all of your predecessors.

I was reminded of this when I was 18 and I went on my first lads holiday with much the same group that I will be going on holiday with this year (incidentally 10 years later) - The Artist, The Nurse, The City Worker and the newly named Tank (who I am pleased to hear will shortly be moving back up north).

We went to Tenerife. To Playa de las Americas. To a place where I would never choose willingly to go again. It was a mess of horrible concrete hotels and cramped clubs with 2-4-1 deals on pints of vodka-redbull hawked outside. We had a good time.

I in particular had a good time until day two, when I was so perfectly reminded of how stupid I was in such an extreme way.

When we were messing around in the pool toward the end of the day (completely sober I might add) - the City Worker cleverly informed us to watch out when diving into the pool, as once his sister had dived into a pool of similar depth (also surrounded by no diving signs as ours was), and had knocked some of her teeth out. Yeah whatever.

That very same day, we were playing an interesting game which involved slam dunking some kind of inflatable ball into some kind of inflatable ring. The kind of game that will keep up you interest for only a short while. I decided to create an additional element to the game and try to actually dive through the hoop whilst holding the ball.

As any sensible soul will tell you - the first thing that happens when you dive into water holding a ball is that your hands will shoot up with said ball into the air. This happened to me.

What happened during this act was that after passing through the hoop I got a little too close to the bottom of the (1.5m) pool. At speed. So close in fact that I had to stop my descent through the use of the only appendage available to me (my arms being in the air and all). That appendage happened to be my face, or more precisely, my front teeth. I rose to the surface and swore loudly when running my tongue over my teeth and realising that the front ones had broken in half.

No pain. No blood. Just a good clean break. Needless to say I wasn't much of a hit with the ladies for the rest of the holiday.

I was also in quite a bit of pain as I was walking through the street a day or two later when some Spanish kid ran up to me, slapped me round the face and then ran off. A little unusual, but not normally a problem but for the fact that my lips caught on my jagged teeth and caused them to cut open. Coupled with recycled Tenerife water those cuts caused me the biggest, most painful set of mouth ulcers I have ever had.

Also I wasn't best pleased with the "I told you so!" from the City Worker.

Today I have been playing around with a scanner that somebody gave to me some time ago and have finally made it work, so over the next two weeks I hope to bring you some gems from the past.

Starting with this picture of some chavs in Tenerife in 1999 (dont worry, the dust is on my scanner, not your screen):


Left to right: The City Worker, The Tank, The Nurse, The Artist

Saturday 7 February 2009

Re-discovering Letter Writing

Even with the wide variety of means of communication open to us; email, text message, twitter. Even with facebook pokes and Blackberries, blog comments, instant messenger and simple straightforward phone calls - there is still something satisfying about writing a good old fashioned letter.

Recently, the evil discretions of a faceless and nameless international corporation have allowed me to re-discover my letter writing glee. After idiotically telling me my mobile phone contract was canceled in August, my nameless foe proceeded to charge me four more months phone charges and then get shirty and send in the debt collection companies when I refused to pay.

I responded with a barrage of written responses. Carefully emboldening my angry words and vengeful threats to report the company to the complaints commission. I systematically worked through their letter responses, picking apart their arguments and formulating intelligent points of note. I am taking joy in fighting my personal battle against the man, a game of cat and mouse - my personal war!

They respond with letters that say simply 'Thats nice. But you still have to pay us', and today sent me an additional bill to add to my collection.

I'll probably end up paying them in the end. Sighs