You Cannot Be Serious!

This week, I was asked if I would attend a community event and just chat and mingle with some of the people who were there to voice their concerns and give opinions about their community. Because I wasn't there in any official capacity (I don't have an official capacity, or any other capacity, for that matter) it was nice just to walk around chatting to people from all walks of life.

I found myself talking to a wonderful lady who had served her community tirelessly throughout her life. She now has MS and is confined to a wheelchair, but she has still retained a very dry sense of humour and a very positive outlook on life. She eventually told me that she had enjoyed our chat but, “I'm going to sit over there looking pitiful so I can blag a lift home from that guy with a bald head. I know he's not going home but he's a sucker for my little disabled lady routine!” With that, she laughed and moved off.

As she moved away, I was aware that someone was looking directly at me. You know the feeling, the one that scares you into looking over. It was a very strange person who was looking at me intently, so I gave him a feeble grin, as I didn't want to wake up in his cellar, smelling of Dettol (he had that aura about him). He smiled back, using the smile that forewarns you that something is not as it should be with the owner of the smile. He walked over with his plastic cup of tea firmly gripped in his hand and introduced himself, adding, “I see you have met Cath?” pointing to the lady in the wheelchair who I had just been chatting to. I nodded. He then leaned over to whisper in my ear, which gave me the creeps, so I stood back, not knowing just what he was going to do.

“It's because her father was a drunkard,” he whispered.

“Sorry?” I replied, thinking I must have missed a few sentences, or maybe a whole anecdote!

“The reason she's a cripple!” I didn't like the word 'cripple' or where this conversation was going so I cautiously said, “Sorry, I don't understand what you mean?”

“Have you read the Bible? The sins of the father shall be visited on the son!”

Now, this retard was trying to tell me that this lovely lady who was suffering from a horrible insidious disease was in this predicament because her father liked to get pissed! I would like to say that I came back with a witty reply, telling him that Stephen Hawking's father must have been the mother of all drunkards. I could have told him that it is quite odd for a loving superior being to punish an innocent person for something someone else did. Although to be fair to him, he could have come back at me with the mind-numbing original sin argument. I could have told him that it would be strange of a loving God to make one of the drunkard's family suffer, while leaving the others alone. I could have told him that it's strange how God has punished so many intelligent loving good people by giving them a crippling illness while leaving low life scum-bags to run about free and healthy. I could have said all this, but I'm afraid I became so angry that my Tourettes kicked in and I found myself angrily swearing at him before telling him to move away from me before I really lost my temper and did something stupid to him. I wonder if God will punish my son for my little angry outburst?!

On a lighter note, at the same event I started talking to a lady who turned out to be an actress. I asked her if she worked full time as an actress, to which she nodded a yes. She was quite a striking looking woman. I would say that she was in her fifties, very grand and, as you would expect, very dramatic. I innocently asked if she had been in anything that I would know, and she looked at me as if I had just pissed on her chips and replied, “I doubt it, Shakespeare may be a little too subtle for you!” I wasn't aware that old 'Shakey' was subtle; he could be quite bawdy at times. But if she meant that I'm not keen on Shakespeare plays, she was, of course, quite correct in this assumption, Shakespeare doesn't read any of my stuff, so I don't read any of his. Having said this, I didn't like her assumptions, and having already upset one person at this event I couldn't see that upsetting one more person would do much harm.

“Have you ever been in Emmerdale?” I asked, knowing this would wind her up.

“I don't do soaps. I'm a serious actor,” she replied. This made me laugh.

“And what, pray tell, is so funny?” Honest, she did say that!

I asked her how she could claim to be a serious actor when an actor is someone who dresses up and pretends to be someone else! My granddaughter does that, and she's not at all serious about it! I explained to her that Ian MacKellen was a very famous Shakespearian actor who also appears in films, and has been in Coronation Street, and he does comedies on TV... because he's an actor! I think it was at this point that she muttered something about me being a grubby little man. I do take exception to this as I bathe every day and I also think with me being six foot two in height, this means I'm not little! But she had already stormed off. 

The person who had invited me to the event asked if I might like to go early?

I have decided that in future that I won't go to any more of these events, because I find it very difficult to be so serious!