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.

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.

Sticks and stones

I've not got the stupidest name in the world. To have a stupid name you need to be in a haircare advert, you find people called Demetrius Pombo or Doutzen Krouze. It wasn't like that when I was young, we had Vosene and we were happy.

But my name has always caused minor issues. It's not stupid, it just isn't spelt like it sounds. If I had a pound for everytime it was spelt Coleman rather than Colman (no e) then I'd have £5,235. Sadly I'd probably get it in the form of a cheque made out to Mr Coleman and be unable to cash it.

As the years have gone by I've had various methods of explaining it to people. I used to say "Colman, as in the mustard" but as most people seem to buy supermarket mustard these days they look at you puzzled "what? as in wholegrain?". Latterly I've been saying "Colman, like a teetotal clubber - without an 'e'". But people just think you're mental.

Anyway, names is what I wanted to talk about, or rather the names I've been given over the years. Yes, contrary to my gentleman-thief-spy-bon-viveur appearance these days I wasn't the coolest cat at school. I developed early (stay with me), by that I mean I was the first person to have spots. So early on I was Pizzaface. Cruel, but then I did have large deposits of dough for cheeks, tomato coloured skin and pepperoni for eyes.

Then I developed dark rings around my eyes, I still have them. Instead of looking like some sort of superhero with a mask I got called Chi-Chi, after the giant panda in a Chinese zoo. Again it felt unfair, although I did get through a lot of bamboo and have no knowledge of reproduction at the time.

The good news that I've come through all these names with no real pyschological scars. In fact, I love pizzas, especially with sliced panda on top.

As I've got older, and people have been kinder, I've found that people called me TC a lot, mainly after the cartoon Top Cat. Fittingly, I even had a gang at the time. And lived in a bin, constantly thwarting the plans of the local police officer. No I didn't, that would be silly.

What's more silly, and why I shall never worry about my name, is that I've known plenty of people over the years who I am most glad I am not, simply because of their monickers. So thank to the following - Pat Mycock, Mustapha Arshed, Roger Boyes and Cliff Wanklyn (that last one always seems like an obscene extreme sport)- for making me feel normal.

Radioactive sausages in the glovebox

There are few things I'd like to do less than crashing to death on the motorway.

The wife's car developed an interesting fault the other day. If you went over 20mph and then tried to brake, as the car slowed down it also switched off. Completely. Yes, you can be doing 70mph on the motorway, come down the sliproad and before you've reached the end of it the whole car can go dead. Shortly followed by you.

It was like a low budget British version of Speed only without bombs, buses or Ted from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (and if you don't know these films - please do see them, they are great).

There were three main solutions to the problem:

1 - once travelling over 20mph, don't stop.
2 - do number 1 and crash the car, claim the insurance
3 - get it repaired

Call me old fashioned, but we went for the third option. So I drove the car the 2 miles to the garage, pausing only for the 11 times it stalled. I must have really annoyed the people behind me. Good, some of them were BMW drivers.

I left the car in on Tuesday and had a phonecall on the Wednesday. I knew it was going to be costly when the garage man started with. "Morning Mr Colman. How are you today?". In asking for my state of mind he was clearly looking for me to say something that would indicate how I might take bad/expensive news.

Perhaps I should have said "Not good, I've just been made bankrupt" and he would have taken pity on me. I didn't and he broke the bad news, £800 worth of bad news. Seems the engine was, erm, the linking things were..oh I don't know, it could have been radioactive sausages in the glovebox for all I care. Expensive radioactive sausages at that of course.

I went back to the garage today to pick up a courtesy car whilst the sausages/engine/whatever was being repaired. I imagined as I walked in that the man who ran the place would be wearing a crown whilst the mechanics drank champagne off the back of my expense. They weren't of course. It was Prosecco.

Still, at least it can be repaired. When the engine literally fell out of another car on a motorway the repair bill cost twice what the car was worth. So I got it towed to a nearby garage, ordered it to be scrapped and got hammered on cheap lager at a snowdome in Tamworth waiting for a lift.

And that, I can assure you, is one of those few things worse than crashing on the motorway and dying.

The 98% rule

When I was young I believed a lot of things. I believed that the programme Manimal, about a doctor who could change into different animals at will, was possible. I believed that playing Laserquest in a lime-green shellsuit was a good idea. And I believed that the majority of people were nice.

That last one, I’ve learned over the years, is the only one that I really got wrong and instead I have the 98% rule. The 98% rule, formulated by me, my best friend and a lot of booze basically says this.

Of all the people you meet, only around 2% are worth bothering about. The other 98% aint.

That might seem a rather cynical viewpoint, but I urge you to think about it in a positive way. There’s so many people out there who can’t wait to argue with you, punch you, stab you in the back, nick your spare change, kick you in the balls or just run off with your favourite video and never return it – there’s so many of them that you should just accept it. Accept that 98% of the people in the world are simply not worth getting upset over. Most people will let you down – get used to it and minimise those people from your life.

Instead, focus on those 2%, the ones that make you laugh, lend you a pair of trousers, cover for you, remember that you like cola bottles, read your work and generally make your life a bit better. If you focus on them more you can get so much more out of life, I guarantee you. In fact, go to your social network page now and look through those ‘friends’ who just wanted to be added for no real reason – and get rid of them, your life won’t be any worse. Similarly, if you’re reading this and don’t know why you really know me, then get rid of me.

So after 6 months of blogging is this my mantra? My manifesto? Obviously it hasn’t had enough hilarious lines in, it’s something approaching me being serious for a change (I’m not dying, don’t worry) and if the 98% rule helps you understand me a little better then great.