“She said yes!” came the first text, and further updates expanded upon the proposal under the palm tree by the sea… I crassly reminded Toby that rather than sending me these messages, they should be celebrating the engagement by “less texting, more sexing.” It says something that the next time I heard from them was after they’d landed back at Gatwick Airport.

Since I saw them together for the first time early last year I could tell they were a great couple. All of the annoyances, the little foibles that Toby had were met with a hearty “Lighten up,” from Louise. And he did; it was remarkable.

The ceremony was held at Butley Priory near Woodbridge in Suffolk. A fantastic venue completely isolated from the outside world. Organisation of the day by the staff was faultless, and even a bit of rain failed to have any negative impact. It was a glorious magical day from start to finish and I was honoured to play the role of Best Man alongside Greg, a teacher from Kirkley High who did a grand job of MC’ing. My speech went okay, marred only by mild heckling from the groom at points.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Barry. Hello. I met Toby in 1999 in the illustrious and hallowed lecture theatres of De Montfort University, or Leicester Polytechnic. We shared the fact that we came from Suffolk, we were born on February the 18^th, and we were both under the deluded impression that Leicester would be a nice place to spend three years of our lives.

It was quite early on in our friendship that Toby announced that he had a list of life goals, one of them being to be married before he was 30, so…  his birthday was in February… (waggle hand) I think he gets half points for that. But I think it’s only fair to Louise to mention that another of his life goals was to be divorced by 40.

Toby was the only person in our group of friends to go abroad for his placement year, to Ireland. We flew out to visit him for a couple days in late November of 2000 only to discover that he had developed an Australian accent. We never really did figure that one out. It was in Ireland too that he grew his big bushy ginger beard. We’ve never really figured that one out, either.

After University Toby and I were both unemployed for a time. We’d regularly travel to Norwich with a large pile of pre-printed CVs ready to hand to the agencies, and then celebrate our joblessness with a trip to the cinema and then to Pizza Hut to eat just platefuls of cherry tomatoes. I’m pleased to say that Toby’s record of 52 remains unbeaten. When I moved to London and found that I’d been replaced on these cinema trips with Louise I knew there must be something special about her.

By this time he’d moved into his dream position at the school of middle-management. From what I can gather his job entails demanding copious amounts of tea from his minions while colouring in various pointless graphs.

“Toby or not Toby…” is how I like to imagine he phrased the proposal. Everyone was over the moon to hear about the engagement. They’re perfect for each other.

And Lou has calmed Toby down a lot. We have plenty of affectionate nicknames for him – Toby Wan Kenobi, Tobeasaurus Rex, Tobelerone, The Tobemeister General, but when we joked that Toby was the Washington Sniper he actually threatened to sue for defamation of character.

Toby’s a lot more polite now too. Previously we’d visit his flat or, as it became known, the Tobeshack, to greeted with “When are you leaving?” Nowadays when his friends ask if he can come out to play it’s a much more believable “Sorry, I can’t, I’m helping Lou wash her hair”. That’s a reference to your balding, Toby.

As everyone undoubtedly knows, one of Toby’s great passions is for Norwich City Football Club. He’d happily bleat on for hours about their lack of progress. Now, with Louise in his life, he has this new, interesting source of conversation about a woman he adores who isn’t called Delia Smith.

So, to conclude, as someone who’s known both of them longer than they have known each other I feel it’s safe to say I have a pretty good handle on their relationship. Certainly moreso than either of them or close family members might. And in my honest and valued judgement their marriage will be… successful!

To Toby and Louise!

Technorati Tags: delia smith, kirkley high school, norwich city

Dave is obsessed with robots and dinosaurs so naturally they seemed ideal topics for songs. And Nathan and I had already written a moving ballad about a tyrannosaurus’ lament to God regarding His wanton destruction of their species earlier in the year. I only remember the chorus:

Dinosaurs!
They are bigger than now
Dinosaurs!
Some were bigger than cows (some were smaller)

Awful. Seriously, B-Oyster and N-dog? What made you think it was a good idea to write songs at 3am after downing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s? It’s hardly the heartfelt opus it was intended as so let’s just put extinct animals as a whole on the back burner for now. What else does Dave like aside from robots, then? Maxibons and a certain time-travel trilogy from the 80s. Okay, go:

I like to watch Back to the Future
Sitting on the couch next to my mum
Don’t know if it’s nature or nurture
But she said I’ve got a pretty cute bum

I turned and yelled “That’s way out of line!”
She looked hurt and I felt a bit mean
“And please stop calling me Calvin Klein!”
Then I left for good in my time machine

Unfortunately incest is perhaps not the ideal birthday topic. I hadn’t yet reached the verse about mother’s dubious uses for Nestlé’s delicious ice-cream based treats and hadn’t even begun to touch upon how Roomba would factor into the resulting mess. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’d even want to. Let’s try to write a song more about Dave himself:

You’re getting older now; you’re growing up
Doesn’t mean you can’t drink wine from a cup
Avoid responsibility
Celebrate frivolity
Still watch too much childrens’ TV
Criticise it ironically
You can forever be
Dave Rickmann

Aw. Lovely. I secretly like the fact that this conclusion of the song boils down to me giving Dave, despite his advancing age, permission to continue to be himself. The verses were all flattering comparisons of Dave to other much more famous Daves and were all written with the assistance of Carmen, who supplied all the genuine musical talent.

Technorati Tags: back to the future, dave, dinosaurs, lorraine baines mcfly, maxibons, robots, roomba

I have no issue with the screenplay or Andrew Adamson’s direction taking liberties with the source material, especially when it serves to make the film better paced, less of a Christian allegory, and more exciting. I don’t remember Aslan biting the Witch’s face off in the novel and I’m fine with the removal of thinly disguised anti-Muslim sentiment. If, like me, you have a rolling production line of cousins the DVD is an easy guaranteed Christmas treat.

An ex-girlfriend of mine is a big fan of realism in films. Suffice it to say that when I dragged her along to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe she liked it up until the children walked through the wardrobe. I, meanwhile, left the cinema wide-eyed and full of childlike wonder. I couldn’t wait to get home, gorge myself on Turkish Delight, and thoroughly investigate furniture under the guise of “tidying up.” Our differing opinions on the film’s actual quality were merely a contributory reason for our subsequent break-up.

Technorati Tags: christmas, den of geek, lego, narnia, religion, the lion the witch and the wardrobe

I considered subverting the feature and entering The Sixth Sense; a film you surely can’t sit through more than once. Any ambiguity is relentlessly ignored in favour of beating you about the head with heavy-handed explanations, pretending it’s far more clever than it actually is, and lasting far too long. Throw in a couple of regional accents and it’s the movie equivalent of a Michael McIntyre routine.

I’ve decided on An American Werewolf in London because I saw it recently in Leicester Square over Halloween and had the epiphany that the reason I watch it so often is simply because that level of awesomeness cannot be fully appreciated by our human minds in one sitting.

• Watch it for the special effects from Rick Baker. Purely practical effects that stand up to this day and the film was responsible for the creation of the ‘Outstanding Achievement in Makeup’ Oscar.
• Watch it for a classic appearance of the Landis fictional film easter egg See You Next Wednesday. This time portrayed as a non-stop orgy.
• Watch it for the fantastic soundtrack; all songs with the word ‘moon’ in them, including a really jarring upbeat version of “Blue Moon” by The Marcels over the end credits.
• Watch it for the scene which would be a great teaser for an episode of Quantum Leap where David Naughton’s character wakes up naked in the wolf enclosure at London Zoo and utters the classic idiom “Oh boy”.
• Watch it and ponder why on Earth anyone would ever think An American Werewolf in Paris was ever a good idea, and what the hell Dimension expect to achieve with a remake.
• Watch it for the obligatory ‘Jenny Agutter gets her kit off’ scene. There are other movies where she’s much more naked but I was perhaps nine years old when I first saw this and it says something about how influenced by the film I was that I just adore sex in showers. And also leaping naked, teeth-bared, at nurses down dark alleyways.

Technorati Tags: den of geek, jenny agutter, john landis, quantum leap, rick baker, see you next wednesday, the marcels

Ingredients

• 200g butter

• 300g caster sugar

• 75g cocoa

• 1 egg

• 275g flour

• large teaspoon baking powder

• 50g white chocolate

• 100g milk chocolate drops

• 50g dark chocolate (preferably 70% cocoa or more)

1. Putting the butter in the microwave for a bit first, cream together the butter and the sugar in a large bowl.
2. Add the egg, baking powder, cocoa, flour and sugar. Shove it all in recklessly. Mix it all up until it’s an thick, sticky but even consistency. Stir in some chocolate drops now, if you’d like.
3. Break the dark and white chocolate into nice chunks with your hands. Or use a knife (whichever feels more natural).
4. Take a chunk of cookie dough and roll it up into a ball. Squidge a dent into the top of the cookie and place a few chocolate pieces into the middle.
5. Fold the dough back over the top of the cookie, so it forms a nice even ball again, then squeeze it so it flattens out a bit. Finish by arranging some more chocolate pieces on top of the cookie. It’ll look fantastic, but don’t eat it yet!
6. You’re aiming to cook the outside but leave the inside really melty and delicious. So heat the oven up to the temperature of THE HOTTEST YOUR OVEN WILL GO. Then put the cookies in on a baking tray for about 5 or 6 minutes.  They’ll look completely raw after that, and they’ll be really squidgy, but you can tell if they’re done by the chocolate on the top just starting to brown. Once they cool for five minutes or so you can feel free to pick them up and stuff them into your chocolate hole. You can freeze the dough the day before if you like and cook them for ten minutes in a hot oven for perhaps a better result, but I tend to want cookies immediately.

Technorati Tags: chocolate, cookies

For the first morning all week we woke up before the kids. Kwan, a teaching assistant in Leicestershire, returned from the boys’ bedroom to report that he’d found Kieran asleep on the floor in his dressing gown with a purple pen in his hand. He’d spent the majority of the night drawing on his roommates’ faces.

This had been after the late night karaoke disco the night before; an end of week treat for the kids where they had the pleasure of the Volunteers singing Greased Lightening, Everything I Do (I Do it for You), and assorted other “hits”. It recreated exactly the school disco atmosphere and Chris and I took it in turns to fetch rounds of orange squash for the rest of the Volunteers. The evening had ended with everyone in a circle holding hands singing Queen’s We Are the Champions. Kieran had handed Nate a note written from Brandon to Tanika proclaiming his love and adding that she was “a sexy bitch.” The letter had a handy check box postscript she could fill in to indicate whether or not she would go out with him.

There was a mixture of emotions while we sat in the lounge after breakfast receiving goody bags with CHICKS memorabilia and assorted toys and sweets. As everyone said their goodbyes and tears were shed, Brandon was sat pouring his sherbet out onto a table, carefully cutting lines with his finger.

On the drive back to the train station, the children were quiet and quite sombre for perhaps the first time during the week. The only interruption was the unintended innuendo from Hayley reminding Charlie to keep his stuffed toy he’d purchased at Crealy inside the vehicle “Don’t dangle your snake out of the window, it’ll get soggy, won’t it?” “Keep your snake in, Charlie. You don’t want to get it caught on anything,” then seconds later “Don’t hit Adam with it either.”

I was tired but enthused on reaching Exeter St. David’s. The week had been really rewarding and I’d enjoyed myself. We weren’t given extensive background information on any the kids and I think that’s a wise decision; we don’t want to go in prejudiced or making snap decisions about any of them but of course they’d tell us things sometimes, aspects of their lives. Sure, some of them would be obvious outrageous lies, but occasionally you’d get the mildest glimpse of what they’ve been through and it would never fail to shock me.

Vicky told us that one of the most painful things is with the kids who attend CHICKS year after year because, although it’s great seeing them each time, it means their situation at home either isn’t improving at all, or isn’t improving enough. I’m not egotistical enough to think for a single moment that on my own I’ve made a difference to any of these kids’ lives, but I’m very happy with what I have done to help and I wish I could do more.

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids

We headed out to the field after breakfast, Kieran intent on wearing his dressing gown all day again. There was a something a bit One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest about Kieran; he’d been identified by Vicky and Nate as having serious anger issues, and not like Michael, who’d began to tear stuffed dog toys limb from limb proclaiming he preferred cats. The Supervisors had been attempting to give him cool down time when he became angry rather than a stern talking to. As well as this they’d offered Kieran lots of praise. I think they were surprised that when they did this, he became really quite emotional and begin to cry.

Team games in the morning brought out the competitive side amongst the male Volunteers. This culminated in a neck-and-neck race between Chris, a former boat builder and Lloyd, volunteering as part of his Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award. Lloyd was slightly ahead and he slid home past the cone, confident in his win. His self-congratulatory expression swiftly changed as he realised he was skidding uncontrollably into Anna, a girl of 9. She was wailing loudly as her teammates rushed to her assistance, but I overheard April, a ten year old veteran of a previous CHICKS camp whispering to Anna, “I’ll lend you 40p to call ChildLine.” I chose not to clarify that it was a Freephone number.

Then it was off to horse riding at local stables, where a crazy lady named Sally sang at children on uncommitted horses that the Volunteers were forced to drag around a large field in wellies. My thighs were already beginning to ache from a spacehopper race earlier in the day, and this wasn’t helping.

Added to this, sat on the horse I was leading was Kieran.

“Come on, Kieran, you suave, sophisticated young man! You can do it!” Sally shouted, “Up and down and disco dance and up and down and disco dance.” This was seemingly her mantra.

“She’s crazy,” whispered the child in the dressing gown atop a horse. I couldn’t really disagree with him.

The horse riding culminated in an overly long inspirational speech from Sally about bravery and trying something new. She reminded everyone that before coming here they couldn’t ride a horse, some of them were even scared of horses and now they’ve all done that. They’ve learned a skill and they can do something they didn’t think they could do. This means they can do anything!

“I can ride a dog!” shouted Cameron enthusiastically, getting into the spirit of things.

Arriving back at CHICKS just before dinner Vicky called all the Volunteers into the Supervisors office. Not for a telling off, as the kids had assumed, but to inform us that Michael was going home with suspected Swine Flu. Though I wasn’t concerned in the slightest, there was a very tangible tension among my fellow Volunteers. It was understandable; Jane, a retired teacher wondered aloud if she should chance visiting her grandchildren after the Camp “just in case,” and Lloyd, who was due to fly to Bali later in the week, was desperately hoping he wouldn’t ruin his holiday for his family. We were asked not to tell the children because it would just cause unnecessary panic, so we silently filed back out and headed to the dining room.

Each table at mealtimes is staffed by at least one Volunteer, primarily to keep the peace while the Supervisors serve food. Today I was sat with Emma, a Volunteer currently studying Law at University. I asked, perhaps less than discreetly, “Have you got any symptoms?” She shot me a look.

“Simpsons?” asked Cameron, sat between us.

“Yeah,” I said to him, thinking quickly, “like DVDs?”

Cameron launched into a convoluted misunderstanding of the movie and I decided to keep quiet.

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids

On the ride to Plymouth Vicky revealed her concerns in letting the kids out in public. There’d been more than one occasion that she’d had to force apologies to upset mothers when a fight had broken out. She cautioned that swimming wasn’t to be seen as a means to release any pent-up rage at the kids by holding them underwater for long periods of time.

In the changing rooms of the Pavilions, Adam remained true to form by peering into the showers and saying loudly, “Look at the size of his knob! It’s massive!” An apology seemed unnecessary as the bloke in question looked quite pleased with himself.

We rushed into the pool and immediately lost sight of all sixteen kids. It made for a strangely relaxing swim with a slight air of tension at the end when only fourteen initially materialised. After a couple of tannoy announcements, and to general sighs of relief, the missing two appeared and we headed back to (thankfully empty) changing rooms.

It was relaxing too, on the trip back to CHICKS until Adam began detailing the many and varied ways he’d kill himself so he could come back and haunt Tanika in order to see her naked.

We were told that this group were particularly lacking in attention spans. There were more than the usual quota of ADHD sufferers and the backgrounds of some of the children were particularly harsh. Vicky told us that there was one child on camp who had a propensity for eating toilet paper and another who was fond of getting naked as often as he or she could. She didn’t name names, but it wasn’t hard to guess who that might be.

Sometimes we’d have to wait a little while for our nightly debrief from the Supervisors while they were busy with their own paperwork. This was one of the only opportunities we had to get to know our fellow Volunteers and have an adult conversation. So when Hayley, who was training to be a paediatric nurse, picked up and started playing a maze game, the conversation naturally turned to an animated discussion of toys. Chris asked if any of us had played Bop It; a game where you have to obey a series of increasingly fast spoken commands to spin, twist, pull, flick or bop various appendages on a central device.

I immediately launched into an excited description of Sex Bop It, an adult variation of the game I’d come up with on a boat trip on the Norfolk Broads. It would instead feature commands to finger, wank, lick, suck or fuck the appendages. Jane interrupted with a stern “Excuse me?” but she didn’t really want me to explain in any more detail and I realised this probably wasn’t the right audience for my thoughts.

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids, Plymouth Pavilions

Crealy is one of those small lame theme parks you’ve never heard of and are never as good as they proclaim. Inevitably, though, kids will love it and declare it their favourite place in the world. It wasn’t Michael’s, though.

Though only nine, Michael was easily the largest child on camp. Despite his claims that he’s always being taken out of lessons at school for playing up, he seemed like one of the most mild-mannered polite boys, but I guess it’s all relative.

I found myself at the top of the Red Devil, a particularly steep “death slide”, sitting next to him. He’d been sat there himself for a while already and I could tell he was desperately wanting to let go, but was something was holding him back from making the final push and surrendering to gravity. I in turn was resisting the urge to push him, or to bribe another child to do the dirty work for me. I admitted defeat when I realised I’d spent 40 minutes trying to coerce a fat kid into jumping.

It was raining again so we stayed inside after dinner to play party games. A couple of games of Wink Murder in, Michael quietly confided to me that he hadn’t liked being the Detective; he didn’t think he’d done too well. I attempted to offer some reassurance, “Well, Michael, in real life you really just don’t know who the murderers are.”

During a game of table-tennis with Brandon, an eleven-year-old from Somerset who fancied himself a bit of a gangsta, I was struck by the one-upmanship, the excessive “my cat’s blacker than your cat” mentality that existed between the children and which extended sometimes to the adults. I don’t think this was unique to these kids, but they’d take it to absurd extremes.

Enquiring if he had played table-tennis previously, Brandon first replied with “Yeah, once.” And slowly over the course of our match it turned out that he’d played in the National Table-Tennis Championships, and had reached the final before being beaten by the best player in Taunton. I accidentally backhanded the ball into his face.

Our game was interrupted by Kieran, a 10-year-old attempting to bring the dressing gown into fashion as regular daytime wear, entering the barn to inform Brandon that Tanika wanted to see him. He pulled his tracksuit bottoms halfway down his arse, winked at me and swaggered off.

Tanika had swiftly become something of an infatuation with a lot of the boys at camp and she knew it. She’d spend one mealtime with Kieran, and then cuddle up to Brandon after dinner. Only Adam had so far professed his undying love for her via a letter written by Michael, who had neater handwriting, and being subsequently turned down and described as “creepy” hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm or spirit. At bedtime Adam attempted to hump his flannel and a Fanta bottle.

That evening over our debrief we had to write a message for each child which they’d be presented with at the end of their holiday. We were encouraged to write something positive rather than carry out a character assassination or just impart to them general life advice, “Don’t do drugs,” or “Join the Army.”

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids, Crealy

Okay, that’s not really fair. These were sixteen children aged from 8 to 11 who, for one reason or another, would not be going on another holiday this year. They might come from a poverty-stricken background, their parents might be addicted to drugs, or they might have suffered some form of abuse. Usually they’ve been excluded from school at least once. The one thing they all had in common was that they deserved a break.

I’d first heard of CHICKS, or Country Holidays for Inner City Kids, at Innocent Drinks’ Fruitstock Festival in 2003. I’d felt for some time that I wanted to do something for charity other than donate money. Sure, I’d had a taste of it with the Walk for Skin, but it was easy; it didn’t test me. This, I knew, wouldn’t be a walk in the park.

I’d arrived to volunteer on Thursday with no expectations at all for the week ahead and was thrown right into the deep end, helping the children unpack into their recently refurbished rooms. We had a brief five-minute “rules” chat from Vicky and Nate, the CHICKS Supervisors, and then it was off out to the Play Barn for table-tennis, foosball, pool, trampolines and air hockey. I was soon exhausted, but that wasn’t so bad because the kids sit down for their evening meal ridiculously early. Throughout the week with no exposure to media or the internet it was easy to lose track of the time and day. Nevertheless I endeavoured to keep a diary.

Friday – Archery and Canoeing

I had reservations about handing these children weapons, but I’d already gained a degree of blind faith in the supervisors, both of whom had been Volunteers themselves. The way the CHICKS staff dealt with the kids isn’t like that of any teacher I’d seen. The time and patience they show to the kids when they did misbehave and the way they subsequently dealt with them is designed to show them that not every adult they encounter is going to shout, scream or hit them. Or indeed ignore them.

It would have been difficult to ignore Charlie anyway. From the East End of London he exuded the image of a 10-year-old Pete Doherty and had a tendency to do a kind of swaggering dance everywhere he walked. All he needed was a trilby.

He was in a canoe with a fellow ADHD sufferer. I say in a canoe, but they spent the majority of the time in the water. The inability of the duo to remain in their boat and their subsequent shock each time their vessel capsized was captivating.

Charlie’s crewmate was Adam and we were quick to notice and attempt to curb his propensity to hump furniture. You could always tell when he was attempting to copulate with a table because he’d start screaming “Don’t look at me!” For pudding in the evening we had apple pie in custard. It was the second day running we’d had a dessert in custard, and the second day running that Adam loudly compared custard to sperm.

After milk and cookies and telling the group our favourite part of the day it was bedtime. Putting the boys to bed, we uncovered a small air freshener on Adam’s pillow from the previous night. Mildly incredulous, this was quickly confiscated to plaintive cries of “Please can I sniff it in the morning? PLEASE I NEED IT!”

The Volunteer’s debrief with the Supervisors which followed was an ideal opportunity to remind us that neither mild substance abuse nor overtly sexual behaviour from the kids was tolerated at CHICKS. They operate on a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy. Nate informed us that Adam would receive his first warning in the morning.

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids