Shame Week Bonus :: What’s the Stupidest Thing You’ve Ever Done?

A few years ago, I had a television in my sleeping quarters. I don't recommend it. I watched a lot of films at night. And missed a lot of days. Anyhow, one day, prompted by the sudden smell of burning tuna omelette coming from the kitchen, I bolted from my bedroom in a blind and stupid panic, and in my careless passage from one room to the other, my foot got entangled in the cable. Rather than bring the TV crashing down from the bedside table on which it sat however, the cable merely snapped where it met the plug – a clean break, leaving the naked plug sitting in the socket, a tiny stump of broken wire and plastic jutting from its anus.

Returning from my culinary disaster with screwdriver in hand, I set about reconnecting the plug to the cable. Generally, when it comes to wiring plugs, I’m a bit of a klutz and I invariably make some kind of elementary mistake, connecting the earth to the neutral or the neutral to the live, or not quite managing to make everything connect, and generally I have to rewire it. Especially when there are three wires as opposed to just two. Three, frankly, is two too many. So this time I thought I’d check I’d done it right before screwing the whole thing back together again.

So, without reattaching the plastic cover, I pushed the plug into the wall with the palm of my left hand.

What a strange, surprising sensation!

I wasn’t exactly thrown across the room, but the instinctive recoil when the electricity zunked into my hand was considerable enough for me to move a couple of feet.

I tingled.

I guess I could have died.

But I didn’t. And shall I tell you why?

Quite simply, because God hasn’t finished with me yet.

Nah, just kidding. It’s dumb luck. I could easily have died. People have died for a lot less.

I am an idiot.

...

So. What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? Leave your most moronic moments in the comments and sit back in shame as the internet shakes its head and despairs.

Thanks.

Shame Week #5 :: What’s the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done On a Date?

I have a confession to make. Actually, a number of confessions. I’m not actually ashamed of killing a mouse with a table tennis bat. Neither am I ashamed of vomiting in Marie’s duffle hood and hair. Nor pretending I had a girlfriend or stealing an illustrated bible. If I’m honest, I’m actually rather (now not so secretly) proud of all of those things. I think they show character. A bit of spunk. I am however, ashamed of this next thing. Heartily so. I’m also a little apprehensive about telling it. That’s why I left it till last. I think you’ll be rather disappointed in me. I’m certainly disappointed in myself.

...

Grace was a friend of Avril, the first woman I ever got intimate with. Apparently I‘d met her before our date, once, but I was having trouble remembering. Avril was on the phone, reminding me.

‘Tall girl with red hair,’ she said. ‘Very striking.’

‘Did I like her?’ I asked, although frankly, if I had to ask, the chances are I probably didn’t.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Avril. ‘She liked you though. That should be enough, surely.’

Avril was matchmaking.

‘Just go out for a drink with her,’ she urged. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’

‘I dunno,’ I replied. ‘Murder?’

‘Oh, she’s not going to murder you, Stan. For fuck’s sake. It’ll just be a drink. It’s no big deal. Go on. I bet you’re desperate. I bet you haven’t had sex since the last time we did it, have you?’

‘You’d be surprised,’ I said. I don’t know whether it was because I’d paused slightly too long or just because Avril knew me quite well.

‘I’d be amazed,’ she said, and she laughed her golden, throaty laugh.

…

Digression

There are certain things in this life which I really, really hate. For example, I hate being judged by the way that I look.

I hate it when people dismiss me because of how I look, carelessly overlooking any other qualities I might have.

I hate shallow people.

I hate rude people.

I hate cowards.

And I hate hypocrites.

…

Grace was sorry she was late. I told her it didn’t matter. And it didn’t. It was only five minutes after all. However, what did matter, apparently, was how she looked.

Avril had described her as tall with red hair. This was a little inaccurate. Actually it wasn’t exactly inaccurate. It was just misleading. She was tall, yes. But she was also wide. Very wide. She did have red hair too, roughly. It would have been slightly more accurate however, to describe it as copper-coloured, and insanely frizzy. She was certainly striking though. She reminded me of an enormous mid-op transsexual with a terrifying, bright ginger afro.

The fact is, from the moment she sat down opposite me, I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell of our date working out.

The fact is, I didn’t fancy her. At all.

The fact is, I thought she was hideously ugly.

I know. Me. With my reputation.

If she had felt the same about me, everything would have been a piece of cake. But she didn’t. It would also have been easier if we hadn’t got on at all, if we’d had absolutely nothing in common. But unfortunately this wasn't the case either. On the contrary, we got on fine. She was intelligent. She read books. She was doing an MA on something to do with Jane Austen. She liked cats. The one thing that might mitigate my overriding desire to flee from her presence was that she seemed, how can I put this, slightly psychologically delicate.

First up, she was a bit full on. I swear it’s not just that I have Groucho Marx syndrome and I’m appalled by anyone offering me membership to their club, but I do feel slightly uncomfortable in the face of unremitting compliments. Grace seemed to think I was wonderful, and after 30 minutes of conversation, she was already plotting our life together.

‘People like us need to stick together,’ she said at one stage.

‘People like us?’ I queried. ‘What are we like?’

‘Well, you know. You’re no George Clooney,’ she said. ‘And I’m no Catherine Zeta Jones.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said. ‘I suppose not.’

‘I want to have kids,’ she said.

If I’d been drinking at that point, I might very well have showered her in Guinness foam. But I wasn’t. In fact, I’d finished my first pint. I ignored her rather previous revelation and asked her if she’d like another drink.

‘No, I’ll get these,’ she said. ‘Same again?’ And she made her way to the bar.

I had to get out of there. I decided to tell her when she came back from the bar. It wasn’t going to work out. I’d tell her so. It'd be fine.

‘What are you doing next Friday?’ she said, placing another Guinness in front of me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, my expression surely betraying me. ‘Why do you ask?’

…

Digression

I realise this might seem rather like Ian Huntley wagging a disapproving finger at Ian Brady, but Grace really was horribly overweight. I feel rotten saying that, I really do, but I believe I can justify it to a certain extent. I am and always have been repulsed by my own body fat. I stand in front of the mirror clutching at my buttocks and scowling, grabbing my belly and slapping my moobs and spitting vile rebukes at myself. So if I’m repulsed by my own fat, surely I’ve every right to be repulsed by other people’s?

…

‘I’m having a few people for dinner on Saturday.’ That’s how she phrased it. In such a way that even if she hadn't been as large as she was, it would automatically have occurred to anyone with a sense of humour to make some kind of joke about cannibalism. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something about admiring a woman with a healthy appetite. I thought I was being rather witty but Grace did not. Her face immediately crumpled.

‘Why do you want to hurt me?’ she said.

I was mortified. I knew it was an odd reaction to a fairly inoffensive comment, but still, I reacted. ‘I don’t!’ I cried. ‘Honestly, that’s the last thing I want.’

She smiled a small smile. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So you’ll come?’

I started shaking my head. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I should.’ I forced myself to speak the next sentence, sure that it would bring about an end to the evening. ‘I’m not sure this is going to work out,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

Yeah. That would do it.

‘Don’t you like me?’ she said, all plaintive and furrowed. ‘I thought we were getting on.’

‘We are!’ I protested, slightly too much. ‘We’re getting on great.’

‘Phew!’ she said. ‘That’s a relief. God. I thought for a second you were going to say you didn’t want to see me again.’

‘Oh…’

I was incapable of finishing my sentence.

She was nodding at me, smiling. ‘I really like you,’ she said. I smiled back. It was Marwood’s smile in Withnail and I when he has no idea how to cope with Uncle Monty’s advances.



‘I’ve just got to pop to the loo,’ she said. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

‘I won’t,’ I said.

As soon as she was gone, I took a pen from my pocket and searched around frantically for a piece of paper. Finding none I picked up a beermat and scribbled on it. ‘Sorry. Had to go.’ I placed the beermat next to her drink and I walked swiftly and decisively out of the pub. I didn’t look back.

Her bag and coat were left untended on her chair. I took the risk that no one would steal them.

All the way home, I imagined her reaction on returning from the toilet. She’d see that I was not sitting at the table. She’d look to the bar, around the rest of the pub. She’d sit down and wait. Eventually she’d see the beermat. She'd read the note.

I couldn’t believe what I’d done. But I’d definitely done it.

The next morning I got a call from an incredibly pissed off Avril. Grace had just left her house. ‘She was crying her eyes out all night,’ she said. ‘What the fuck do you think you were playing at?’

I had no excuse. It was cowardly. And it was incredibly mean. And I should have known better. I did know better. I knew much better.

Avril swore a lot, and when I wouldn’t assure her that I’d do everything I could to make it up to Grace, she hung up on me.

We haven’t spoken since.

...

I enjoyed writing this week’s other posts because, as I said earlier, I wasn't really ashamed of any of the things described in them. However, I didn’t enjoy writing this one.

This is probably the one I needed to write.

…

I’m sorry if I’ve gone down in your estimations. I’m sorry for going down in my own. If you can bring yourself to, please leave your worst date behaviour in the comments.

Feedback Friday is away. It’s not speaking to me.

Have a good weekend.

Shame Week #4 :: What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever killed?

We were playing table tennis, at which – incidentally – I excel. It wasn’t proper table tennis however. It was kitchen table tennis, with the flaps up, crappy bats, ugly nylon netting and heavy, practically flightless balls. There was Keith, me and Keith’s girlfriend at the time, Emily, an overly earnest girl with a slight lisp. I’m not entirely sure why but Emily always reminded me of a slightly itchy cardigan.

This was years ago.

We were in the living room of our old place in Dartford. It was winner stays on and frankly, I’d been on for some considerable time, when suddenly, a plump grey mouse darted out from beneath the sofa on which Emily sat patiently rolling a jazz cigarette.

I don’t know where the mouse came from and I don’t know where it imagined it was going. I only know it didn’t get there.

It was remarkable. Remarking on it later, Keith said that he’d never seen me move so fast. I was a mouse-seeking missile, across the threadbare living room carpet in less than a second, my arm swinging into action as if I were swatting a fly, the cheap bat cracking the mouse’s skull like a spoon breaking the crown of a hard-boiled egg. Covered in fur. There was no blood. Just instant death.



A moment of silence followed, quickly replaced by Keith’s and then my own uproarious laughter.

Emily however, was less amused. ‘I can’t believe you just did that,’ she said.

‘I’m not sure I can believe it either,’ I said. ‘I was like a man possessed, wasn’t I?’ I was smiling, clearly pleased with myself.

Emily wasn't smiling.

‘Yeah, but it was vermin,’ said Keith. ‘It was liable to eat us out of house and home if you hadn’t stopped it in its tracks.’

Emily was shaking her head. ‘It had just as much right to life as you or I,’ she pointed out.

‘I guess,’ said Keith. ‘Still. It’s dead now. Your serve, Stan.’

…

Looking back on the kill as I lay in bed later that night, I decided that that was pretty much how I would like to go out. Like a popped light bulb. Like a slapped mosquito. Like an unwary mouse under a ping pong bat. No blood. No pain. No lingering illness. No slow decay.

Since then however, I’ve changed my mind. I’d now like to take life in any form at all for as long as I possibly can. (Cerebral liquefaction permitting.) One day I’m pretty sure I shall tell you what changed my mind.

In the meantime, RIP, my little mouse.

…

And you? What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever killed? Confess in the comments, please...

Your secret is safe with me.

Shame Week #3 :: What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever stolen?

When I was 13 years old I made friends with Raymond Moulding, one of my comprehensive school’s lower-echelon bad boys. Ray for short. And he was short.

Ray lived in the next street from me and used to enjoy picking on me every few months or so while we were growing up, just to keep his hand in. Then one day I lost my temper, grabbed him by the throat and pushed him up against a brick wall.

The reason I lost my temper – if I may be allowed to digress for a moment – was because Ray had discovered a repugnant and to his mind hilarious new trick with which to torment me. This consisted of him holding his hand against his bottom, passing wind into his hand and then thrusting said hand into my unsuspecting face whilst spitting the words ‘’Ave a fart’ at me.

We were sitting on a wooden bench along one wall of the giant sports hall at school. A game of indoor cricket was in progress and we were waiting for our turn to bat. So naturally I was already fairly depressed. Imagine by what degree my mood worsened when with the words, ‘’Ave a fart’, I found Ray Moulding’s foetid hand pushing itself into my face.

I don’t actually remember if there was any malodour to speak of, but I was certainly repulsed by the concept, and just the very idea of having this ghastly bastard’s sweaty little mitt in my face. I was disgusted. No doubt this showed on my face, causing Ray to dissolve in a small burst of rancid giggling. My disgust mounted. I really didn’t want him to do it again.

He did it again.

Up went the hand. Out came the same line. ‘’Ave a fart.’ (It repulses me just to have to write it.) On came the giggles.

To my left was Alan Dowell, a school non-entity like myself. When Ray had recovered from the desperate amusement he was causing himself, he said, presumably to himself, or perhaps to the devils in his head, ‘He’s dying to laugh’ – meaning Dowell – ‘and he’s dying to cry’ – meaning me. And what made that such an unforgivable thing to say is that he was absolutely right. There were tears pricking at the backs of my eyes. I swore at him. He repeated my curse back at me in a mocking voice even more childish than my own.

Then, maybe thirty seconds later, he did it again. That time, something in me snapped and seconds later I found myself pinning him to the wall, my right fist raised behind my head, ready to smash his stupid, flinching and suddenly quite frightened little face to a miserable pulp. But I didn’t throw the punch. I didn’t have it in me.

Whether it was the fact that I’d finally retaliated, or the fact that I’d shown some sense of restraint or control or whatever he imagined I was showing, I never discovered, but something in that moment made Ray decide that we would be friends. Not great friends, not by a long chalk, and not lifelong friends, but friends nonetheless. And the part of me that was desperate for any kind of friendship didn’t object.

For the most part, Ray’s and my friendship consisted of us playing darts in his bedroom. But also, and finally getting round to the point, it also consisted of going into the town centre, and nicking stuff from shops. Ray had been taught how to nick stuff by his older brother, Nick. Ray in turn passed on the arcane knowledge to me.

‘Pick up two things,’ he said. ‘Put one back.’

I lost my virginity in a local department store which at the time had a small U-shaped sweet section which was a shoplifter’s paradise. You’d walk in at one end, shuffle down the narrow aisle filling your pockets with all kind of goodies, then when you’d turned left twice, you’d reach the day-dreaming checkout girl and pay for a single packet of Polos. Then you’d sashay out into the street trying not to drop anything, take the first left into the nearest backstreet and stockpile your booty. I still remember vividly the feeling of joy when, after one particularly audacious haul, I slid a monstrously large Toblerone out of my sleeve and pulled a Terry’s Jelly Lemon out of the front of my underpants.

So that’s how it started. At first it was me and Ray nicking sweets. But I got a taste for it, so I started to branch out on my own.

After sweets came stationery. I’ve always absolutely adored stationery. Before I started nicking it, I used to just look at it in WHSmith and occasionally treat myself to a pen. When I started nicking I had no need to show such restraint. And what I was surprised to discover was that stationery nicked was twice as sweet as stationery bought.

It was also during this period that I discovered the full extent of how invisible I was. I was just the cowering, self-conscious ugly kid. I wasn’t particularly threatening. I clearly wasn’t going to cause any violence or anything horribly untoward. I was merely an unfortunate retinal sensation which was best, and quite easily, avoided. People either averted their eyes or simply looked through me. And I found I could get away with quite a lot.

From stationery I graduated to pocket-sized toys and games - Top Trumps were especially easy - and from there it was a simple and natural progression to books. Mostly I stole paperbacks I had absolutely no interest in reading. It was odd. Indeed, by the end of my petty criminal career, I was prone to increasingly inexplicable crimes. Anything that caught my eye would find its way up my sleeve or jumper, into my pockets or pants. A wind-up Woodstock. Juggling balls. Novelty pens. Horror novels. I was a regular little magpie, and I became convinced that I had something of a talent for it. Consequently, it became a habit.

Then one day, after having stolen an autograph book from the very same department store where the whole thing had kicked off around eight months earlier, I was sashaying down the street outside of the store, as per my MO, when I heard footsteps behind me. ‘Wouldn’t it be funny,’ I thought to myself, ‘if I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder.’ Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I stopped and turned to face a tall blonde man who was already reaching into my inside pocket and pulling out the autograph book I’d just taken from his employers’ shop. He then slid one hand under my arm and led me back into the shop. I believe he may have used the words, ‘What have we here?’ and ‘I think you’d better come with me’, but equally, I may just have heard them on the telly.

What I have no doubt about however, is that I said, in a tiny, suddenly petrified voice, ‘What will happen?’ and he repeated it back to me, not mocking me, just echoing, stalling, playing for time. It wasn't his job to converse.

I couldn’t believe it was happening. Other shoppers stared.

I was led into a small back room where a middle-aged woman sat at a table with a phone and some papers in an untidy pile. The store detective sat me down at the table, handed over the evidence to the middle-aged woman and left us to it.

She took down my details. My name, my address, my telephone number. She told me she would have to call the police. As I offered to pay for the autograph book, I started snivelling. Couldn't stop. ‘You should have thought of that before,’ she said. I offered to pay double. She said that wouldn't be possible.

She asked me if I’d ever stolen anything before. I said I hadn’t. She asked me if anyone had ever stolen anything from me. I said that they had. She asked me how that felt. I told her it felt awful, but I was just going through the motions, telling her what I knew she wanted to hear, all the while willing her not to call the police.

‘It’s not nice, is it?’ she repeated.

I shook my head, staring down at the floor.

‘So why did you do it?’

I told her that schoolfriends had pressured me into it. She nodded. She understood. She'd seen it a thousand times.

‘Alright then,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to call the police this time, as this is your first offence.’ I managed not to put my hands in the air and start cheering. I continued looking at the floor. ‘But I am going to telephone your parents.’

‘OK,’ I mumbled.

Score!

My dad answered the phone. It was a short exchange during which I ascertained that he was being his usual scintillating conversationalist.

‘You can go home now,’ I was told. ‘And don’t do it again.’

'I won't,' I said. 'I promise.'

On my way home, I wondered what kind of reception I would get. In the end it was exactly what I feared most: almost total disinterest. ‘Oh, here he is,’ said my mum when I walked through the front door. ‘McVicar.’

My mum was an idiot.

Then she said, ‘What did you get caught for, softarse?’ I didn’t say anything. I shrugged and went up to my room. Thinking about it now though, it was probably something to do with a craving for attention.

Now we come to the answer to the question. The biggest thing I ever stole was not that autograph book. No. The biggest thing I ever stole I stole probably half an hour before that from a different shop, a book shop. The biggest thing I ever stole – probably both in terms of size and value – was a beautiful, sumptuously illustrated, leatherbound bible.

I was a funny boy.

Over the years, as my faith shrivelled away to nothing at all and eventually turned in on itself, becoming a rather violent anti-faith, I came across the stolen bible on a number of occasions. Each time I had a powerful urge to tear it up and throw it away. Partly out of anger, partly out of guilt, partly just out of some weird religious hangover shame thing. But I never did. Not because it was The Bible. But because it was a Book.

That evening, I sat on my bed and took the bible out of my school bag. I flicked through it, found the Ten Commandments, rummaged in my booty drawer and dug out a highlighter pen and a shatterproof ruler I’d previously liberated from Woolies. I found the commandment I was after - Thou shalt not steal - and using the ruler and the very tip of the nib of the yellow highlighter pen, I painted it yellow and stared at it.

And I never, ever stole again.

Much.

Here endeth the lesson.

Amen.

…

And you? What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever stolen? Spill your shameful beans in the comments...

Thanks.

Shame Week #2 :: What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told?

This is tough. Not because I’m some paragon of honesty or anything like that. Although I am. I think it’s probably more my lack of real relationship experience which exempts me from most of the easiest of life’s big lies. For example, I’ve never been unfaithful to anyone. I’ve never said ‘I love you’ and not meant it. I’ve never said, ‘No, your bum looks absolutely fine in that’ when in reality it looks like a pair of colliding planets, not just in that but in anything.

Of course there are the dreary, petty lies that I used to tell at school when I realised that being late was nothing to be scared of; the stuff that was taken from real life but chronologically displaced. Like I had to wait in for the builders. Like I didn’t get to sleep till dawn because my parents were up all night fighting. Like my dad ate my alarm clock. But nothing remarkable. Nothing audacious. Not even a dead grandmother.

Oh, hold on.

I have it.

I was in year ten or eleven, so 14 or 15, I don’t remember which but I think the former. I was still being bullied fairly regularly, but my school life had settled down quite a bit and I had a few friends. Most of the friends I had however, and most of the friends I didn’t, were all growing up much faster than me. They had girlfriends for a start, and they had house parties. And every weekend they went to one another’s house parties and they drank vodka and they smoked dope and they danced to 2 Unlimited and felt each other up. Meanwhile I stayed at home listening to Leonard Cohen and writing poems about not having the courage to even contemplate suicide. At least not seriously. I did a lot of weeping.

It was also around that time that I started to fantasise about having a girlfriend. I really wanted one, you see. I mean, I really, really wanted one. So much so that I used to pretend that I had one. In fact, I used to pretend that it was children’s telly presenter Philippa Forrester. I used to imagine her lying on my bed as I lifted the dumbbells I’d made out of a broken broom handle and some old motor oil canisters filled with soil. I’d talk to her as she gazed up at me in awe. I’d laugh at her jokes and when she told me to put down my dumbbells and come and make love to her, I’d come over all shy. Then I’d gently lower myself onto the sad pillow of her body and I’d kiss it until I fell asleep covered in semen.

I was a sad case for sure, but I’m sure I wasn’t alone. Was I? Of course not.

Then, one day – God only knows what possessed me – I decided to take Philippa out into the real world. She’d have to change her name however. My school friends might not have been the brightest bulbs in the firmament, but even they might have had their suspicions if I’d claimed to have been going out with Philippa Forrester. So Philippa became Emma. My real life girlfriend. Only I didn’t want to have to tell people about Emma; I wanted them to discover her for themselves.

So what I did – and you’re only the second person I’ve ever told this to – what I did was to take hold of something like a square inch of my neck flesh with my thumb and forefinger of my right hand, and squeeze and twist it for all I was worth. It hurt. But no pain, no gain. That’s what they say. So I did it again. And again. And I carried on doing it until there was a mark on my neck, which in the right light, and to a gullible eye, could very easily appear as a passable, genuine love bite.

The next day at school I wore my Spurs scarf (I used to be into that sort of thing I’m afraid) and I affected a slightly self-conscious air, occasionally craning my neck to follow an imaginary crane fly in the hope that someone would notice my mark and jump to the desired conclusion.

‘Oi, Elbows!’ It was Neville Waterworth, low-key tormentor. ‘What the fuck are you wearing a scarf for? It’s the middle of summer.’ I shrugged, blushed, ignored. ‘Fucking ponce,’ he said, more or less good-naturedly. And that was that.

It wasn’t until the beginning of Physics just before lunch, when my neck crept out of my scarf sufficiently for Judith Taylor to notice and remark, ‘Elbows? Have you got a dirty neck?’

The story I concocted was that I’d met Emma one day on the bus to Sidcup. And why not? Well, I’ll tell you why not – because apparently it was utterly ridiculous. I had one particularly vocal unbeliever: Gus Hindmarsh. He gave me the third degree at lunchtime, cornered me in the corridor and wouldn’t let me go, him and a bunch of others from our registration class. Gus led the interrogation:

Gus: So what was the first thing she said to you?

Me: She just said hello. And she asked me if she could sit down next to me…

Gus: What’s her second name?

Me: Pissington-Bladderfuck. [I can’t really remember what I said, but whatever it was, it was repeated back to me by half a dozen incredulous voices as if it were every bit as unlikely as Pissington-Bladderfuck. I was really wishing I had left the girlfriend fantasy in the bedroom.]

Gus: What colour hair has she got?

Me: Just, brown.

Gus: Have you fingered her yet?

Kevin Body: How big are her tits?

‘Oh, leave him alone,’ said Judith Taylor, just as I was saying, ‘Look, I don’t have to tell you anything. I’m not answering questions like that.’

‘Have you watered the plants?’ asked Body, as per some asinine euphemism that was doing the rounds at the time.

‘Have you stained her rug?’ someone else chipped in.

‘Let me have a look at that neck,’ said Gus Hindmarsh, pulling my scarf away. ‘That looks like you’ve been at it with the Hoover.’

‘Oh, don’t be a cock,’ I said, which got a laugh and alleviated the tension for a second.

At which point Judith Taylor declared, ‘Good for you, Stan! Ignore these idiots. They’re probably just jealous.’ Whoops of derision from Gus et al. ‘I think it’s really sweet,’ she said. ‘It just goes to show, there’s someone for everyone,’ she added.

Then off she went to lunch, followed by Gus Hindmarsh, who now that I think about it was quite clearly in love with her. I loved her a bit myself after that day.

And that was that.

The love bite faded, and Emma faded along with it. I wasn’t important enough to face much more mockery about my imaginary girlfriend, so the lie died within a few days. In fact all that remained of Emma was a flash of shame every time I saw a bus to Sidcup. I still saw Philippa for a while afterwards however, and I took some solace form the fact that she really did care for me.

Oh, and whenever the subject of virginity came up for the next ten years, I lied about that too.

Sorry.

…

And you? What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told? Leave your whoppers in the comments…

Thanks.

Making the Most of the Pain

Yesterday I came across a piece of old news, which - new to me - had me clutching at my face in abject embarrassment. I mention it now because tomorrow is Shame Week, and it seems appropriate. Apologies if it's old to you.


Watch the video here.


Good Lord. Surely, there is only one thing in the world worse than not winning an award, and that is thinking for a moment that you have. One can only hope that, as painful as that was for Tom Bullough, it was a thousand times more so for Mr Thomas. For obviously, it is with him that the shame must lie.

On his blog - in a post entitled A Glimpse of Hell - Tom Bullough wrote:

'Such a quick succession of euphoria, bewilderment, vertigo, humiliation, despair and absolute broken-heartedness has no place in real life. I am truly not somebody given to complaining, but that was cruel.'

My heart goes out to him. Writing in his follow-up post however, Bullough highlights the upside:

'The positive side is that a tidal wave of sympathy, support and enthusiasm for ‘The Claude Glass’ has come my way, which has been genuinely wonderful. The first message I received on Tuesday night was from the poet Gwyneth Lewis, who wrote, and I hope she will excuse me quoting her: “Another thing I’ve learned over the years – the part of you that hurts like hell right now is what helps you to write. So channel it towards that and forget the circus which surrounds publishing.” I am happy to report that last night I was able to get back to work, and I can tell you that Gwyneth is absolutely right.'

Few of us will go through the kind of cruel public humiliation which Tom Bullough had to endure that evening in July, but we all of us must suffer our own humiliations, moments of shame which eat away at us and have us shouting out blasphemies whenever we recall them (often creating other humiliations in the process). But yes, it's true, the part of you that hurts like hell is the part that helps you to write - or if you don't happen to write, it's the part of you that helps you to do whatever it is you do that gets you through life. It helps you learn. And it helps you grow. Really, it's what life's all about.

Aaaaah, good old humiliation.

Tomorrow I will tell you about the most embarrassing thing I have ever done. And I will grow in the process.

Happy Sunday!



Thanks to Dick Headley for the heads-up.