Mental illness + hardline religion = Grade A bullshit.
These things always start innocently enough don't they... Looking for a drummer many moons ago, auditioned one hairy, rhythmically-challenged protazoa after another when a very small, shy, speccy girl walks in. Well, she can't be any worse than the rest of them... let's try...

Well position me at an angle of 45.6 degrees if she wasn't a bloody amazing drummer! Somewhat taken by the novelty value of this tiny, meek drumming whirlwind the other guitarist and I immediately decided she was in.

We began to notice a few things... She had a very rare eye condition that meant she couldn't carry bits of her drum kit around in case her eyes burst. Apparently it also meant she couldn't go horse riding - presumably this was to add validity? It also explained, we were told, why she was so small, skinny and weak as she couldn't exercise for fear of going blind (steady now!). Hmm... well never mind, she might be right on that one so other guitarist starts lugging her drumkit around in his Micra.

Next up she stopped being able to pay for rehearsals as she was skint. Fair enough, we've all been there, we'll all chip in a little bit extra. Only thing is, by this point she'd got a job at the same company I was at, so I knew exactly how much she was earning.

By this point her meekness was thawing a little bit. Thawing into depression and the occasional bout of being anti-social. Not, however, anti-social enough to keep quiet about it to anyone within earshot. We had reached the point where working and muso-ing with someone means you spend a lot of time talking to them, therefore the more... ahem... challenging mythology starts to come out.

"Hey, A, why are you poking that limp salad around a plate, you're not veggie are you?"
"No, I'm Catholic. I can't eat meat on a Friday."*
"Wow... that's quite hard line. What about fish?"
"Oh nooooooooo, that's even worse! You can't eat fish on a Friday or you'll go to Hell!"
"O..K.."

Now, Catholics are known for many eccentric behaviours including eating fish on a Friday. This one is so well established that in my heavily Catholic current workplace we all look forward to Fishy Friday. Maybe it's some Polish sub-clause that no-one knew about.

Things got better though with the victimisation stories. Apparently everybody in her school - teachers included - hated her and made fun of her. Then it spread to everyone else in her life. Not only that, her sister and the people in the band are the only people she's ever been able to trust. o_O She was, in fact able to trust us enough to tell us that she was born with severe cerebral palsy that meant she couldn't move as a baby. It wasn't until her mother prayed for her that she was miraculously healed. The doctors couldn't explain it and she was a medial marvel, but because it happened in Poland no-one kept any records on it "because Poland is like that. They probably sold the data to the US or something."

Then we got into the full works - "I don't think I want to live any more. I'm going to kill myself."

Now... the first time anyone says this to you in all seriousness you tend to take it seriously - thus a one in the morning trip down to Tower Bridge with my wife on the phone to the police while we were driving trying to make sure A was scooped up before she did something silly. Various memebers of the band closing in on central London to try and reach her a phone call from the police. Oh shit! Why didn't we listen? Right, what have they got to say?

"We've picked her up, she says she's fine and had no intention of doing anything."

That was enough to curtail most musical endeavours for the forseeable future but not before one more gold plated lie and more stupid generosity on my part.

A is moving house and needs to take her pet guinea pig with her. It's a short bus ride through part of SE London. Apparently I need to drive down from the very fringe of north London to come and take her guinea pig as "the cold air of the bus will kill him."

A Guinea Pig. Descended from Andean cavies. That is to say it could happily live in the foothills of the Andes, yet a bus ride through Lewisham on a mild summery day would kill it.

I put the aircon on full blast for the duration.
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Thu 13 Jan 2011, 22:37, 2 replies)

You poor fucker...
...you had to go to Lewisham?!
( Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Thu 13 Jan 2011, 23:58, closed)

Worse, I actually LIVED there for a few years...
I can remember a time when it were all yellow police incident boards round there...
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Fri 14 Jan 2011, 21:57, closed)