‘Things I Wish People Would Say to Me’

Me Minding My Own Business Obviously

Here’s a list of things which I wish people would say to me:

‘Max, what will we name our kids? Hieronymous? Pushkin? Somerset? And exactly what would we call it if its a boy? ’

‘Max where did you get that blazer from, is it really from Aquascutum’s current season? You are quite the style guru aren’t you?‘

‘Max, now that we’re alone together I just wanted to ask how you managed to get your nails so delightfully refined and cared. Is it a manicure?’

‘Max, now I know I’m really annoyed at you but I still cannot bring myself to discredit you in public. You simply are the most charming personage I have ever met.’

Pardon me gentlefolk, its just the way I was raised.

‘Shitstorm’

Another calamity occurred to me recently, and one completely different to my previous disasters .

To my horror of horrors I swore in the public the day before yesterday. 

Breaking into the calm serene air of a delightful summer’s afternoon in Kensington Gardens (one of the most beautiful parks in London) the cry of “Oh no, shit, oh God you bastard” rang out amongst the happy mothers and children around me as painfully as the squeal of a repressed fart flapping out of one’s arse just at the moment you kneel down to beg forgiveness before the Almighty on a Sunday. But at least it didn’t smell. Yet.

Cowering uncontrollably under the sky (my withered hands covering my shaking head rather pathetically) I did believe the heavens would crack apart in disapproval. But of course, as with most of my life predictions, this did not happen and my epic imagination was put firmly back into place as a disapproving mother simply covered the ears of her child and glaring in my direction called me a ‘rude little prick’. Touche, my dear woman.

Now, if this was one of my academic essays that I submitted to my Oxford tutor a couple of years ago, I would preface this story with an eloquent and entertaining explanation of cause and effect, its mechanics (dur?) and the philosophy, before going on to describe the details of the particular incident on which the said process exerted itself. However, right now I am really not feeling that profound and this is the internet and your time is short, so I will will adapt to your time constraints.

Basically I shat myself.

I sincerely doubt that the grounds of Kensington Gardens had ever been treated to quite the type of manure as was released that day, but if the standard of the manure is judged by its smell then I do believe I was delivering quality – so you can understand why I was absolutely emphatic in my coarse exclamation.

Now we all go through transitional periods in our lives, those times thorughly stained with the often chaotic space between the before and the next, those times fraught with the discomfort, the pain and the torment of our own irresolution. Blaa. Well let me tell you dear reader, in my cream shirt, my brilliant tweed jacket and severly browned trousers – in that space between well-dressedness and stinking like absolute crap - I felt thouroughly unresolved myself.

 Needless to say, I did not manage to get the numbers of any MILFs that day  (I would say that was quite a prudent move on their part).

“That Chilled Out Shit”

I don't surf, I just pose

Having fully recovered from my recent disastrous party I have now decided to take myself off to Newquay, where I thought I would be able to contemplate the new developments in my life (and also how I can best remove the phrase ‘You Square Cunt’ which still sits on my forehead; N.B. – for those not in the know, someone kindly indellibly penned this accusation to my face whilst I was passed out on the floor at my own party last weekend).

I was promised that getting out here would definitely give me some time to ‘chill out’ and that is indeed what I feel me and my friends are doing excellently right now. Having recovered from my wonder at seeing my friend use his incredible origami skills to create a cigarette (why not just buy some from the shop?!), I am now currently sitting in a lounge and watching my friend take another thin piece of paper and put some incredibly green tobacco leaves into the concoction (they must have been really mouldy) before rolling the whole thing into an almighty verdant cone.

N.B. – I must note that I for one definitely feel that serving one’s guests anything that mouldy is definitely something of a faux pas; subsequently, I did tell him that he really did not need to give me anything that he felt was too different from what he would usually serve (for his own sake of course) but he just looked at me rather funnily and said he always served this kind of ’shit’ to his guests. Charming.

I guess that after he said this my face must have looked rather perplexed because he then looked me straight in the pupils and drawled ‘relax maaan’ before passing a flame under the tip of the immensely fat brocolli finger that was now lounging horizontally out of one corner of his mouth.

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We are definitely chilled out now. After having been informed by my friend that we are actually smoking a ‘weed’ plant (which is quite easy to get hold of apparently – and there I was thinking that it was some kind of mythical flower which could only grow on the hair of people known as ‘Rastafarians’ – shame on father for misinforming me!) I now feel that I am a lot more enlightened about culture and the way things are; I can totally realise why you would want to eat crisps and watch TV all day whilst taking a sickie off work; I can also really understand where those easy-going ‘brothers’ in the Malibu adverts are coming from; I can’t say that I really want to go out and do anything constructive but I do feel that things will be at peace today, and that if I stay inside and soley watch re-runs of ‘Only Fools and Horses’ on UKGold this will only further my path to inner enlightenment.

As you might have gathered I didn’t actually go surfing that weekend – I just posed on the beach with a board and then rolled another fatty and kept it real; but that was some real chilled out shit homies!

“You got GHB’d you Square Cunt”

God have mercy on these delinquants...

The party was going so well. I had made the most concerted effort in providing all of my guests with many different kinds of sandwiches, lemonade, as well as furnishing the discourse everywhere with the highest quality polite conversation possible. To get my conversational skills up to the high standard that I reached on that eventful night had of course taken a good few weeks of study (for it is of course mandatory to always have a good many topics ready for when one is plunged into such a chaotic situation as a garden party in England – at an event such as this it is surely a given that one must have an entertaining subject for everyone , for what could be more embarrassing and disgraceful than recycling previous conversation?!).

I had thoroughly researched and understood the basics of fifty coversational subjects ranging from the thrills of sailing boat building, to cake making (for the ladies ) to the delights of public transport (my personal favourite – I must boast that I had hardly any research to do here, having already made myself an expert in this fascinating field through my keen observation of the developments of the transport service in London over the past few years).

So it is quite clear that my planning for this event was not at fault. And neither was the guest list for that matter – I invited the very best of my aquaintance who turned up in an orderly fashion and were dressed appropriately (and do not think me too arrogant when I say that I do believe they were absolutely bowled over with my scintillating chatter).

But there is always one who spoils the party; the gatecrasher ‘Brad’ turned up at after ten pm in completely the wrong attire and was swaying in quite a peculiar fashion (NB – furthermore, the commencement of the party was at 7.30 pm, the sandwiches were served at 8pm and most of the lemonade was finished by 9.30 – he had missed the best part of the evening!) Dressed in some kind of informal clothing (which I later found out was the clothing of a unambitious and lazy sect of western society who are most commonly found to be ´surfing maan´), he immediately drank the 6 cans of beer that he had brought with him and then got started on the lemonade before denouncing it as “totally weak shit” to yours truly.

Now aside from his complete rudeness, the fact that he was not on the guest list presented another problem for me as I just did not know quite what to say to him – I had planned to have 50 topics of conversation for my 50 guests, not 51! I was in quite a palaver as you can imagine and (horror of horrors), had to piece together two subjects that I had previously talked about to some other guests in quite an offhand and haphazard fashion. I can only surmise that it was because I had to make up my conversation in this unplanned way (but what else was I supposed to do?!) that he looked incredibly bored and even had the gall to call me a “socially inept fucking retard”at my own garden party.

To make matters worse, it was around this time that a number of the guests, including me, started to feel rather strange ( I honestly thought at first that somebody might have been naughty enough to put some Pimm’s into the Schweppe’s Lemonade); I for one got into this very unmanagable state of euphoria where I really genuinely felt that Deubussy’s Nocturnes (which had been playing perfectly comfortably for most of the evening) simply just didn’t cut the mustard anymore. I needed something harder, something more uptempo, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what.

I mentioned this to Brad whose subsequent smile was accompanied with a reach into his pocket for a scratched Compact Disc with the phrase ‘Dirty Sweaty Fucking Electro Classics‘ scrawled over it in indellible pen. I really did not think that my record player would be able to take this format but Brad kindly showed me that my music unit actually had one of these CD playing functions (imagine that!) and popped the disc in for me, whilst confiding to me quietly that ‘this fat shit is going to burn the house down.’

I later found out that this was actually a colloquial expression and that he wasn’t actually being literal, thank god.

By the time the disc had started playing I was ready for it and so was everyone else. Jumping on top of the garden table I toppled it over and with a rather high-pitched yelp spilled the rest of the sandwiches on some of my lady friends who were standing nearby. I immediately attempted to apologise but found that it was quite hard to make the words come up into my head and fall out of my mouth in an orderly fashion. Quite embarrassing. Luckily for me my lady friends found it painfully funny and tried to tell me so except that being in the middle of laughing, dancing, and waving uncontrollably they found it rather hard to do even such a simple task.

You can imagine what a mess my house was in after the party but trust me, it was nothing in comparison to the chaos my conscience found itself in after I realised what the message indellibly penned on my forehead referred to (‘You got GHB’d you square cunt. Brad x’).

No wander all those ladies were running away from me.

“Hot Girls, Audi TT’s and Hot Tubs”

You meet me on a hot summers afternoon, mid-way through a day’s vacation to Maidenhead. Right now I am frantically nursing my teeth, for the ride up here, although in an Audi-TT, was less than luxurious for yours truly. Automatically drawing the short straw on absolutely everything as I was sharing the vehicle with two incredibly built professional boxers, the ride was far more of a discomfort than I had expected. Having been stuffed into the back of the car by the two burly men in such a way that I managed to spectacularly fly headfirst over the front seats, I eventually ended my trajectory crash landing face first into the floor at the back of the car, expertly nailing my teeth firmly into the carpet. Yum. Somewhat discomforting you might think, but with my dentures firmly anchoring my face to the bottom of the car at least I had managed to discover an innovative new way of getting out of wearing that dratted seatbelt.

But all this pales in significance when you understand that the reason that I am in Maidenhead is not to go gallavanting around England in fast cars but to take pictures of some lovely English ladies in the countryside. Quite a delightful project don’t you think? I thought so too, for when my friend called me up and asked me if I wanted to take some pictures of some ‘proper well fine ladies’ out in the country I could hardly say no. I had just been reading a few volumes of some of our most celebrated pastoral and romantic poets and at the prospect of this my mind was immediately filled with cascades of wondrous visions; amidst the great green rolling hills of England my camera would capture the beauty of the female form celebrating itself and the natural world around her in a breathing landscape of brilliant colour and motion; there would be nymphs, there would be rejoicing, and nature and man would be one! (well I must note aesthetically at least, unfortunately one can make no definite statements on one’s art actually effecting the real-world).

Or so I thought. I can only say that I was rather surprised when I got to the destination and realised that the location where these wondrous images were to be brought to life was a house in a Maidenhead cul-de-sac which had two giant hot tubs rather ominously frothing away in the back garden. Whilst picking my way through the collection of white plastic deck chairs,  bottle tops and crates of beer (which had amazingly managed to be so numerous that they were hiding most of the grass in the garden!), my friend then excitedly informed me that I was to be shooting these ‘fine’ ladies for the ‘Hunting for Hunnies’ website. Dear readers, my jaw absolutely dropped. Immediately I saw that it was going to be very very hard to convey the sentiments of what I had originally intended.

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Once I had been roused back from my black-out to a decent state of consciousness (for I must not mince my words, this knowledge came as a truly frightful shock to me), I am satisfied that I did maintain my professionalism enough to swallow my doubts and take the job in hand (though it was severly tested when three ladies walked in wearing things I had only ever seen in department store catalogues – bikinis!)

I also believe I was quite lucky on that day for even though I had tied a blindfold around my eyes so I couldn’t see anything at all  (purely a matter of principle – I felt that as I was not courting any of the ladies it was not proper for me to see them in such a state of undress), through an amazing combination of experience, astute judgement and sheer luck, I was able to position the camera in such a way that I managed to get all of the desired pictures for the client, even though I was completely blind. Now although one does not want to blow one’s trumpet too often, I really do think that that is definitely the mark of a great photographer. Furthermore, I must admit that for me, the day (although I did not quite realise my aesthetic ambitions) was a real professional triumph. For as a photographer there are simply many things that are out of our control and when confronted with the unexpected, it is for the good of the client and one’s professional reputation one must bite one’s lip, set one’s doubts aside and jolly well dig in to get what your employer wants. It really believe it is one’s professional duty.

Here is my artistic failure:

‘Skank Bitches’

Being the complete posh bastard that I am, my delicate morals are of course rather prone to being incredibly shocked by the outrageous things that I see happen in my day to day life as a photographer. Why I took on this mantle in the beginning I have no idea why, but being the stiff upper lipped professional that I am, I am resolute in seeing the bloody job through till it is well and truly done, even if that means that I am exposed to such lewd acts as seeing a woman massaging a rapper’s penis whilst he is onstage performing to his ‘homies’.

It is not often that I am thrilled by the experience of modern music – in fact in the few musical discoveries that I have bravely embarked upon, I have found out that Oasis sounded as scummy and uncouth as the north actually is, and that dance music if played to the volume that the genre’s champion’s deem ‘phat’, actually acts as a gravitational force  which brings unruly youths outside my front door demanding to know where the ‘rave’ is!

So with this in mind dear reader, you will be rather surprised to know that I was indeed backstage at a ‘Ghostface Killah’ concert (a main ‘boy’ out of the infamous Wu-Tang Clan, or so I’m told) some nights ago, and privy to some rather sordid affairs.

It was about the time of the night when my man Ghostface aired the undisuputed Wu-Tang classic ‘Ice Cream‘ (a metaphorical track about the different ‘flavours’ of women no less) and all of the females in the audience turned rather raucous – in particular this young lady at the front who was waving her humungous juggs around in quite a conspicuous fashion. Obviously she had neglected to pack her sports bra when she decided to go out for the night, and then decided to exploit  her forgetfulness by hanging her two straining giant watermelons over the barrier till they were stretching down a foot away from the floor. Talk about a poor show, wot wot! If my eyes were goggling you can imagine what Mr. Ghostface’s were like (and probably not because he found it attractive, I hasten to add). Suffice to say Mr. Ghostface completely neglected this young female, showing everyone that if you are that dirty, even drunk off your face rappers who are prone to  hold their dick onstage, whilst rhyming about ‘pussy’ and ‘bitches’, will not go near your skank arse.

But that did not stop the poor lady, for after five songs of mammory hanging she did eventually manage to get herself onstage at long last  – at which point she was surrounded andcaptured by one of Ghostface’s supporting rappers  (although I’m not sure whether she minded, to be honest).

Now, I believe in some countries that upon meeting someone, sometimes it is customary to shake ones hand, or in other lands kiss the other on the cheek. However, the other night was a complete revelatory learning experience as I found out that when meeting a member of the opposite sex onstage at a hip-hop show it is quite normal for the female to grab the male member rather hard and squeeze it violently. This astounding greeting act was soon reciprocated by her male friend who immediately stuck his hand down her trousers and left it there for quite a long time.  After five minutes of saying hello they quickly went to the VIP room backstage , where I couldn’t see anything, but I do assume that they carried on welcoming each other on in their own rather strange ways. I really can’t quite believe what happened myself, I really can’t.

If only my father were alive to hear these stories, I’m sure he would be very amused. However my dear readers, at the moment I have only you.

Until next time,

Your faithful correspondent,

Mr. M Colson, esq.

“Fuck Off”

“Fuck off you prick, allowit, get that fucking camera away from me, I fucking just finished a fight innit!”

You can imagine how sternly I looked at the cage-fighter after he had uttered these outrageous vulgarities. There are certain ways of acting when in society, and throwing out perjoratives without so much as a thought for the feelings of the other person is certainly not the way to go about oiling the wheels of polite discourse when one is with other people!

So picture the scene – I, a polite gentleman from the western part of London, am now (rather unwantedly) the centre of attention in a room full of cage-fighters, backstage at a ‘Cage-Rage’ event in the capital. And really, I’m quite annoyed beyond words to be quite honest. For I had honestly never heard such terms used in such a manner and directed towards myself quite so aggressively.

I must point out though that it was not like I had never heard such terms before in my life. On numerous occasions when me and my fellows retired to the smoking room after lunch, yes we would engage in a bit of informal coarseness (as a joke between friends I must add), and yes we would wink at each other when talking about the fairer sex, and throw in a few expletives here and there, but it is important to note tha such informalities would always be kept for the ears of one’s closest peers. So you can imagine my shock at hearing the before mentioned sentiments from a stranger!

Now, I was just about to begin giving this cage-fighter a good piece of my mind when I actually took a good look at him. Immediately, I felt that this was a matter that should handled a little more delicately than I had previously envisioned. For in front of me stood a lean adrenalined piece of muscle, unblinkingly looking in my direction with a stare that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a pouncing tiger. There is an expletive beginning with ‘F’ that I could write here to describe exactly what I was thinking at the time. However I think we have already had far too much of that language contaminating this post already and so dear readers I will leave it all to your capable imaginations to fill in the gap. So I just said this:

“Please dear sir, don’t hurt me…I’m just a photographer.’

There was the most awful pause after I said this, and I was quite ready for his fist to come crashing through my cranium in the most brutal way, before someone actually sniggered and then suddenly the whole room burst out into laughter all around. The noise was deafening, I cannot describe how it hurt my poor ears. I did not know where to look, I was so embarassed. You know when you feel so embarassed that you lose control of your ability to speak proper English? That is what happened to me then. Stumbling through my excuses and looking nowhere but on the floor immediately by my feet, I fled the room where I could reflect on what happened without the threat of anymore soul-destroying social embarassment.

I clearly have a lot to learn about life.

Yours,

Mr M Colson esq.