You Should Be Like My Friends and Stop Being a C...retin
This weekend I've been absolutely privileged to have had the company of some brilliant folk - Joe Bunn, Bard of Northampton who did a sterling job hosting the Bardic Picnic benefit bash on Friday (and was extremely funny), the very affable Chris Fordham, aka The Silent Committee, and lovely ladies called Alex: Alex Rex and Alex Ultradish who kept me giggling the whole night...
And last night N and I went to a housewarming for Paul Cornell and his wife, Caroline, where we did have lovely chats with Prof and Catherine, and Jaine Fenn and her husband, David, and Liz Batty and many other fabulous and lovely people.
... and every single person I have mentioned does stuff.
You know what I mean by 'stuff'... I mean, the stuff that makes the world go round. The stuff that inspires other people. The stuff that makes people happy. The stuff that other people can't do, or can't be bothered to do, or just don't realise needs doing. Every man - and woman - jack of these people does this stuff, and they are all brilliant at it. They have got the necessary enthusiasm, practised hard, honed their skills and put joy and love and light into what they do... even if that's just enthusing madly about other people's stuff. If there have to be teams, I want these people on my team... although I really don't want teams. I just want everybody to be happy... and they'll be happy really happy if they just take notice of the stuff that these people do.
For example, they could go here, or read one of these, or get into this. Doing any of these things can only make your life better, and then hopefully that will make you a nicer person and you in turn will be inspired to go create stuff for other people to enjoy and the love will just spread like a cheery meme.
However, there are lots of people out there who are not like my friends. They consume with apathy and, perhaps somewhat obliviously, only succeed in spreading annoyance and misery - to me - meaning I need the balance of the lovely people to right my head and stop me frothing at the mouth.
And you are one of those horrible people - that is, if you were one of the people who only paid £1 to get into the Bardic Picnic fundraising bash on Friday night. The price was £3. £3 to get in, enjoy a select and intimate evening of fantastic music and spoken word (and maybe one musical act had more enthusiasm than talent, but let's wash over that) in order for a FREE festival in YOUR town to go ahead.
Now, I don't know if you realise, but free is not actually free. In order for the Bardic Picnic to go ahead a lot of people have had to give up their time organising it, securing the site, gathering the acts (who will all play for nothing), obtaining the facilities, negotiating with caterers and doing the promotion. If they were Michael Eavis, they'd be putting a profit margin on all that, but they are not. They do need cash as well as enthusiasm, though, hence the fundraising gigs - which you wanted to come to. Fine - that's £3, please. Only none of you had that money on you.
However, because the people organising the gig are nicer than I am, they did not tell you to f-off like they should have. I think they thought along the lines of 'the more the merrier', though as my friend pointed out, what were you going to drink when you got in if you didn't even have £3 on you? After all, the venue has given up a Friday night to this ticketed event on the understanding that they will make a profit from the bar. It's called capitalism.
But you and your friends didn't care about drinking, did you? No. You were already wasted on Ketamine.
Yeah - Ketamine! Special K... and you'd probably had one bowl for breakfast and another for lunch and dropped a few million braincells in a fortnight.
I don't know for sure... it might have been Meow Meow because that makes people talk a lot, which is what you were doing, only you were all bog-eyed, unaware and REALLY ANNOYING, a bit like the idiots who kept me awake at Endorse-it last year by CONSTANTLY FALLING INTO MY TENT and SHOUTING - especially about having taken Ketamine. I mean, people who take coke are renowned for developing Games Show Host personalities, and being utterly selfish (which is why they don't care about being partly responsible for the murder of Pablo the dog), and people who take weed often don't realise they smell like cat's piss. But YOU with your new-fangled horse drugs or whatever - you are something else. Hey, why not try mixing K and Meow Meow by snorting horse manure? It's what I put on my plants and it does have something to with horses after all. Go on, try it, see if you get a buzz off that. Suck up a fly with that and you just might.
So, yeah... it was before I went on stage and did my bit when twenty or so bog-eyed space cadets were let in and proceeded to shout all over the poetry. I mean, it was bad enough for Richard Frost, who had some people talk over his bit because the music had made them think they were allowed to just carry on chatting, but with the addition of these twenty unaware cretins, anyone trying to do a bit of speaking got talked over. Try telling the crowd to shut up mid-poem. It's most off-putting.
I tried speaking louder... but so did the idiots. This kind of made me angry.
When I got off the stage, one of the idiots, a blond girl with her hair in a ponytail (I will think of her as My Little Pony, perhaps) came up to me and slid her hand my arm. Normally, this would imply something nice was going to be said to me, but no. She stared at me with her giant eyes and said, "What was that?" I blinked. She continued,"What were you doing?"
"Sorry?" I said, meaning, "What do you sodding well think I was doing?"
"What was that you were doing? I don't understand."
I gazed into those slightly mis-matched pupils and thought, no, bless,you don't understand anything do you? I could have explained the premise of the whole night to her - the night that she and her friends were now spoiling for everyone - but I thought, no. She's taken some strong drugs. She's liable to still not understand and then she'll just get paranoid. So I decided to tell her instead, "I was doing mass crowd hypnosis. And now you think you're a chicken."
My Little Pony did look a bit worried by this. I probably did convince her she was a chicken.
And last night N and I went to a housewarming for Paul Cornell and his wife, Caroline, where we did have lovely chats with Prof and Catherine, and Jaine Fenn and her husband, David, and Liz Batty and many other fabulous and lovely people.
... and every single person I have mentioned does stuff.
You know what I mean by 'stuff'... I mean, the stuff that makes the world go round. The stuff that inspires other people. The stuff that makes people happy. The stuff that other people can't do, or can't be bothered to do, or just don't realise needs doing. Every man - and woman - jack of these people does this stuff, and they are all brilliant at it. They have got the necessary enthusiasm, practised hard, honed their skills and put joy and love and light into what they do... even if that's just enthusing madly about other people's stuff. If there have to be teams, I want these people on my team... although I really don't want teams. I just want everybody to be happy... and they'll be happy really happy if they just take notice of the stuff that these people do.
For example, they could go here, or read one of these, or get into this. Doing any of these things can only make your life better, and then hopefully that will make you a nicer person and you in turn will be inspired to go create stuff for other people to enjoy and the love will just spread like a cheery meme.
However, there are lots of people out there who are not like my friends. They consume with apathy and, perhaps somewhat obliviously, only succeed in spreading annoyance and misery - to me - meaning I need the balance of the lovely people to right my head and stop me frothing at the mouth.
And you are one of those horrible people - that is, if you were one of the people who only paid £1 to get into the Bardic Picnic fundraising bash on Friday night. The price was £3. £3 to get in, enjoy a select and intimate evening of fantastic music and spoken word (and maybe one musical act had more enthusiasm than talent, but let's wash over that) in order for a FREE festival in YOUR town to go ahead.
Now, I don't know if you realise, but free is not actually free. In order for the Bardic Picnic to go ahead a lot of people have had to give up their time organising it, securing the site, gathering the acts (who will all play for nothing), obtaining the facilities, negotiating with caterers and doing the promotion. If they were Michael Eavis, they'd be putting a profit margin on all that, but they are not. They do need cash as well as enthusiasm, though, hence the fundraising gigs - which you wanted to come to. Fine - that's £3, please. Only none of you had that money on you.
However, because the people organising the gig are nicer than I am, they did not tell you to f-off like they should have. I think they thought along the lines of 'the more the merrier', though as my friend pointed out, what were you going to drink when you got in if you didn't even have £3 on you? After all, the venue has given up a Friday night to this ticketed event on the understanding that they will make a profit from the bar. It's called capitalism.
But you and your friends didn't care about drinking, did you? No. You were already wasted on Ketamine.
Yeah - Ketamine! Special K... and you'd probably had one bowl for breakfast and another for lunch and dropped a few million braincells in a fortnight.
I don't know for sure... it might have been Meow Meow because that makes people talk a lot, which is what you were doing, only you were all bog-eyed, unaware and REALLY ANNOYING, a bit like the idiots who kept me awake at Endorse-it last year by CONSTANTLY FALLING INTO MY TENT and SHOUTING - especially about having taken Ketamine. I mean, people who take coke are renowned for developing Games Show Host personalities, and being utterly selfish (which is why they don't care about being partly responsible for the murder of Pablo the dog), and people who take weed often don't realise they smell like cat's piss. But YOU with your new-fangled horse drugs or whatever - you are something else. Hey, why not try mixing K and Meow Meow by snorting horse manure? It's what I put on my plants and it does have something to with horses after all. Go on, try it, see if you get a buzz off that. Suck up a fly with that and you just might.
So, yeah... it was before I went on stage and did my bit when twenty or so bog-eyed space cadets were let in and proceeded to shout all over the poetry. I mean, it was bad enough for Richard Frost, who had some people talk over his bit because the music had made them think they were allowed to just carry on chatting, but with the addition of these twenty unaware cretins, anyone trying to do a bit of speaking got talked over. Try telling the crowd to shut up mid-poem. It's most off-putting.
I tried speaking louder... but so did the idiots. This kind of made me angry.
When I got off the stage, one of the idiots, a blond girl with her hair in a ponytail (I will think of her as My Little Pony, perhaps) came up to me and slid her hand my arm. Normally, this would imply something nice was going to be said to me, but no. She stared at me with her giant eyes and said, "What was that?" I blinked. She continued,"What were you doing?"
"Sorry?" I said, meaning, "What do you sodding well think I was doing?"
"What was that you were doing? I don't understand."
I gazed into those slightly mis-matched pupils and thought, no, bless,you don't understand anything do you? I could have explained the premise of the whole night to her - the night that she and her friends were now spoiling for everyone - but I thought, no. She's taken some strong drugs. She's liable to still not understand and then she'll just get paranoid. So I decided to tell her instead, "I was doing mass crowd hypnosis. And now you think you're a chicken."
My Little Pony did look a bit worried by this. I probably did convince her she was a chicken.