Contracting Ginger
Roskilde Festival, Denmark a few years back. 2 AM. Nice warm summers evening.

A group of us are sat round a stereo in the camping area, basking in the glow of the nearby electric lights. As you do at Roskilde, we’d got chatting to a group of Danes and were busy downing strong, weird Scandinavian spirits and sharing some of the strongest grass I’ve ever had the pleasure to fuck my system up with.

One of my mates, Sean, declares with absolute authority that he needs to go for a piss. He staggers to his feet, joint hanging out his gob, and weaves towards the perimeter fence in the style of a man who was being pushed too and froe by a really fucking angry poltergeist.

We forget about Sean, and after another twenty minutes or so one of the Danes – a big brutish fella who looked like Hagar the Horrible in a Metallica t-shirt, slinks off to hose the bushes too.

We carry on drinking and smoking, and just as we’re about to come up with the formula for a special elixir to cure all known diseases, Hagar the Horrible returns at a lolloping run: “Your friend!” he says in this strange harsh-edged accent, we could see his face screwed up in concentration, trying to convert the Danish in his head into English for us to understand. We stared back at him, nonplussed, the weed was so strong we felt like he was communicating with us from a parallel dimension. Then he said: “Your flame haired friend! Come!” And he went lolloping off again into the night.

This was a bit of a turn up for the books. Sean was a bit of a wanker, but we were all pretty damn sure he wasn’t a ginge. Surely someone would’ve noticed before and ripped the piss out of him relentlessly for it? A few of us, fighting back the narcotics and alcohol, stagger to our feet and follow our new Danish friend into the night.

Sean – ginger??? I just couldn’t quite grasp the concept. Then I had a thought, now I’m no scientist but: Maybe all those chemicals in what we’re smoking and drinking had altered his DNA (or summit) and made him a fucking GINGE!!! Then the angry poltergeist grabbed me firmly behind my knees and started making my legs move in an incredibly fucked up way, like I had no bones in my legs. After a bit of walking like I’d just shat my pants, I found myself stood with the others surrounding a prostrate figure on the ground with his pants round his ankles and his bare arse mooning the moon. It was Sean.

Sean looks up at us, and then I realize there’s smoke coming off his head. “Dunno how I did it, but I managed to set fire to my own fucking hair while I was unbuckling my trousers! And I lost my fucking doobie! And where the fuck's my booze? I had a bottle of fucking booze! I did have a bottle of fucking booze didn't-fucking-I???” He says.

Hagar the Horrible points: “Flame hair!” with a big shit-eating grin and starts laughing like an eighteen wheeler truck turning over. Then he makes a sort of explosion sound above his own head with added crackling sound effects as way of explanation.

Sean continues patting at his locks that now resembled a pubic wig in a large patch on top of his bonce, grumbling to himself about having mud stuck under his foreskin and piss running down his legs.

We turn as one and start walking away. Another one of the English lads, my mate Dave, looks at me and says: “You were thinking what I was thinking, weren’t ya?”

I nod: “Yeah, for one awful fucking moment there I thought we were all gonna contract ginger…”

“’S a worry – do you think Sean will be ok?” asked Dave.

I gave Dave’s question my full consideration: “Fuck him. Now where the fuck did we leave our fucking tent?”
( SpankyHanky, Thu 25 Feb 2010, 14:54, 2 replies)

I laughed really loudly
about 6 times while reading this. Ta.
(Wagane, Thu 25 Feb 2010, 18:15, closed)

This had me laughing like a twat
Best post this week by far!
(Irish Lobster, Thu 25 Feb 2010, 23:26, closed)