I travelled to Gloucester in a shower of rain this afternoon, with the fine actor and writer,
Ben Moor. We're going to a big party tomorrow - in the middle of the week? How very decadent. I met Ben way back in 1987, so I have known him for nearly twenty years. The first time I met him he was wearing an orange cagoule. He made me laugh out loud the first instant I saw him. I have laughed many more times at him in the intervening two decades. He is brilliant and you should hunt him down and then watch him do his stuff. Or hunt him down and kill him. Whichever you prefer. Though it would be a shame to kill him as he is nice. So just hunt him and maybe shoot him with a paintball gun if you enjoy hunting for sport. And then you might also get to watch him being funny and charming too, which would be less likely if you have killed him. Though I contend he will still be quite funny if he was dead. He's just got one of those faces.
We once toured together in the Oxford Revue of 1988, so we have been on a few roadtrips before, but not for a long time. We were sharing a twin room at a small hotel. Just to cut down on travelling expenses, no funny business, unless we got really drunk. I am sure we must have shared rooms before back in our student days, but I can't really remember any occasions. So sharing with him didn't bring back any actual memories, though it felt like it should.
I saw his bum when he was changing. I am sure I probably saw his bum 19 years ago on tour. Maybe in 19 years time we will travel somewhere together (maybe the funeral of a mutual friend) and will share a room again and I will see him bum again and thus have a kind of mental flick-book of the way his bum has changed over the decades. His bum looked OK today, probably not as pert as it was when he was 18, but still respectable. In 19 more years though I think gravity will have taken its toll. I am not looking forward to seeing his old bum. To be frank I got little pleasure from seeing his middle-aged bum, but at least it wasn't all wrinkly and saggy. But maybe Ben has a portrait of his bum in his attic and his actual bum will never age. I hope so. I don't really want to see his old bum. Why must our bums grow old? Why God? Why did you make it so?
I am not advocating a world where only people's bums don't age. That would be weirder and more upsetting still. It's just a shame. That's all.
Anyway Ben's bum looked fine. Not that I looked at it. I just went "Urggh!" and looked away. And anyone who says I didn't is lying.
I am now writing a weekly blog for the New Statesman website. Where possible it will be something different to what I write here, or at least an expansion of an existing entry. Occasionally it might double up. But I doubt I will be writing about Ben Moor's bum on there. Anyway, you can check out my first one
by clicking here.
WIN a PSP question 29
I end the month of November in the town of Gloucester, a place famous for Dr Foster, cheese and the murders of Fred and Rose West. At what address did Fred and Rose live when they were finally captured for their awful crimes?
