Читать книгу Not Ready to Adult Yet: A Totally Ill-informed Guide to Life - Iain Stirling - Страница 11

CHAPTER 2

SCHOOLED

‘The Best Days of Your Life …’

School years, love them or hate them, one thing is for sure: they will leave an indelible mark on your psyche that takes a fair bit to shift. Doesn’t matter if it’s the jock that never quite grew up and accepted that after school no one gives a flying fuck about you having captained the football team that got to the semi-finals of the Scottish schools cup or that once you got to second base with the prom queen. Or the poor bastard that spent his life getting picked on by cowards who were just glad it wasn’t them receiving twice-daily beatings and now spends his days locked in his room playing video games. Now I’m neither of those two extreme cases, but if I had to sit myself somewhere on that spectrum I would much rather be spending my evening chatting over my Turtle Beach headset while playing Fortnite online with my gamer friends than with ‘Jimbo’ and ‘the lads from his golf club’. You know the type, those guys that seem to punctuate every sentence with ‘WHAYs!’ and ‘OI OIs!’ Now, although the guttural screams are relatively difficult to portray using the written word, I’m sure you can remember a time you’ve heard those alpha tones fill your local town centre like a group of Burberry-clad wolves howling into the midnight sky. I remember once hearing a guy in baggy black jeans and an Alexisonfire T-shirt describe them as ‘a load of coked-up Teletubbies’. I liked that. I liked that a lot.

It’s not that the alpha-male night out can’t have moments of genuine hilarity. These lads can get it spot on – on occasion. I was once out in Glasgow after a gig. I love gigging in Glasgow; Glaswegians are the perfect mix of attentive and mental. That’s what you want from an audience. People often, and mistakenly, think a good audience is one that gets involved and keeps the comedian on their toes. Every interview I’ve ever done has always had the dreaded question, ‘What’s the best heckle you’ve ever received?’ The truth being that there isn’t one. No heckle is ever good. Normally it’s just some drunk twat screaming incoherently because the town they were born in or a football team they vaguely recognise was mentioned. You want an audience that’ll sit there and just get into it, and let the comic get on with their job. But if the comic does ask a member of the audience a question then we want something we can work with. And if you want a mad answer then Glasgow is the place for you.

Anyway, I was in this pub in Glasgow, in the toilets if you really want me to hit you with specifics in front of the urinal, reading a poster I’m sure must have been about van hire or Viagra. By the way, any girls reading this who haven’t experienced the joys of the gents’ toilets, they are often covered in posters advertising things men can’t do after a few pints, namely drive or get an erection. To be fair to the Viagra marketing team, it is excellent targeting. What better place to reach out to people who have penises and inadequate sex lives than the gents’ toilet of a Wetherspoons?

On this occasion I was distracted from looking at the picture of a man with a hat balancing on his shaft, as well as the great deals I could get on a Fiat Fiorino, by something amazing behind me at the sink. A man was tipping his head right back, almost like he was trying to limbo underneath the taps. My first reaction was obviously this man is off his face on drugs. I mean literally off his face. It looked like he was trying to scratch his own eyes out. Now we’ve all been there in the past: gone to a pub, got too drunk, retired to the bathroom, caught your own reflection in the pub mirror and had to have a quiet word with yourself. ‘What are you doing with your life, mate? You’re hammered in a Wetherspoons on a Tuesday!’

But this guy must have been so aghast with what he had seen in the mirror that he was starting to claw at his own head. In order to get a better look I finished up, noted down the number of what seemed like a really good Fiat dealership and moved towards the sink – the whole time trying to catch a glimpse of what my battered friend was actually doing. After a few seconds I could see that he was trying to get his contact lenses in. Now, I’ve only used contact lenses a few times, but in my limited experience the two most important factors are having a steady hand and a sterile environment. I didn’t think the best time to insert tiny shards of glass into your eyes would be when you’re absolutely hammered in a public toilet in Glasgow. But, fair play to this lad, he absolutely smashed it. He popped them straight in. It was actually really impressive to watch, like when someone throws rubbish in a bin, first time, from distance, or when someone recites the entire Fresh Prince of Bel-Air rap perfectly, including that weird third verse that no one’s ever heard before. A man that could barely stand managed to insert tiny little windows over his retinas – fair play, lad.

The only issue now was that I had become totally transfixed by the guy – I could no longer take my eyes off the dude. Do you know that horrible moment when you’re staring at someone but have no real knowledge that you’re doing it? They then catch your eye, and you can try to look away but the damage is already done. The only thing worse is when you try to get a photo of someone on the sly on public transport. Nothing malicious, they just look like a friend, have a classic retro football shirt on or have a really cool moustache. You just want a little photo to stick in a WhatsApp group. But as you go to take the snap, when it’s too late to turn back you realise the flash is on. There is no getting out of that very public clusterfuck, even if you say to the guy in question: ‘Sorry, mate, I just really like your moustache.’