Friday Fives Feel Faintly Furry
I was out quaffing lagers with a pal last night and once again Friday arrives with that faintly queasy, furry-tongued sensation we all know so well. Blech. Still, nothing a fine meal of fish and a couple of pints at the King’s Wark can’t solve I am pretty sure. I have yet to meet the hangover their fine lunches can’t defeat.
Tonight I am off to act as arm candy for Mrs. Toad at a client dinner with the Dastardly Finance Corp for which she works. Me, my black eye, a scruffy beard and a grudgingly-worn suit – not quite like the braying public school fat-tongues who tend to dominate these sort of events. Maybe if I act arty enough they’ll think I’m some sort of creative genius.
We’ve already had some interesting situations with this sort of thing actually, because a lot of the posh Edinburgh people we’ve met seems to have a very acute awareness of which school one attended and what job one does and therefore which of you needs to kiss the other’s arse. Because Mrs. Toad and I don’t seem all that posh they tend to start out quite optimistic, too. Then they find out we met at school in Vienna, which both worries and confuses them – it sounds posh but they don’t know the school, so they can’t be sure – oooh, what to do?
And then my job confuses them too. They know the company Mrs. Toad works for, and that’s quite legit, so they can kind of peg that one to their ladder, but of course they tend to assume that her wage is probably about two thirds of mine or less because that’s how these things tend to work in the world of finance. So when I tell them that I’m an industrial designer and that I actually make fuck all they get really confused. Am I just lying? Am I a maverick creative guru and just playing it down? Can they actually condescend to us like they sort of want to? Or am I from such a wealthy family that I simply don’t have to work? But what if they misjudge it and act superior to the wrong person? Aaagh, too many options, does not compute… head explodes! It’s quite funny.
Although to be fair, Mrs. Toad’s worky social events aren’t really like that actually; in fact they tend to be pretty friendly, to be fair. I got distracted and started nattering about another occasion entirely just there, sorry. Umm… so er, please do take advantage of the Friday de-lurking amnesty and chip in with your Friday Fives. As Christmas gets closer and closer I would imagine that less and less work is being done in the offices of the nation anyway, so you might as well.
1. Your worst-behaved plus-one moment.
2. The worst plus-one moment your other half has inflicted on you.
3. How do you subversively rebel when asked to scrub up to impress folk?
4. Do you love or loathe your other half’s colleagues? (And are you free to answer that question honestly?)
5. In the company of people you are supposed to behave in front of (colleagues-in-law, the other half’s family, your parents friends etc..) how scooshed do you actually get?
The five songs this week are new things which have found their way into my inbox recently. That’s a new Eels song from a recently announced album, which is good news, and ditto for Stanley Brinks. Tune Yards is someone just signed to Matador, and of whom they have high hopes in the new year. It’s weird, but I like it. Naughtily, I’ve had that Ravens & Chimes song for ages, so their album might actually be out already – if it’s as good as the last one that is very good news.
Eels – Little Bird
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Ravens & Chimes – Hearts of Palm
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Stanley Brinks – End of the World
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The Chord & the Fawn – Love, Sex and Rock ‘n’ Roll
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1. I went to a staff barbecue with an ex once. I’d been out on the lash until about eleven that morning and ended up getting even more pished and inviting her boss’s wife’s best friend and her pal to a threesome. They declined, for some unfathomable reason.
2. Not to me, but Mrs. Toad went to a meal when she was with her previous fella, with lots of boring, middle class lawyers where the lads talk about Binky Stinky and Pinky from school and the ladies discuss shopping and home decor. That not being entirely her bag she ended up getting hammered on red wine, jumping on the table and shouting ‘Come on you boring bastards, lets nail our flaps to the floor!’ She does rock oh so very much.
3. There are some shite ones apparently, but so far they’ve all been pretty good fun. Mrs. Toad does tend to keep me at arms length from them though, presumably so I don’t destroy her career. Which is probably wise.
4. The beard stays, the shirt is never ironed, and the hair is always a mess. It’s just the rules.
5. I get hammered and swear and make inappropriate and offensive remarks. But then, I do that with my friends too.
1. I puked at my ex’s mother’s second wedding. In the bathroom, thank goodness.
2. Hmmm. Probably by pretending to be a normal person, when actually he was an arse. (yes, I refer to the same ex)
3. I don’t really – I’m pretty casual most of the time, so it’s nice to get dressed up every now and then
4. Don’t have a current other half at present
5. Depends on how rough the week has been – I tend not to worry too much – there’s always someone drunker than you!
Yeeeeeeah Tune-Yards! She’s ACE.
1. I got taken to a comedy show at the Fringe on a date and spent most of it throwing up in the Caves loos (it was a midnight show and I’d just spent the evening being reunited with my all my uni friends after 4 months away…)
2. Mainly just not turning up to any such occasions.
3. Never brush the hair. And you won’t catch me anywhere near a tin of shoe polish.
4. They’re pretty nice, but architects so they do have a tendency to talk about nothing but architecture, and architectural jokes, and architectural gossip etc etc. And they don’t interbreed with us mere humans much – many’s the party I have attended where I am a bit of a curiosity as the only non-architect.
5. Hmm depends on the event. I generally think I’m holding it together pretty well at the time, then on later reflection realise that I was probably slurring my words and repeating myself. Nothing radical though.
Lordy I am bored today.
1. Nothing springs to mind. I just tend to get drunker than everyone else.
Best story I heard was when my friend went to a dinner party with his girlfriend. It was all his girlfriend’s mates, so he didn’t really know anyone to talk to. To loosen up the nerves, he decided to ply himself with alcohol. Soon he ended up feeling a bit sick. But, following his weird drunken logic, he didn’t want to be rude by leaving the table, so instead pulled the neck of his t-shirt out and threw up over his tummy, thinking that would hide it. It didn’t. His girlfriend apologised to everyone, and asked him to go and clean himself up.
Five minutes later, he returns having ‘cleaned himself up’ – ie is topless. And sits back down on his seat acting as if nothing has happened. They left shortly after.
2. My girlfriend is perfect, and always on her best behaviour. She’s funny, charming, and friendly. It’s really annoying. Like in Buffalo 66, when Vincent Gallo kidnaps Christina Ricci and takes her home to meet her parents, pretending that she’s his girlfriend, and his parents instantly fawn all over her, and regard him as an abysmal disappointment. Only without the kidnapping, obviously.
3. Individually, I understand the words ’scrub’ and ‘up’, but put them together and you’ve lost me completely.
4. I get on well with most of them.
5. Depends who it is, really. But generally, pretty wrecked.
1. I tend to be the one leading the circle of dirty-joke telling that congregates at the bar at weddings. That’s where you’ll find me; over at the bar, telling dirty jokes.
2. Sitting through Scream 3 at the cinema. SHe paid for the tickets. I just slept.
3. I either make the barest minimal effort to meet the required grade in appearance, or really push the boat out.
4. N/A. Although I do like the sound of your other half’s colleagues, Matthew. When can I come out to play with them?!
5. I try and make sure I’m not the most drunk, until everyone’s so pissed no-one cares, then I try and get the most drunk.
1) Does drunkenly falling across the in laws table at your own wedding count? guess it does
2)just realised how utterly selfish I am, I’ve never done any of the shit plus one gigs. Mrs C did brilliantly ask ‘West of where?’ when some pompous git said he only ate cheese from the west country.
3) Its too late for scrubbing up, they all know me
4) I like the bonkers ones who are easily lead, now that’s subversive.
5)I have a definite oh fuck it level, beyond which anything is possible and many things have transpired.
Mrs C scores big with that one – brilliant.
I’m thinking I might exempt Bart from the Friday Fives in future and just ask him to give us a brilliant anecdote about some looney or other he kind of knows. Bart – the drunken mentalist’s version of the Brothers Grimm.
The best thing about it is, 9 times out of 10, it’s about the same guy.
I hope to fuck he never reads this blog.
Me too because then you’d have to stop. I am
mostly trying not to be caught playing computer games this afternoon.
1. I kicked a toddler in the head whilst being flung round at a wedding ceilidh. The band stopped, and everybody stared, I drunkenly burst into tears and spent the rest of the night in the toilet listening to everyone talk about “that bitch who kicked the child” outside the door. Not good.
2. He has some pretty poor jokes, but generally charms the pants off everyone he meets and makes me look bad.
3. I don’t. I like getting scrubbed up, I don’t get the chance to do it often.
4. I like them a lot, but they’ve all got the serious burgers (their “cute” little nickname for Aspergers). Awww, computer scientists.
5. Conferences is the biggie – I got myself into a very awkward situation with a person who could potentially make or break my career by getting excited about talking about music when drunk. I always do that, and it always gets me into trouble. But the whole thing did end with an astonishing ensemble vocal attempt at a Radiohead song off Kid A, which probably made it all worthwhile.
Try this Matthew, then write off your afternoon…
http://www.gamesgames.com/game/Never-End.html
1. see 2.
2. I haven’t really had to be a plus one at any works dos, archaeologists don’t really go in for that sort of thing, they just go to the pub. And as it’s nigh-on impossible to be the drunkest one there in a roomful of archaeologists (although I’ve had a good stab at it), you’re pretty safe.
And family-plus-one-wise, I will be forever trumped after being a plus one at the most extravagant wedding ever, it was in Spain and they eg were frying quails eggs for you while-you-wait.
3. Being of the female persuasion, and in a job in which dress-down Friday would mean coming in in your pyjamas, I actually quite like scrubbing up. Just as long as I don’t have to do it too often though.
4. On the whole it’s impossible not to love archaeologists, with their furry pints of real ale and terrifying jumpers (or is that the other way round..)
5. Very. There’s something about having to behave that just makes it very difficult to do so. And the sorts of things you have to behave at so very often involve free alcohol, and I’ve spent way too many years of my life as a student not to take advantage, so it’s all bound to go wrong really.
Becky, when embarking on drunken singalongs, Kid A is not really the first album which springs to mind.
Good baby kicking though. A lot of our friends are breeding at the moment and the sooner they realise that the rest of us will just want to kick the little fuckers in the head the better.
1. I’m generally quite well-behaved at plus-one things if you discount the one-too-many-glasses-of-posh-wine occurrences which leaves my chat very polite if slightly slurred.
2. He’s a teacher so dinner with the new headmaster and his really odd wife who doesn’t speak. We were half-pished when we got there (to calm the nerves/soften the dread), sober when we left (how the fuck is one weak-ass G&T supposed to last you a whole evening?) and went straight to the pub for the post-mortem to get absolutely hammered.
3. I very rarely wear any make-up which seems to make some people think I’m a bit odd. Also my dressing up clothes are not that flash so I always look a bit half-arsed. I reckon I probably look a bit more grubby than rebellious on these occasions.
4. I don’t know them all that well to be honest; they all have children and therefore pubbing/gigging is off the agenda and we don’t do ‘dinner parties’. I suspect I’d find them alright in small doses and file under ‘nice enough’. I do bake cakes regularly and send them on to the staffroom (just so I don’t eat them all myself) so I must like them a bit.
5. If I’m always a drink behind the drunkest person there then I reckon I’m doing alright. It is hard to be well-behaved when you feel you ought to be rather than because you want to be, though.
And I thought Becky was such a nice girl..
What on earth gave you that impression?
1. An ex-girlfriend was disappointed when we had to go and sit on another table at a work’s do because I smoked at the time and one of the people got asthma. I rarely go to these events…I’m very bad at hiding how bored I get.
2. Another ex-girlfriend bought me along for drinks before they went out for a meal, whereupon she proceeded to be rude about my family.
3. The hair stays scruffy, the beard stays…and not drinking tends to annoy a lot of people.
4. I am free to answer the question honestly, the lasses who work in the Pharmacy with Mrs. 17 Seconds seem nice, but the bosses sound like dicks. And that’s just the women. I think she would like to strangle several of my ‘colleagues’ whose behaviour has led to me being off for very nearly seven months now…
5. I don’t drink, so the problem is not me being drunk, but being sick with nerves because i don’t have a drink to take the edge off…
I’m breaking the rules to say hong kong is fucking awesome!!!!
Sue me ya wankers!
Love
Tom
As someone who knows better, you should be ashamed of yourself.
I think Radiohead sounded great at the time, but as I can’t even remember which song it was, perhaps it wasn’t that great. Like a seriously inebriated round of Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
Can we make Chutters screen name link back to that drag queen agency again like we did before?
He didn’t like it very much last time.
I can’t even remember which song it was
Well it was from Kid A, I’m hardly surprised.
Any more pish from people who should know better and I’ll make up their five for them.
1) I tend to try and behave. That said I tend to have a few pints to0. I once watched her take part in a team building exercise where they had to build rafts. It was in resort so half way through I went to the beach. When asked about it later by her boss I said “Honestly, you were all so crap at it I just felt you were all just embarrassing yourselves so I pissed off to the beach. I mean, it was a bit pathetic wasn’t it?” He was a bit stunned.
2) The misses showed up to our Gala performance pissed as proverbial, very loudly questioned to the ability of certain senior members of staff to dress themselves, and proceeded to fall asleep and snore though the first act. So I threw her out.
3) Not on purpose but I don’t shave and tend to show up from work in jeans. It is quite a scandal. Much prattling about how great life is in the arts to which I respond: “If you fancy taking a $100,000.00 pay cut I can get you a job in the arts tomorrow. Up for it?.”
4) Most are very decent actually. And the ones that aren’t I stare at blankly when they talk to me.
5) There is no one at work I need to be that sober around except when I am actually working. And I don’t drink when I’m working because it completely buggers up your ears.
“If you fancy taking a $100,000.00 pay cut I can get you a job in the arts tomorrow. Up for it?.”
I love it when other media people purport to envy my freedom to play and write about what I want to when I want to.
It’s simple, if you wanted to receive no wages at all for your work, you too could have such freedom.
Wonderful isn’t it?
When lawyers piss and moan about their work schedule I often reply with a swift “if it was fun they wouldn’t have to pay you so much would they?”
Well my journalist friends, if you want to be paid, then there’s a downside.
1) I decided I was fine to go on a first date with a certain young lady having just moved to London and having spent the last few days in hospital and just being let out that evening on one hell of a concoction of prescription painkillers. Got back to hers – wasn’t pretty – ended up having to take myself home after seeing things and thinking I was doing things that were either a) impossible for any human being or b) definitely not what was on her mind.
2) Any girlfriends have generally been far better people than I, so not too many stories there. Some female “friends” have decided to teach my parents on future sex positions that an older crowd could do and then offered to show them…
3) I actually quite like the odd scrubbing up. I suppose I never am clean shaven (only time in 4 years was for work this in fact, similarly to wearing a suit). Fully dressed up with black tie etc is strangely far more common
4. No other half at the moment, but as a general rule I don’t like people – take that how you like.
5. If I’m genuinely on good behaviour then I try to stay a couple of drinks behind, but once I get over a certain point… There are a few games to play at this point (as long as the other half’s p\rent’s are equally pished) which involve invitations to model or questioning on how to face various porn film scenes. It’s like Trivial Pursuit but regrettable.
Bart, I think I love you.
oooh I beat Adam!
1. Made my own dress, (that wasn’t the awful part… the fact that it fit like a glove was what made it bad), which was rather inappropriate for the political dinner I was arm-candy/guest for. My date was in line for nomination for some high ranking position in the local level party and well… it took him a bit longer after he eventually persuaded them that indeed he had not brought a call girl to the dinner club that night. (I do realize that it seems like I’m intentionally inserting material of a sexual nature into these friday fives, but honestly this happened!)
2. Thanksgiving dinner – Cambridge Massachusetts, enter one working-class, Marxist/Socialist waitress (me) to an entire table of Harvard professors and their wives and college-aged children. Conversation over dinner consists of going around the table and giving a brief recap of each person’s progress so far that year. Astro-physicist, audio-engineer, mathematician, college student majoring in Medieval Chinese poetry, waitress, bio-chemist, you get the picture, I’m sure.
3. Talking usually does it for me.
4. loathe and yes, she’s given up on stopping me by now.
5. Alas, like Ed, those days are gone. Thank fuck for sexual fantasies, they keep my mouth shut for at least an hour.
oooh I beat Adam! Mmmmmmmm
1. Drank just too much and prattled on an awful lot about a lot of onliney stuff that I need absolute deniability on. Ran around denying everything.
2. Friend’s 40th birthday party, she didn’t want to go and made it very clear that she didn’t want to go, she hated it when we were there and stood in the corner and made me stand with her whilst whispering angrily at me, we left after about ten minutes and she wouldn’t stop until I agreed with her that it had been everyone else’s fault as they had been awful.
3. Ear rings
4. I’ve got on with them fine when she’s had them.
5. I used to go around hoovering up the remains in ‘empty’ glasses at the staff christmas party.