Cocky Cock Made To Look Like What He Is
{whoops, got a little long again - read it it if you want, don't if you don't - either way don't get on my case about it}

About 40 students from my year in high school went on an outward-boundy-type trip to Snowdon (a mountain-ette in Wales) for a week once. You know the kind of thing - extreme gradient rambling, abseiling, kayaking, 'trust games', chucking sheep turds at each other and the like.

I remember now that one lad, who had been a total cunt to me throughout high school thus far asked me to give up my place on it so that he could take it and join a handful of his idiot mates who were going. I didn't fancy the idea of the trip much, to be honest, but told him to get stuffed on general principle and to my amazement he was honestly hurt - stupid fucker - what did he expect? 'Oh yeah, I just love being treated like a twat for years by some tit whose red cells outnumber his neurons - please, keep in touch after we leave school so you can have dibs on my first born as well.' Dickhead.*

One example of the trust games was to stand on a wall and fall backward into the arms of your schoolmates - since I didn't trust even the teachers at my school (two of whom were fucking on the trip - I think it's compulsory), I flatly refused to take part in it. The youth hostel-employed leader was fairly nonplussed by this. 'Do you not trust your own classmates then?', obvously trying to shame me into participating. 'I can count those I trust without running out of fingers on one hand mate, and none of them are anywhere near this place.' is what I would have liked to have said but I was fairly uncommunicative as a teenager and settled instead on a simple, earnest 'No'. The cajoling stopped right there. I got a fair few dark looks from the girls for days, meaning that any possible fumblings had gone right out of the window for the duration, but fuck 'em - I'm gay now anyway. The lads didn't seem to care very much - must be a bloke thing.

Of all the activities I enjoyed the kayaking most (partly because I've always had a thing for water and partly because the instructor was a good laugh), but the event which made it most for me was one trashmouthed pillock named Mark getting a richly-deserved comeuppance from, of all people, the French. I forget his last name, but it was never that important to me. Anyway, staying in a youth hostel, there were a number of european groups and families staying also and one French family were playing table tennis in the common room whilst a few of us, Mark X included, were playing cards or something.

Naturally, the family were speaking in French and Mark kept piping up loudly with stuff like 'I'm trying to concentrate here', 'Talk English or don't talk', and other such witless bollocks on the assumption that they didn't understand him. They didn't bat an eye through a dozen or so of these jibes then in the middle of one of them, they all switched to perfectly legible, intelligently-delivered English whilst still not even visibly registering Mark's presence, let alone his shocking (if characteristic) rudeness. Mark shut the fuck up immediately and the expression on his face kept me warm that night. One of few times I've ever looked at the French and thought 'Good work there' - twas a righteous put-down administered with aplomb, dignity and style - full marks :)

There is a stronger enduring memory of that trip though. The Pet Shop Boys were at number one with 'It's a Sin' at the time and one of the girls had a tape on which she had recorded it over and over and fucking over again and played it incessantly at volume. I didn't mind the song so much previously (hey, I was 15) but I hated it and her both by the time we went home. Whenever I hear the song now it reminds me of her - an experience I could easily live without, shrill little slag that she was.

Ah, one last thing, and the only thing that impressed the hell out of me on that trip was whilst we were abseiling on this mini-mount by the side of the road. There was a group of squaddies around this big ol'rock across the road from us, and the rock had a bit that overhung the grass it was sat on - these squaddies were taking turns at clinging to the underside of this hang doing push-ups upside-down. I think of that even today and still think 'wow'.

* To be fair, this lad and I went to the same sixth form college after school and got to know each other a little better, so in the end he wasn't quite so much a dickhead as he was in school.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Mon 11 Dec 2006, 14:01, Reply)