Monday 24th November, 2003 – The Weblog / Sitcom Curse

For the purpose of writing a weblog like this, it’s sometimes necessary to embellish certain episodes of your life. Not to lie – just to make neutral events fun to read about, and to make humorous incidents accessibly funny. The problem with this is that too much embellishment can make it seem that you live some kind of ridiculous sitcom life of endless double take, pratfalls and pained, Fawlty-esque scenes of social anxiety.

And yet, this weekend featured a moment that was equal parts Frank Spencer and Basil Fawtlty, as I was first humiliated (in a very traditional sitcom manner), and then left raging impotently against the elements, my fiercely English pride in tatters.

It doesn’t bear extended telling. Simply put, after a number of minor but infuriating misfortunes, I was drenched from head to toe by the splash from a bus speeding through a very deep puddle. It didn’t just splosh on my shoes. It didn’t just dampen my trousers. It gave me a full, right-royal, Terry and June soaking. Unfortunately the water didn’t quite reach my head, so I wasn’t able to run my hand slowly down my face, before spitting out a goldfish. All the same, it was a proper sitcom soaking.

And, as in sitcom land, this final humiliation left me (literally!) hopping mad, as my haughty veneer shattered, and I dissolved into a flailing, foot-stomping tantrum. In my temporary madness, I was dangerously close to tossing my umbrella off Putney Bridge. I didn’t. Instead, I just did a petulant little dance of frustration – one that involved me kicking out wildly and thrusting said umbrella down onto my own head. The impact of this caused two of the fingers of the umbrella to break, leaving it sagging pathetically at the back.

To recap – I was splashed by a bus, exploded in a pathetic facsimile of righteous anger, and broke my umbrella over my own head. I then had to pretend to Jane that it had always been broken…that I could never be such an arse to smash a perfectly good umbrella over my own head in a sissyish tantrum. Well I did. I’m a twat.

My big worry is that this display of twatishness may be my subconscious pushing me into sitcom-style situations for the sake of having interesting and / or humorous content for this weblog. Will I inexplicably feel the urge to take a rowboat out next weekend, inevitably finding myself with one foot on the riverank, and one on the boat as it slowly drifts out. Will I be compelled to invite my boss round for dinner, and end up making unintentional double-entendres whilst wearing no trousers?

Perhaps the safest thing would be to put myself in a situation with no comedic potential whatsoever. For instance, I could marry an Asian woman, who would bear me a child with Cerebral Palsy. I could then make a series of trite and agonisingly unfunny observations on life as our multi-cultural brood mill around having predictable, formulaic ‘adventures’.

Ahhh. I have inadvertently described the new Jasper Carrot-fronted BBC sitcom ‘All About Me’. It seems that I am truly cursed.