I was born in 1974. To celebrate, McDonalds opened their first UK branch in South London, and Mohammed Ali beat George Foreman. I later told Mohammed Ali I would have preferred it if George Foreman had won that fight, and he developed brain damage by way of apology. Sadly, Britain was so taken with my birth that it forgot to keep control of Grenada, which accidentally went independant. But, on balance, the Queen said she’d rather have me than Grenada anyway, even though I pick my nose too much.
But the 80s weren’t a good time for knitting. People were just discovering the joys of metalwork – Fred West was idly doodling his first plans for a metal rendition of the word “cunt” that he could put above Rosemary’s side of the bed. In the 70s, he would have had to make do with making her wear a knitted jumper.
So I’ve not been weaned on woollens, you see. In fact, until my 30th birthday, if you’d come up to me and said “look at the knitcraft on that panda – there’s some flawless-ass stitchwork on that fucker”, it would only have been a disciplined upbringing that prevented me from whipping it out and pissing on your knees. Now I’m older, wiser, I piss on whatever knees I like, and strangely enough – I love the woollens. So where do I get my fix?
Naturally, I go to Arnold Hill Comphrensive School’s Annual Craft Fair. Look at that woolly shit, all piled up there. You know what I’m talking about. See that elephant with its trunk kinda coming out the top of his head? That’s EIGHTY PENCE. You try making an elephant like that for 80p. Even if you were to put its trunk in the right place, you’d be spending probably seven pounds on a ball of wool, some knitting needles, which as it turns out cost around twenty five pounds (unless they’ve discounted them to something gay like £1.79 to make me look like a dick). Then you’ve got to have lessons, and those old women do not go easy on you. My tutelage with Nana Harper nearly killed me, but now at least when I enter a pensioner’s house, we respect each other. Even though we know one of us has to die.
I nearly forgot! There was a tombola, too. You pull a raffle ticket out of the hat, and if you get a number ending with a 0 or a 5, you win! Does that sound too good to be true? Have you just relaxed every sphincter in your body with a frankly ill-advised delight? Well prepare to fly around the room like a fucking balloon when you see what you can win.
That cassette is a NINETY MINUTE cassette. What lasts for ninety minutes? Nothing! You could put everything on that cassette. Also there is a small bowl!
If there’s anything I’ve grown to love in my adulthood more than wools, it’s evasiveness about the number of cards I get for £2.50. Ask how many cards you get for £2.50 in WH Smiths, and they’ll winch a gigantic and unequivocal number one from the ceiling. “No need to be showy about it,” you’ll grump, and shuffle down the street with your hands in your pockets.
It’s not like that at the Craft Fair. £2.50 gets you mostly 10 cards. But that’s only the beginning. When Maureen got her daughter to pack the bags, she said “put mostly ten cards in those bags, dear”. This insanely relaxed attitude makes the child think – “hey, she said mostly ten – it won’t matter if I put mostly mostly ten”. By the time you’re two mostlies away from a number, things can get crazy. I swear, one day I got fourteen cards for £2.50. I walked home fast that day – I wanted to count my cards. There were fourteen!
Of course, there’s a downside to Craft Fairs, and that’s pornography. They’re absolutely littered with turbo-grade filth, and in the more sordid rooms you’re ankle deep in grunt-sweat.
Drawer Fresheners. Who doesn’t gasp in horror every time they open their drawers, at the violent stench of decay and the cloud of erupting spores? Drawer fresheners are a modern essential. But I can’t buy these! Not because they’re lavender – that’s my favourite! – but if I hang around this stall for even a fraction of a second, people will think I’m getting my cheapies from the “vintage” ladies.
I tried to brave the situation (I really wanted those drawer fresheners, I can’t explain), and ask innocent questions about the drawer fresheners, but I was so constantly distracted by the breast-outed lady that I found myself ejaculating the most brutish innuendos…
- Hello! Have you got anything I could slip into my drawers to deaden the smell of mince?
- Lavender… lavender… Oh no! I didn’t just say “Love in da lav, in da anus!” I didn’t say anus at all, twice!
- How much for unsafe?
Well, you know what it’s like. I can’t imagine any of you, as cheeky youths, haven’t pinched a policeman’s helmet to stop him doing a spunk in your mouth.
I was so fucked-up after my outburst at the drawer freshener stall that I spent some chill-time with a couple of dolls and a bear. Look at all the booties! Can you imagine the sense of achievment from making all those booties? I’d be like “I don’t want to go to the pub tonight, I’m going to stop in and look at my booties”. Then I’d be like “now, if only I could find something with the right size feet to put in the booties. If only atoms had toes.”
But that’s what the Craft is all about. You make shoes that someone wears, you are a cobbler. You make a six dozen booties that no fucker will ever want or use, then sir – you are a craftsman.
Look at the Lavender-filled crinoline ladies. They’re the fucking best – and don’t tell anyone, but I’m using them as drawer fresheners. This is a stroke of genius, I swear. Sure, they’re £2 apiece, and the drawer fresheners are like £2 for three, but look at the craft. These ladies are so full of art that they look like mice. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a metaphor.
Idiot Customer : I would like to make a complaint. This crinoline lady is a mouse.
Wise Craftsman : Aren’t we all like mice, in a little way?
Idiot Customer : No, I am a human being. That is absolutely the most unlike a mouse you can be!
Wise Craftsman : Look inside yourself, and embrace the mouse. But remember you are the kind of mouse who has money, and pays for things.
Idiot Customer : OH GOD THE CRAFT IS IN ME, I AM A MOUSE
Wise Craftsman : They’re £2 each. £20 for mostly 10.
Craft Fairs are amazing. Here’s a Craft Fair on the internet. That’s CYBERMAZING. (Check out the Rotamake 360 – if you are serious about your craft, then you would be some kind of elbow-swinging retard not to buy one).
Good lord man, who the hell let you into a school in the first place; do they not read the papers?
These craft fairs are tough on admittance. Last time I went to one, or tried to at least, I was frisked by two elderly lady bouncers, and by bouncers I mean that literally, they had those incredibly huge old lady boobs that sit about halfway down their bodys like water filled barrage balloons restrained only by cheap nylon blouses and ships rigging bras.
It was the school I went to from 11-16. They had to let me in, my genetical material fit. It was strange, walking around the rooms that provided the first fifty stories in the Law of the Playground. I was constantly torn between wanting to say “oo, oo, that’s where we turned Mr Manicom’s watch forward and taped his chair legs to the table”, and “oo, oo, it’s a crinoline mouse”.
Aah, Arnold Hill Comprehensive Craft fair. The NIGHTMARES of my childhood caused by that god-forsaken hell-hole.
“Come on Peter, turn off ‘Going Live’, we’re going out!”
My mother would say to me. Where? Oh where? To a Golden Palace of sweeties and excitingly emetic rides? No. To her sodding WORK, where she would catch up on MARKING while I was left in the care of her BORING teacher mates, who seemed to think I would be interested in the craft produce of lonely spinsters.
The single SHITTEST present of my young years which I still have today to remind me how offensively shit relatives can be is a knitted policeman from Arnold Hill Comprehensive Craft Fair. I call him P.C. Rubbish. Six inches in height, and clad in some form of skin-tight catsuit that I am sure is not standard issue uniform, leading me to suspect that he might be some sort of BALLERINA policeman sponsored by a ‘politically correct’ diversity programme, the woollen fuck is not exactly the kind of protection the public needs on the mean streets of Nottingham. Although, saying that, come to think of it, I have never been burgled. Maybe he’s not so rubbish after all.
Also, why was my mother content to teach at a school that had craft fairs, while sending her own diminutive, middle-class homosexual son to a school where any craft-fair would have sold knives and heroin?
I find it terribly frightening going back to schools that I once attended. No matter how big the place felt when you were eleven now seems far too small for humans to inhabit. It’s nightmare material, the walls are closing in like you’ve taken a bite from the eat-me cake and are heading for the roof. Lillipution horrors abound in old schools and those nasty little children may one day find you asleep and tie you to the floor.
I’m not claustrophibic or anything, but there’s something wrong about going back to your old schools.
HeWhoIsTooBored… you’re not Darren’s older brother are you? If you are… well. Fucking hell. It’s like Friendsreunited around here.
Here’s what I wanted to write about, but didn’t get photos of;
1) Another tombola stall, only this time is was 25p a go, and you were guaranteed a prize by picking a card from the pack. Amongst the prizes that weren’t Chocolate Freddos
(note the giveaway 10p emblazoned on the packet) – were Refreshers (10p), Milky Ways (16p) and bags of Tangy Toms (10p). The one thing that I didn’t know the value of was a Matchbox-style car that they’d clearly just found under their sofa. This was the Star Prize.
2) The T-Shirt stall with the best T-shirt ever – across the front was a really shit drawing of a child on a skateboard. Forehead way too large, mouth making an inappropriate shape, and best of all he had the words COOL DUDE written in Times New Roman (the coolest font of all) around his head. Not even at a raucous and cool angle. Like a headline.
COOL DUDE SKATEBOARDS DOWN ROAD
“Whoa!” comments less cool observer.
No, I’m not Darren’s older brother. I have no brothers. And if I did, I imagine that my parents, with that snobbery of which only middle class socialists are capable, would have scorned the name Darren with a haughty sniff, and called him something suitably Biblical, like Joshua, or Classical, like Agamemnon. Or Vespasian. I’ve always liked the idea of a brother called Vespasian. Or maybe Mama would have named him after Mr. Sprigg’s cat, and called him Jasper.
Maybe the cool kid had Down’s Syndrome, and it was a comment that hey even cool kids can have Down’s and even kids with Down’s can be cool.
The thing I liked best and dreamed of winning was the small tin of ravioli. And I don’t even like tinned ravioli! I was just caught up in the excitement of it all.
The thing I liked least was Mugabe’s Fresh & Fly Tube LIghts.
I liked it when a American lady dribbled her honey on Log’s finger.
It’s alright for you. You didn’t get dragged into the mock-up hut where the Mugabe Tube Lights were being kept, and have to pretend to like them.
“That one’s nice.”
“YES THIS IS ONE OF A KIND HERE IS MY CARD”
“Thank you, it’s lovely.”
“YES CALL US IT IS FROM MUGABE LAND ONE OF A KIND AWWWK”
The honey was nice though. And apparently ideal for use in stir fries. Also, I want to see a T-Shirt saying “COOL DOWNS” with a Downer riding a skateboard.
“THIS ONE HAS TWO DIFFERENT COLOURED LIGHT BULBS IN. YOU CAN’T QUITE SEE HEAR, BUT THE TWO COLOURS ACTUALLY BLEND!”
:-O
Shits, HERE. I meant HERE! Edit me please, Log!
But if I edit the first one, you’ll just look like in idiot in the second one! I don’t know what to do! Jonesy, you idiot!
It’s a disaster!
Now See Hear, later, Jimmy Carr with subtitles.
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Can we post images in the comments Log?
No, but I can. If you just put CONV TO IMG PLEASE then I’ll put the <img> tags in. So long as they’re not wider than 500 pixels or shit.
This has been a highly commented entry. Mostly because my dumb boyfriend can’t spell. DUMMMMM.
NM, the moment has passed and the image isn’t as funny now as it was 30 seconds ago. Probably a very good reason for not showing it. Besides, what do you think this is? FUCKING B3TA?
Have you photoshopped something? Is it kittens? WOO!
and there was me thinking that the ‘craft fair on the internet’ was a gag and that was a link to ebay…IMAGINE THAT!!!!lol!!!!!!!
With all that celtic knottery and olde worlde style artwork on the site, are they trying to tell us that craftmen (read hobbyists) are the last bastion of the skilled manual worker in the face of the mechanised mass produced age or something?
‘Cos I think they’re a bunch of twee sister fuckers who make miniature fruit from fimo. Of course, I could be mistaken.
I have never been back to my school owing to the hypocrisy intrinsic to every institution.
Plus, I shagged my sweet speccy English teacher on the last night, and he turned out to have a huge scaly man prong and I’m scared of running into him.
I imagine if I did go back though the craft fair would have much better shit than those atrocities. Going to school in rural Essex, where Victorian England meets Nazi Germany, parents thought nothing of sending Nodger to school with a roast suckling boar to give out on his birthday.
Sorry for my comment tardiness. If the kid on the skateboard was a down syndrome, shirley he’d have been speaking in Comic Sans MS, not Times New Roman.
i am LITERALLY only posting so i can be the 21st comment, although i’m not sure why i find this significant. But i do. I’d prefer 23 in all honesty.
Erm, you weren’t born in 1974, were you, Log?