Some Of My Most Embarrassing Moments

If you read through some of my offerings here you would think that my life has all been one long tragedy. However, the truth of the matter is that my life has been littered with some of the funniest events which I really could not make up.

Way back in 1969, I ventured into a professional recording studio for the first time. I sat down with my acoustic guitar on my knee and started to perform one of my own songs.

Suddenly the studio producer came out of the control room and asked me to stop. What he wanted to tell me was that it would be better to first record the guitar, no vocal. Then after that, we could record the vocal over the guitar part. What he actually said was…

“So what we want you to do is just put the guitar down.”

Taking what he said quite literally, I put the guitar down on the floor. He stopped dead in his tracks back to the control room and looked at me with incredulity.

“ No, not put the bleedin' guitar down on the floor. We want to put the guitar down on tape. We want you to play the bloody guitar, but don’t sing at the same time.”

Of course, I felt a fool, but I contend to this day that what he said was highly ambiguous. It was so easily misunderstood by a fifteen-year-old novice.

Around about the same time a friend got married and invited me to his wedding. During the evening I met a beautiful young girl and when the evening came to a close I escorted her home.

She invited me into her parent's home and we sat on a sofa chatting for a while. We decided to call it a night at about one o’clock in the morning. As I got up to leave I asked her for a date the next day, well the same day as it was already the early hours of Sunday morning. She agreed and suggested I return to her house at five o’clock if that wasn’t too early.

Now to my mind, she could not have possibly meant in the afternoon since that was a more than respectable time to meet up for a date. Ergo, I presumed she meant that later that morning. Instead of clarifying that point I just went along with it.

The walk home from the girl’s house was about an hour across very muddy fields. I got home at two in the morning and cleaned myself up a little and went to bed, setting the alarm for four o’clock. That meant all I was going to get was two hours of sleep. The only defence I can claim for my misunderstanding was a touch too much alcohol. It was all plain old youthful stupidity or an excess of alcohol. I'll choose the booze as an excuse if it's all the same to you.

Three hours later, after just two hours of kip and another slog across muddy fields, I stood at the door of the target of my affection, knocking loudly. Suddenly I saw curtains in a bedroom twitching and what looked like it was maybe her father scowling and glaring down at me. However, nobody came to the door.

It slowly dawned on me that she had meant five o’clock Sunday afternoon. As discretely as I could, off I trudged once again across the muddy fields.

Later that day, at five pm, I once again arrived at her doorstep. My new heart’s desire tentatively opened the door and ushered me in. “ Ok “ just go through to the back room she whispered “ My dad is in a really bad mood as some muppet was banging on the front door at about five o’clock in the morning. You wouldn’t believe what idiots we get around here.” I never plucked up the courage to confess that the idiotic muppet in question was me!

Not too many years later my maternal grandmother sadly passed away. On the day of the funeral, I found myself inside the church waiting for the mass to begin. I sat next to my elder brother quietly making small talk. “I went to see Barry at the weekend,” he told me. “Barry who?” I asked. He looked at me in disbelief.

“ What?”

“Barry who?” I said with more emphasis, thinking he hadn't heard me.

“ Barry Island in Wales, not a person you idiot.” He snarled.

At that, we both started corpsing. Corpsing is when you break into uncontrollable laughter at a highly inappropriate moment.

As we were attracting unwanted attention we had to get up and leave the church. Outside we managed to get the laughter under control and agreed to go back into the church separately. He went first, me after.

As I sat down, we both sneaked a wryful look at each other, and that was enough to set us off laughing all over again. My lovely mother and her relatives were not amused I can tell you. In the end, I went back out and stayed out.

And so to one of the funniest people I ever met, my mother. That woman could not tell a joke if she tried, but she was a very funny woman. Mostly the humour same from her innocence, as I will demonstrate to you now.

One Christmas a few of my family were celebrating Christmas Day at my sister's house. Whilst waiting for the feast there was lots of laughing and jesting going back and forth across the lounge.

My mother asked my younger brother about his new house and where exactly it was located. When he told her, a lippy nephew chuckled as he piped up

"Ahhh, that's where all the rent boys live." My mother looked very serious as she announced " Well it wasn't where my rent man lived."

"No Nana, these rent boys don't collect the rent." said my nephew.

"Oh well, if the rent man didn't collect the rent in my day they got the sack."

"Noooooo, Nanaaaaa........! Have a day off will you!"

Mum was from a totally different generation, too innocent to realise that a rent boy is a young male prostitute. Realising this, my nephew asked me to explain to my mother what a rent boy was. " No way Jose, you got yourself into this bloody mess, you get yourself out of it," I replied. I have never seen anybody squirm about so much trying to dig himself out of a hole of his own making.

I well remember once asking my mother why she had such a big family, there were eight of us. She stared away with one of those pensive looks. After a moment's thought, she simply said, " Well we didn't have television in those days."

"I see," I said " And your mother had sixteen children, mum?"

"No TV, radio or newspapers." was her answer. In other words, they made their own fun. That was the pragmatic generation my mother was born into.

These are but a few of a great many funny moments and happy memories I have I have experienced over the past sixty years or so. It has been a life of enormous fun with a great many lighter moments. I may be tempted to recall some more of them over the next few days. In the meantime, thank you for reading this journey into my hilarious past and remember, get busy laughing or get busy crying. I know which I would rather do.