Monday 19 July 2010

On wearing a kilt


I wore a kilt last weekend. Alright, plenty of you reading will find this an utterly common experience and half of you probably wear things like dresses and skirts all the time. I know for a fact two of the blokes reading this do. But as it was only my second time I thought it was worth talking about.

Anyway, it was my second Scottish wedding where I've worn a kilt. It wasn't a cunning survival plan to stop the Braveheart like masses tearing me to shreds - Englands performance in the World Cup has tempered the traditional north/south hatred. We're now all as bad as each other.

No, it was a choice thing. I wore a kilt a few years back and was thoroughly happy to do so. Here's a rundown on my kilt wearing information for those of you considering.

It's comfy..once it's on
I say comfy. By that I mean once you are strapped in. And that takes some time. Once the kilt is on, the dress shirt, the waistcoat, the socks, the shoes, the laces, the heroin needles, the metal belt, the shortbread, the deep-fried mars bar, the imitation plastic knife, the stock 'flashes', the sporran and the jacket. I had help from the wife this time, last time I did it on my own. It was like watching a laboratory mouse try to assemble an IKEA dressing table when he's been given the instruction manual for a 1982 Sony Walkman. But as I say, once you are in it's all very comfy. It holds you in place and makes you stand upright. And yes, the breeze is lovely.

Sporrans are cool
You can get more in a sporran than you think (no sniggering) - it's positively TARDIS like. But when you fumble for loose change you are aware that people might think you're doing something dirty. People will also hit your sporran (men and women). I think this is a custom, it could just be a way of warding off sexual predators.

Don't go to the toilet
Honestly. Hold it in. Whatever it is. To do one thing requires a lot of sporran rotation/kilt pleat holding. To do anything more than that requires a team of four, chicken wire and high powered magnets.

It stays with you long after you've finished
The kilt is a comfy thing, but you feel like you're still wearing it a day later such is the weight and tightness of the whole ensemble. It's like you've looked at a kilt shaped lightbulb all day and all you can now see is that silhoutte. But in muscular form.

I'll do it again
Sadly the chance of more Scottish weddings hangs with two cousins and at 10 and 14 they are still a little way off being married yet. But I guess I'm available for parties dressed like that, so maybe I'll get a gig doing Scots-a-grams.

Maybe not.

Friday 9 July 2010

Beating a bit of bully

I don't know quite why, but I started to think about bullying the other day. By that, I don't mean I intentionally laid out a five point plan to cause misery to people for their dinner money, more the topic of it and how I've encountered it over the years.

When I was at school I got bullied three times. Once at Primary school by a lad called Andrew who punched me in the arm because I told our teacher, a nun, that he stole some marbles. That sounds like the plot of a Roddy Doyle book, I know, but even at the age of five I clearly knew that the truth deserved telling despite the threat of violence. That and I could never lie to a nun.

At secondary school I often had to get the bus and that was the point at which I discovered 'the bigger boy' - a 15 year old called Mark who didn't like me for what seemed to be the sole reason that I asked the bus driver to drop me on the corner and not 50 yards along at the bus stop near Mark. He pushed my head against the window once, which is quite an achievement if you've ever since just how massive my noggin is. I think he stole my 12trip tickets, with 3 trips remaining, as well. I saw him about 10 years later on a moped near a job centre. Clearly he'd used up those 3 trips.

My favourite (if you can have such a thing) bit of bullying was from a boy called Ryan at secondary school. He was massive and regarded as an utter psycho. Thing was, his father was a bit of a crook and one summer he set fire to his own yacht as an insurance job. Ryan was alledgedly caught in the fire, breathed in smoke and it messed up his vocal chords. As a result he had to have an operation and wear a button on his throat. When he wanted to talk he had to press it, to press onto his vocal chords. It was like having a Bond villain in your class.

Anyway, one day he decided I needed a kicking and he chased me across a bit of the playing field, kicked my legs out from under me and pinned me to the floor, putting his legs astride my arms so I couldn't move (steady on, this isn't going anywhere funny.). However, to then threaten me he had to push the button his throat and tell me "I'M GOING TO BATTER YOU" but the fact he was out of breath meant his voice buzzed too much, like being attacked by R2D2 and I burst out laughing. That somehow put him off and he left.

Of course, that was silly old school days (happiest of your life apparantly) - since then I've met a few people at work who have been just as bad. One woman who went from boss to psycho in two minutes and never looked back, making my life a misery whenever she could. She's dead now of course. Of course she isn't. I haven't cut her brakes. Not yet. She's old anyway, and looks a lot like the villain in Terrahawks, so perhaps that's enough for me to know.

And remember - the way to deal with bullies is, of course, to stand up to them.

Either that or anvils.