Terry....is Vexed

I have a crime to report but I don’t know who to report it to. The police are probably not bothered and Nick Ross has long since hung up his crime(watch) fighting cape. Yet this criminal behaviour is happening now, this very minute, somewhere. When I say somewhere, I mean Facebook.

Technically it isn’t a crime in the strictly legal sense of the word, although come the revolution when my followers rise up and crush the normal state of affairs then things will change. In Hayward’s Britain, alongside new and harsh penalties being dished out to individuals for the offences of noisy children inside pubs after 7pm, slow moving HGVs in the fast lane, and being in any way involved in the production, broadcasting or viewing of ‘Geordie Shore’, I will include a very important social media no-no.

The crime to which I’m referring to is that of ‘friends’ hinting at something in their Facebook status that they never intend to spill the beans on, or at the very least without other ‘friends’ having to go through the long and tedious charade of pretending to give a damn and having to ask them what it is that they are not making explicit and to check that, whatever minor catastrophe has befallen them, it has not left them harmed and/or bereft.

You know the type of thing I’m talking about. You see it all the time. If I were to do it I would put something like ‘Terry is angry’. Well, Terry probably is angry but that’s because he’s just spotted some friend or associate announce that they are ‘pissed off’, or ‘sad’ (accompanied by sad/teary faces).

I guarantee that when I post this blog on Facebook I will find that, within two or three posts either above or below, one of my friends will have unwittingly done this very thing. If it is you then you should hang your head in shame.

Not as annoying but still within the boundaries of criminal behaviour are those that announce they have had a good or bad day/news/trip to the shops, without explaining what it was that made any of these things good or bad.

In essence I’m referring to anything that involves another person having to ask the question “what’s up?”, or worse still “what’s up hun?”. The linguistic abomination that is “hun” should, all by itself, automatically become a criminal offence punishable by public flogging, but that’s a whole other matter.

However, for the main offenders of this heinous act of self-important attention seeking there will be a substantial prison sentence and a lifelong ban from using any kind of communication tools available to you, up to and including talking, sign language, grunting, and whimpering.

We are neither small children nor are we chimpanzees with only rudimentary abilities to indicate we‘d like a banana or that we’ve soiled ourselves. We are all intelligent, literate, right-minded adults who should be choosing to use this glittering social media forum to entertain, educate and inform our friends about the amazing, and wonderful, and terrible things that occur in our lives.

Feeling sad? Tell us why. Help us to empathise. Feeling happy? Share your joy and bonhomie. Nothing to say? Well, for the love of God, if you feel compelled to say something then at the very least try to make it funny.

I have to stress that this kind of behaviour doesn’t happen on Twitter, or at least very rarely, probably due to the overall design of the thing. If you post similar sentiments on Twitter you are likely to be met with a deafening silence which does no good for the soul of the individual seeking love or pity.

In that respect, it is in some ways more impersonal but it forces and encourages wit and imagination, more so than lazily tapping out a few self-regarding and humourless short words to a bunch of friends and family and school friends you haven’t clapped eyes on for 20 years on Facebook.

It’s not that the guilty parties are bad people. They are usually perfectly lovely people in the flesh but put them in front of Facebook and suddenly they are possessed by their inner demons and become immune to the norms of social behaviour. Quite rational individuals feel suddenly compelled to hide behind a status of incomprehensible hints and riddles.

So, as a plea, before my forces march across Westminster Bridge and surround Parliament, I urge you to stop and think before posting. Exercise your brain for a few seconds longer. The rest of us, well, if we spot this behaviour we need to resist the temptation to type out the usual bland and predictable responses and, instead, type the words (in capital letters) CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS.

This simultaneously admonishes your friend for their crime and tells others to steer clear. That way I won’t have to come and burn your house down, so it’s for your own good really.

Friday I'm In Love

Ever since I left school I was certain of one thing; I would never go back for any kind of school reunion. It wasn’t that I had any particular problem with the place or any of my fellow pupils or teachers; I just didn’t see the point in it.

This self-induced attitude had therefore made me suspicious of reunions of any sort. So when, on Facebook, a group started up, loosely based upon a nightclub in Southampton I used to go to around 1993-1994, the first nightclub I regularly went to in fact, I initially viewed it as a mild curiosity. I could glance through my phone to see that there were photos and posts from people whose names and faces were flickering around in the deeper recesses of my memory and I smiled to myself as I remembered these images from another age.

So I remained a casual and fairly impassive observer of these posts for a while, and wasn’t at all tempted when I saw a reunion was being planned. I figured that it was all such a long time ago and besides, no-one will remember me so it’d all be terribly embarrassing.

However what I did have were some photos of my own to contribute. So I spent an afternoon going through boxes and unearthing the flattering and not-so-flattering faded images of friends of yore, and friends of now from back then when they had more hair and less girth (I include myself in that description).

The nightclub I speak of wasn’t actually a nightclub at all. It was just a night in a room above a pub on a Friday called The Attic but it was, to all intents and purposes for us, our very own goth club. The pub below was a gay bar, which was almost a perfect venue as neither party were bothered by the other and it was always pretty clear which part of the establishment you were from when you went to the toilet.

To those who have not dabbled in goth, of which there are many I’m sure, I have to stress that goths are no more scary or weird a group of people than any other. No-one is drinking blood, nobody has the power to turn into a bat and no-one is sacrificing virgins on a stone plinth. Well, not every night.

I agree that the black hair and pale faces have a slightly creepy edge and not one I went for myself, mostly because black hair didn’t suit my ruddy complexion. I experimented one afternoon and it just looked so appalling that I resorted to red and other colours that have now left me with a somewhat auburn hue. Also, applying make-up wasn’t my strong area so I didn’t do it but I’ll tell you something, any man that paints his face in ghostly white make-up, dons a frock coat, a cape and winkle pickers and walks through a city centre on a Friday night has, in my view, absolute balls of steel and I take my hat off to you, past and present.

Goths are just joined together by their common interests in the music and the literature and the…..ahhh, who am I kidding? Yes, maybe that’s the genesis of it and I haven’t done any research on it but, on the whole, there was just something about the boys and girls and men and women who were goths, or who, like me, flirted around the scene, that I quite liked.

It was a small but busy club and after a while you realised you probably knew everyone in the room, and that was a comfortable feeling. When you went to a pub in town you would often witness a fight, but at The Attic on a Friday night there was no such risk. Yes, I wasn’t alone in getting a bit giddy on snakebite and black and accidentally falling down the stairs, or bumping into the DJ area (which was in effect a table suspended down from the ceiling by chains) but no harm was done.

The Attic unwillingly closed its doors at the end of 1994 so we all dispersed elsewhere, but the vibe of the place has clearly stuck with a number of people for many years, myself included, and I suspect we’ve never found anywhere else quite like it.

So time has gone on and more and more people have joined the group on Facebook, added photos and videos (some of which I was in, much to my surprise – I don’t remember anyone having a camera!!), and joined in the many conversations. People who, whilst I hadn’t totally forgotten them, I’d certainly not thought about for a long time. It’s a weird thing but slowly the memories have manifested into the carefree feeling of the time, the camaraderie, the anticipation of a Friday night. Bear in mind, I was young and going out in Southampton still felt relatively new to me back then.

Everyone has their own place they remain fond of but for me The Attic was the first place I danced, drank, laughed, loved and occasionally fell over (damn the heels on those pointy boots I bought in Salisbury). I remember the many nights when we all crowded on the postage stamp sized dance floor and wheeled around backwards to The Sisters of Mercy or Siouxsie and the Banshees. I remember the way we used to change the words to the songs so that the opening of The Marionettes’ song ‘Like Christabel’ was changed from “She keeps her thoughts in a forest dark” to “She keeps her tits in a thermos flask”. Oh how we laughed.

I remember the night the fire brigade turned up because a nearby resident had not been aware of the injudicious use of the smoke machine and believed that the great clouds of smoke billowing out of the upper windows on a warm summer evening to be a full blown inferno. The burly men with the hose were not impressed.

I remember being sat mournfully outside one evening after being dumped by a girl I’d only known for a few weeks when I was approached by a goth called Robbie who imparted me with some sage advice, “It’s probably her time of the month, mate. Get it sorted!”. Even at the tender age of 19 I knew that these were wise words even if I didn’t, on this occasion, get it sorted. It did, however, cheer me up no end.

And of course I will always remember the night that Ned was upended into a large metal wheelie bin and bundled through the door to the backyard of the pub, only to discover there was a drop of several feet on the other side. Oh well, he lived to tell the tale.

So now I find myself in a strange place because all these memories have come racing back to me like an explosion of sight (mostly black), sounds (mostly ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ by The Cult) and smells (mostly patchouli oil and K Cider).

Each day more and more names and faces from my past are going to the reunion and, actually, I would really like to join them. Yes, it’s not the early 1990s anymore, but these people were friends. We’ve all changed of course, all older, some with kids, some in different parts of the country, but all with a shared memory of a little nightclub down Northam Road.

The sad thing is I’m going to miss out on this night of memories. Not for a bad reason of course, I’ve got a date with three mountains, all for a good cause, but when I’m heading from Scafell Pike to Ben Nevis next Friday night, tending to the inevitable blisters from my walking boots, I’ll be remembering when the blisters came from, yes, those damned pointy boots again.

So, if you’re at the King Alfred pub in Southampton that night, spare a thought for me and my aching feet, but above all have a fantastic night and party like it’s, well, 1994 I suppose.

Love You Long Time

It’s not very often that I get emails via Facebook. Usually when I do it’s from friends passing on a new address or mobile phone number or sometimes an invitation to a party, or even to share the odd bit of gossip. It’s rare, in fact completely unknown, to get an email from someone totally random. Today I did, and I was a little surprised.

I received an email from a Chinese lady living in Ghana who was keen to know whether I was looking for love or whether some “lucky lady” had “won my heart”. Rather than wait for an answer she had obviously decided to crack on and state her case, explaining that I “look like a nice person and a man worth getting to know”. She obviously hasn’t been looking at my Facebook photos in too much depth as she would have seen me in various states of inebriation, often wearing a novelty hat on my head, or worse still, a video of me singing “I’ve got a Brand New Combine Harvester” on karaoke after too many cocktails.

Mind you she may be aware of my newly found sporting prowess. The running is going well. I say running, it’s jogging really, I’m not going to be mistaken for Usain Bolt anytime soon. However I can run/jog all the way from my house right up to the new Tesco (via a housing estate). This will mean nothing to most of you but it was only two weeks ago when I could barely get out of sight of the house before collapsing in a sweaty heap on the pavement. Anyone who has seen ‘Run Fatboy Run’ will know exactly what I’m talking about.

I have to say, the present Mrs Hayward is also running and she’s doing well, even if she keeps complaining that her legs hurt. She’s even started a Zumba class. I don’t really know why, we don’t know anyone who speaks Zumba.

Then there’s the swimming. OK, so I haven’t stepped into the murky waters of eternal doom yet but, a week or so later than I promised, I went to Bourne Leisure Centre to enquire about adult swimming lessons. Pleasingly no-one laughed at me either. I met ‘Manager Lee’ who cheerily told me all about how it worked and when lessons started.

Apparently there are two instructors, one who works with the improvers and the other with those who “are petrified of the water”. He gave me a knowing smile as if to say, ‘but of course you’re not one of them’. I pointed out that I was indeed in that camp, in fact the first lesson will most likely involve prising me away from the edge.

He suggested I might like to go along one Thursday evening for a taster session before enrolling for the new term in May. I agreed that this would be an excellent idea, especially as you have to pay for the full course up front. That’s £88 in one hit. That made me splutter and I haven’t even swallowed a mouthful of pool water yet. I guess it’s so that people who don’t like it after the first lesson keep going. Maybe it’s because they drown after a moment of bravado on week three. Who knows?

‘Manager Lee’ said that it was a good group and they often have little social activities outside of the pool environment. Maybe this is some sort of cult or swingers club, either way I’ll keep you informed. I’m not sure what my new future wife from Shanghai will think about it.

Talking of which, her email became a little forward at one point. She explained that we should get to know each other so I could make up my mind about her “and after that is when we can decide where we want to go with this”. To be fair there is no ‘this’ but she’s obviously not shy in coming forward, especially when she went on to explain that she was looking for “a serious relationship or marriage”.

I decided that I probably shouldn’t respond to the future Mrs Hayward without sharing this communication with the present Mrs Hayward. After all she was the one who “won my heart” first and I didn’t really want her to stumble upon this email by accident, wonder what the hell was going on, and decide to nail important parts of my anatomy to the wall. Seriously, if you'd read the email you’d think that the mystery lady and I were acquaintances of old.

As it was she thought the whole thing was bizarre but amusing. We looked through the photos of Miss Shanghai which evoked the comment “she’s quite pretty” from my good lady wife. I suggested that perhaps we could entertain some sort of bigamist relationship but Mrs Hayward doubted I had the stamina for it, and she’s probably right. Not with all the running and swimming and stuff. As for my shin splints….

So, whatever Miss Shanghai is, either real and weirdly desperate or an elaborate ploy to steal personal details off gullible men who believe that an attractive mysterious woman who posts photos of herself in a bikini are really going to be attracted to them despite not knowing a jot about them, she briefly became a talking point this evening.

Who knows, perhaps she’s genuine and just likes a man who enjoys a drink, sings out of tune and occasionally likes to wear a fez? After all, who wouldn’t?