Day 31: A vivid memory (#BEDM).

My Hag Do was one of my best days ever.

Stag + Hen = Hag.

I went to amazing trouble to provide something that was local, cheap, original and fun. Too many stag dos now are really ridiculous: Self-indulgent, expensive, unreasonable and unjustifiably over the top. Bridal couples seem to expect as a matter of course that now, rather than a night out or whatever, you have to go on a short holiday to an expensive foreign country, incurring hotel bills, flight costs without even considering the exorbitant fees for the go-karting, paintballing, food and booze. It’s painful and a little bit selfish.

I wanted none of it.

Hag Day 2008 was a day of fun in Brighton. We met on the beach, in teams of 5-8. I provided each team with a bottle of booze, a disposable camera and a list of 100 challenges. The premise?

Choose 30 challenges and record them on your camera. Easy challenges earn low points, hard challenges earn high points. Combining challenges in a single photograph can win you mega super points.

For example:
Re-enact Riverdance would be low scoring. Too easy...
Remove furniture from a house dressed as a burglar- high points. Much more challenging.
Kicking a cripple, then kidnapping their pet whilst dressed in newspaper clothes... mega points. You could practically win with one photograph if you achieved that.

Dressed as a monarch, stealing a dog.

Of course, no-one had to actually attack a cripple. You just had to get creative and courageous with your photographs, and simulate each challenge in a pleasing way.

But it was genius. I thought of everything... I even put our local, cheap and student-friendly photography development place on high alert for several rounds of bizarre photograph submissions, primed and ready, for the 4pm cut off.

Blagging their way into the doughnut shop.

Then teams got a text with submission instructions- to arrive on the beach at 5pm with their completed photo-assignment, dressed as... BACOFOIL ROBOTS!

Bacofoil robots convene on the beach.

It was the best day ever. Some people lamed out a bit, and some went completely fucking all out!

Then, to top it off, I hired a venue for a party, where we did an awards ceremony and drank and danced the night away. It was frickin’ awesome.

Collecting stamps and performing a 

sacrifice in a newspaper outfit.

I didn’t even get that wasted, because I was concentrating on seamless organisation and orchestration throughout the day. A bit sketchier in the evening, when i was made to drink beer (bleurgh!) and wear a bra (woop!), and do some challenges of my own.

But so the most awesome day ever.  I loved it and I really should organise another someday soon...

breaking into school in the holidays to make rude art.

***************************************

The challenges? I won’t recount them all, but highlights include:

Re-enact the feeding of the 5000
Simulate sex in a public place
Celebrate Christmas (it was May)
Disgust me
Torture a cuddly toy
Be a gimp
Prick up your ears
Kiss a copper
Impersonate a monarch
Steal candy from a baby
Get a job
Sell something
Make doughnuts
Backstreet gambling den
Play a game with a pensioner
Carry more than 1 passenger
Organise a large-scale piggyback derby
Find your sinister evil twin
Food fight with strangers
Steal a pet
Take something back that costs less than 50p
Dress age-inappropriate
Dance off with a stranger
Food fight with a member of the public
Go dogging
Take something back that you’ve blatantly eaten
Dance with a very short man
Create some art
Pay child fare
Start a band
Dine out in fancy dress
Pour water over a stranger
Hold something dangerous
Eat something horrid
Old lady holding inappropriate sign

Day 30: React to this term: Letting Go (#BEDM).

I have no sense of self-preservation at all when it comes to climbing. I’ve always been a climber.... I like climbing. I used to climb trees and walls and things as a child without hesitation. Then I grew out of it for a while. Then I took up climbing a few years ago as an adult, and – unsurprisingly I suppose –took to it straight away.

I went twice a week for a long time, and got pretty good pretty quick. I have tried to continue in that vein, but promotions and work commitments ate into my time and it dropped down to once a week, then once a fortnight. I pretty much keep to that, and still love it. I can do some pretty tricky moves and walls and climbs now- and the occasional thing that I think “Oooh, I must look way cool doing that!”

And I’ve done Go Ape! a couple of times too, with friends for birthdays and things. I love it, and am equally fearless. I didn’t see myself as fearless until this point - only when my friends commented that I have no sense of self-preservation did I notice.

It’s because I completely trust the equipment. Experience is part of it, definitely, but I suffer no concern at all that it’s high up or dangerous or I might fall. I can’t fall- I am tied to the top with string. Other people were in a state of shock when I leapt off of things in a crazy fashion, or ran full-pelt across tiny rope walkways, falling off and screeching along half way across, or when I let go and dangled off the side of a platform, or shouted down to the supervisors “Are we allowed to jump off, no hands?”

Apparently we were.  So I did.

And you know what?  It’s about letting go. If you jump off a few things, low down if need be, you learn that the rope holds you. It will catch you. You can’t fall because you are tied to the wall. But people don’t like to. But then they never learn how safe it is.

Let go. And trust in your equipment.

Let go. Then you learn how safe letting go is.

Day 29: Five songs or pieces of music that speak to you or bring back memories (#BEDM).

5 songs, not necessarily good songs, that take me back to times past. Some of them in fact, are actually quite bad songs...

Dario G – Sunchyme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yal9En46tt4

My 16^th birthday: My friends and I went to Leicester Square in London, to the Capital Café. I’d always been a bit worried that I didn’t really have ‘enough’ friends. I know better now, of course. But around 15/16, not only did I suddenly find myself with a nice circle of close friends growing around me, but I actually started to socialise with them, and go out doing exciting things for the first time. And I remember sitting in the restaurant with my friends, this song was playing, and I thought ‘You know what? I’m going to be alright. Life is good, and I am happy.’

And those best friends I had then?  They’re still my best friends now...

Britney Spears – Oops, I did it again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImIa_5awDFg

University. My favourite club- the illustrious Dynamite Boogaloo. It was an amazing phenomenon that I am happy and glad to have been a part of. It was more than a night out- it was a bit special to the people who went there. And at the peak of my times there, before it moved, evolved, grew, then moved on, we used to do silly dance routines dressed in ridiculous outfits. Everyone did. It was that sort of place.
My favourite memory- a BAD homemade dance routine we drunkenly improvised whilst standing on the stairs queuing for coats, ready to leave as it was crazy-late and we were flagging. But Britney started. That instantly-recognisable first double strike- and we just made up this stupid, crazy, drunken dance there on the stairs.
And then? Everyone started doing it; copying our routine like some glittery workout video. It was the strangest thing, but SO much fun... It reminds me of uni, it reminds me of my best nights out, and it reminds me of everything I loved about Dynamite Boogaloo.

David Essex – A Winter’s tale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL6jptOQ84A

So yeah- when my dad left AGAIN, and my mum started perpetually crying AGAIN, mummy and I had to go and watch my brother in his school’s Christmas carol concert. And they sang this, and it made my mum cry. I think she’d been told that day that it was over, or she’d told us that day it was over, or something. And it was just horrible.
And then for years later, she always skipped it on our Christmas CD, or turned the radio off for that song. She said she couldn’t hear it again as it made her so sad. Which was a shame because I sort of like it in a melancholy way. Maybe because of all that?  I don’t know. And then when I had to sing it in my Christmas concert I think I lied and told her parents weren’t invited, or that all the tickets were gone so she wouldn’t come and have to hear it and feel sad. I told you I started taking care of her around this point, didn’t I...?
She can hear it now. She quite likes it now, which is a bit perverse, but she’s very much moved on and is a different person now.  Still gets me every time though.

Liberty X – Just a Little

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bItgfoBl4wE

For reasons unknown, we spent an ENTIRE YEAR singing this song in our final year of uni. All four of us had it stuck in our heads for the entire year, all through all 3 terms, all the holidays and right through finals. You’d walk down to the kitchen quietly murmuring to yourself:
“Sexyyyyyyyyyyyyy... Everything about you’s so sexyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...”
then as you walked in, you’d find one of the others making dinner, singing:
“Just a little bit moooooooooooooooore.... gimme just a little bit moooooorrrrre!”
At a completely different point in the song.
It was amazing, but so amusing. And that became my uni song, just because it was so impossible to shift. It reminds me of the girls- we were such a happy little group.

KISS – Crazy Nights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSb4tF1X368

I was going to choose Do Your Thang- the best song ever and our first dance at our wedding, but I can bet Simon will choose it too, and I want to avoid being twee.  Crazy Nights was a song I learned of relatively late in life. It was at the last ever Dynamite Boogaloo in fact- the end of an era, and all the amazing hosts, hostesses and DJs were dressed as KISS, doing crazy stunts and games and the usual stuff. And they closed, after years and years of amazing nights, and years and years of attendance from us with this song, and I thought- Fuck- they WERE crazy nights, weren’t they. It was the end of an era, and so sad, but so much fun and such an amazing way to go out. It was like you were part of a special little select gang, and you’d all shared in something wacky that most people didn’t know about and it felt so special. A sad night, but a happy memory...

Day 28: Only pictures... ADVENTURES IN DRESSING UP/DOWN (#BEDM).

ADVENTURES IN DRESSING UP/DOWN

Day 27: A letter to your readers (#BEDM).

Dear Internet

Please stop taking photographs of your cat or dog in the mornings, snuggled up on your bed, with cutesy captions like “someone doesn’t want to get up lol111.”

I could tolerate one or two.  But a daily update of your cat or dog, in the same position and the same place? It looks the same each day. You might as well save yourself time and battery power and just repost the first one over and over again.

And why don’t you? Because you think it’ll be boring. I’ve got news for you, I’m afraid. It is just as boring taking a fresh photograph of your dog in bed with you each morning as it is posting the same photograph of your dog in bed with you again and again. To the casual observer, it really is no different.

I’m really not totally convinced I understand what it is you’re trying to achieve.

Also, you may not realise, but you are not the only one doing this all over twitter and facebook. You are one of 15-20 obsessive dog-photographers taking multiple photographs of your dog from different angles in the same position, in the same place. And you may not realise that we can’t actually tell the difference between your dog in bed with you and the dog someone else posted in bed with them 3 minutes earlier.

Admittedly, I am not an animal lover. I don’t see the cutesy appeal. But it just seems so self-indulgent! Yes, I’m aware that half the internet is people taking ‘selfies’ now, and pictures of their child, or their dinner or their drink. The whole internet is self-indulgent, sure.

But the animal thing? I’m no fan of endless pictures or updates about children, but at least they are actual human beings. They still take precedence over animals on my sliding scale of interest. And food? At least you can vicariously think 'ooh, that looks tasty!' But animals?  In bed with fully-grown, functional adults? Every morning?

So do us all a favour, internet. Limit yourself to one picture of your dog a week.

You might love it to bits, but you probably wouldn’t be interested if I distributed a daily photograph of my verruca via social media each morning, would you?

I feel much the same about pictures of you in bed with your dog.

  

Day 26: Something you read online (#BEDM).

I could read www.cracked.com all day.

Sometimes I get lost for hours, trailing one article to the next to the next.

I realise it might not be the most reliable source, the provenance being a little questionable, but there’s something about the tone of it that I generally trust – maybe because it’s one of those ‘you’ll never believe this is true!’ sites, full of misconceptions that turn conventional wisdom on its head.

Also, some genuinely are true, as they happen to be things I know are misconceptions from reading related material with less dubious attribution. This makes me think that some of the ones I cannot verify myself must be similarly true.

This one, however, blew my mind.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18948_5-real-deleted-bible-scenes-in-which-jesus-kicks-some-ass.html

Deleted gospels telling of the early life of Jesus, you say?
With super powers and explosions, you say?
And... Dragons?

Can it actually be true? That unselected gospels featured such mega-amazing super power drama? It might explain why they weren’t selected, I suppose. Too implausible even for the Bible?! 

That’s seriously implausible.

It makes great reading however – even if it’s not entirely accurate.

And it reminds you how totally ridiculous religious beliefs are in general.

And it makes Jesus seem like a total dick!

And if any bright spark out there can provide more substantive attribution for these lost gospels, I would love to hear it.

“Dragons. Pah – how ridiculous! Angels however- that’s obviously true. No question.”

Day 25: Something someone told you about yourself that you’ll never forget (#BEDM).

You may have picked up by now that I am not a deeply spiritual person.

I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t believe in the baby Jesus, I don’t Believe In Life After Love.

But at a particular club night that I particularly enjoy on a particularly regular basis, they sometimes have an enormous-breasted hostess and entertainer, who occasionally likes to read fortunes.

So I went for it.

I thought it would be ironic and amusing and comedic and... well, silly. For this is the tone of the particular club night in question.

AND OH MY GOD, SHE TOOK IT SO SERIOUSLY.

So I took it seriously, and whilst it wasn’t a deeply spiritual experience, and was more akin to life-coaching than anything else, it did stay with me. Like an expert therapist she had my measure in short order, and broke through my not insubstantial mental defences and my protective shell of irony to cut through to my soft, marshmallowy middle.

We started off like this:

And we ended up like this:

And her advice?

STOP OVER THINKING EVERYTHING.

STOP TRYING TO CONTROL EVERYTHING.

IF YOU CAN'T JUST ACCEPT THAT CERTAIN THINGS JUST HAPPEN

THEN YOU'LL NEVER BE HAPPY.

Whoa!!! Stop right there.

This echoes my Simon Amstell/Acceptance epiphany I’d had a few weeks prior, but was more scary because she said it RIGHT TO MY FACE, and KNEW that was where my brain was at. If you’d asked me the source of all my worry and anxiety, and why I was so frustrated with work, it would have been THIS. And it took her about 4 minutes to coil her tentacles around my cerebellum and play her beautiful music into my frontal cortex. She was so right...

So heed these words, gentle reader: Beware of busty ladies reading fortunes. Their keen insight may not be mystical in nature, but they have GOT. YOUR. NUMBER.