This kinda counts as a one line answer..so soz.
This has happened a few times, but the result is always the same.

Whenever people in my family / friends meet up for whatever reason, there is a lot of drinking involved. Like most families' get-togethers there will be a wide smattering of people of all ages and persuasions, spacking around whichever house we’re relinquishing of it's beer and food supplies...sorry, visiting.

Bizarrely, at these ‘parties’, it’s usually the kitchen which ends up being the designated smoking area (I know, logical eh?). I usually end up in there too – I don’t smoke but that’s invariably where the interesting people hang out, and the ‘dull as arse-water’ folk will find a telly somewhere else and slump in front of it.

As you are all no doubt painfully aware, whatever the topic of conversation slithers onto, I usually have some pointless twaddle to comment about it and before long I’ll be launching full-on into hip-thrusting, ‘anecdote mode’.

I have my family and friends around me, and we’re all pissed, so of course I’m pretty confident. I know which funny buttons to press and before long I will be running the show, regaling everybody with tales of my adventures; the ups, the downs, the women, the scams and the beer-based frolics. I will have the audience in the palm of my hand, laughing and lapping up every word. The beer flows, I get more animated and 'in the zone', the noise level increases and everybody is glad that I’m there to entertain them, livening up an otherwise crudd-hole bore-fest into a generally decent ‘boozy do’.

Life is good, and then it happens….

My mum will sneak in to the proceedings like a soap opera-obsessed stealth submarine to seize the slightest gasp between laughter and say one line…


“Stop showing off, Pooflake”


Everybody turns to me. I am teleported to a time when I was 5 years old and used to jump up and down shouting ‘look at me!, look at me!’.

My jaw drops, my eyes sink into my head and my cheeks drop to my knees – It feels like my body has shrunk by about 4ft. I point my right big toe into the ground, twist my leg and sway my head from side to side.

“Awwwwwww, mum”

*cue sniggers from everybody in the room*

My credibility is shot to buggery shit

The thing is – it’s the unchallengable ‘telling off’ comment…if you say ‘I’m not showing off’ then you look like a proper twat starting a crappy argument with your mum about ‘showing off’, (much to the hilarity of the people you were showing off in front of). It only makes things worse. However, If you say nothing then it’s a total admission that you were showing off in the first place and that you need your mum there to put you in your place.

Either way – you’re boned

The conversation is killed. Dead. Someone does that little cough, says ‘anywaaaaaay’ and trys to re-ignite the spark but it’s no use.

The party is over.

length? normally a good 20 minutes before the clanger is dropped
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 21 Sep 2007, 10:52, Reply)