Keswick Capers

Mon.13.11.06. Chris has spent most of the weekend tidying and finishing odd jobs around the chassis. This type of work often passes unnoticed but generally occupies a great deal of time revealing the difference between a ‘cobbled fit up’, compared to that of a competent conclusion. Recently, Chris has been, justifiably, distracted by his annual trip to Keswick. 

This reunion of a few days has always been organised, to military precision, by Captain Salty who for the past weeks has been handing out detailed agendas to the invited members. Never having been invited I am never really sure how to actual qualify or what fulfils the entry criteria. Each year to maintain the ambient balance of the English party to that of the Scottish contingent it has always been necessary to reshuffle the peripheral membership by including new blood. This is primarily due to either sudden death, unwanted marriages into the family, new, past or rekindled friendships. Excluded persons receive the black spot particularly if they have of late suffered the embarrassment of bankruptcy, behaved very badly the year before or shagged a commoner. If I had to guess the true content of the trip I would suspect that it is simply several impossibly crammed days of over eating, drinking, watching bad rugby, singing morose Scottish loyalist folk tunes with huge doses of mutual back slapping. It has absolutely no interest to me what so ever. Whether I could be totally honest, when I eventually have to decline the future invite, is hard to call. “I am sorry I can’t attend this year or any other, because the thought of spending more than one hour with pompous, arrogant, patronising Scotsmen, listening to banal anecdotes of previous gloriously amusing weekends, Philip fussing around like a mother hen yet simultaneously and accidentally having his right hand in your wallet, consuming too much rich, yet shite food, guzzling crap, flat real ale, having only four hours sleep on a lumpy unforgiving mattress, pigging down the biggest, greasiest, dustbin lid of a local breakfast and finally the fond but meaningless, transparent, obviously fake and embarrassing, farewell hugs fills my entire body with unmitigated dread. In fact I would rather have my eyes poked out with hot rusty nails whilst having a student doctor check out my prostrate. ‘No thanks’.  But the tradition, for the past twenty years, of meeting old friends does have an appeal for many people and it should not be criticised or mocked. It strengthens old bonds, reinforces historical, proper, decent and acceptable social values and continues the myth that the Scots genuinely ‘like’ the English. Get a fuckin’ life!