The Day The Clown Blinked

So I've sat most of today, absolutely loathing this girl at work who, nominally, is my friend but at work we just don't get on because she asks a lot of open ended sarcastic questions that imply you are failing at your job. Actually what I've done today for large parts is just endlessly watch this video two guys made about Penguin. I didn't watch it for any other reason than it gave me a break from working on my epic 2001 Youtube playlist, but also because it's kind of interesting to see things as they really are, not as my tiny blonde permanent tanned 8ight year old mind would like them to be. For some reason no one seems to have made one about Kilwinning, the place I went to school, which is fair enough I suppose, but I wouldn't mind some sort of visual representation of the place for the sake of accuracy. This visual representation would explain something to me - why when I sketch mentally about the place, I'm always miserable, and it's grey, and I'm depressed and getting an Indian burn or talking to pimped out drug dealers, and yet when it came time to leave and move back to Penguin, where in my mind at least I was happier than at any time in my life, I cried like a baby. I don't think is a logical path to take - it may have had something to do with sophistication though. You see the thinking in Scotland was, and probably still is, somewhat dismissive of outsiders. I love Scotland, I should say that because I've made it sound otherwise, but certainly you wouldn't want to stand out. I went to school with a kid called Martin who looked a bit like AC Slater from Saved By The Bell is he had a flattop haircut. He was quietly spoken with a slight stammer that did nothing to knock his confidence. We were queuing for Yorkie bars in the grim countenance that passed for our recess snack hut, a cupboard from which harassed middle aged women would tell you exactly what they thought of your coupons. Since I was a nervous, slightly fidgety child I would often impart stories with exaggerated punchlines or over impressive social boasts, but in that case, I definitely had a story to tell, that I had been invited to a party, at night, in Kilwinning, with girls and probably a scary movie. Maybe even punch! Martin barely even took his eyes off his Peppermint Aero to tell me it sounded shit, and then walked off. I think that's the difference between Scotland and Penguin. If I had played the party down, he'd have said I was an idiot for not looking forward to it and then walked off. In Penguin, you never had to worry about the deeper meaning of anything, you never had to worry about being put in your place. At least that's how I remember it, although I'm sure it's nonsense, the innocent thoughts of a child - I mean, if you fell off the flying fox, I'm sure someone was discussing what an idiot you were at the bakery the next day...

I can't remember the exact circumstances surrounding the party. The girl who was hosting was sort of an Elizabeth Berkeley clone if Elizabeth Berkeley had more acne, more untameable hair and fainted in the library once a month. That's my main memory of our party hostess, she was always fainting in ever more dramatic swoony circumstances. I think, in fact I know, she wanted to winch my best friend, and I was sort of surplus to requirements in the whole situation. But hey, I'd brought punch, what was he bringing? There's a possibility it was a Halloween party, which would explain the movie, but if you think I'm going into details of my one and only halloween costume, we'll just move on right away. The punch is my most significant memory though, not just because it's a rare example of me mixing a drink that didn't have the word spider in it, as the implications were that at this party, we would all have our first drink of alcohol. Never happened of course - I didn't drink until I was 18teen, which should tell you the quality of my punch, for the most part if sat bobbing quietly in the corner acting as a conversational makeweight during awkward lustful one way glances. Anytime the conversation was muted, it was all hey, punch is in the corner. Her house was a vague collection of wicker furniture from that shop at the end of the Irvine mall that stank of cane seats and drunken staff, and family photos where she was always smiling with a suspicious nervous grin. Her best friend was called Sarah, and she had an upturned nose, which, had I been more musically cognescant, would have resulted in some sort of immature Billy Joel parody. She didn't like me because during one of our classes, taught by my Dad incidentally, we all had to on a pink card write something nice about everyone else in the room and I, and I swear this was innocent taking the piss out of the exercise move, said she had a nice nose. So she wasn't talking to me outside of university style lectures about respecting other people, I was in a cane chair probably being yelled at for continually mentioning the punch, Elizabeth Faint was no doubt fussing over ordives and trying to get my best friend to pash her, and my best friend was no doubt lapping up the attention with a pretty smug smirk and then whispering to me that the whole night was completely terrible and we should run away and leave. As far as parties went, it was hardly the Hooligan X rave at the Ayr Pavillion. Our host tried to get the party started with a tape of her favourite rave tunes, and it chewed up, crumbling in her hands. It would have been prudent to leave, but my Mum wasn't picking me up for another four hours so I had to sit back down, either that or get a pen and try and unpick the cassette. Did I mention I made punch?

Time moved slowly. Conversation picked up slightly, although in my case any incremental increase in attention was noticable only because I had a theory that Altern 8 were the greatest band in the world shot down, and because really I didn't need to be there in that living room, they could have managed quite happily without me. Except they did need me, because I was the only one making conversation. Which is how the Lorna incident happened. Someone finally cued some sort of ravey dancey hands in the air like you just don't care track up without the tape dying, and things were going a little better. Still no one drank the punch though. The upturned nose girl still wasn't having any - she preferred Marti Pellow. I was in the middle of some sort of early 90s discourse on the nature of music when all the girls went into the kitchen while I was in mid sentence. I was used to this, I didn't even miss a syllable, but then the hostess was back out into the living room asking me if I would go out with Lorna. Lorna? Who was Lorna? I hadn't even noticed Lorna, and this was a party of five (not that party of five) people. Was she the girl with the Halloween silver face paint on? What does she look like? Why is she hiding in the kitchen? Am I still going out with Debbie? Why is no one drinking the punch? Of course, this was a complex question asked at a strange and awkward time, so I had to respectfully decline the blind date, or my friend did it for me because that was his manner, and then there was just chaos and pandemonium as a silver swish ran out of the kitchen, into the street and burst into tears on the front lawn. I've never made a girl cry since, or had before, and I hadn't done much to provoke the situation, but the party ground entirely to a halt as the girls ran down the road to try and soothe her hurt feelings. My friend, in his infinite wisdom, didn't counsel me to go and be nice to Lorna and score a sympathy pash, but raided through the collection of blank tapes round the base of the TV to try and find embarrassing home movies of the girl who was hosting the party. We found a lot of episodes of Alias Smith and Jones, but dirt, no dice. When the girls returned, without Lorna, I was subjected to a lot of long boring relationship talk, even though I effectively had done nothing wrong and was, I think, spoken for. I tried valiantly to escape with a few pointed remarks about the decline of Stock Aitken and Waterman, but it always came back to my flippant cruelty. Mum was three hours away, my friend was smirking, and there was I, pinned with my back to the rattan, knees pressed up against my chin, listening to a well rehearsed talk that I would become incredibly familiar with over the years. It felt very much like growing up, or it would have, if it wasn't for how I was dressed...

Naturally, the Lorna incident was, as is the nature of early teenage parties, a big deal for an hour of fraught tension and variations of what a bastard I was until the next round of ordives came out. Everything eventually calmed down, and upturned nose girl began a controversial discourse on her first experience with cocaine. With that nose? Anyway, in the midst of our conversation, we had forgotten that the Steven King film IT had been put on the TV. IT of course has nothing to do with computers, it was a film about a killer clown or some such gubbins that I was too cool to think was scary. In fact we took intermittent breaks from our little mini kievs and discussions about the future (I stole most of my ideas from Debbie) that included the words massive a lot. If you've seen IT, the movie not the industry (yes you've done that joke get on with it) you will know that at a certain point, something happens where a photo in a book winks and then begins to bleed. I say something happens, because whatever happened, we weren't really paying attention or expecting it and I'm not ashamed to say it scared the crap out of us. Four people who had spent a tedious amount of time having psuedo intellectual conversations about rave music and inter personal relationships to the soundtrack of a ticking clock had just been reduced to the same scared kids who had hid behind the couch a few years earlier during Gremlins (or was that just me?)...at which point, we had to face the uncomfortable realisation that the girl with the upturned nose had, for whatever reason, jumped into my lap at the moment of film fright impact. We looked at each other, then at her, then at me, then at the punch bowl, and then back at each other, and then she had to slowly unpeel herself with as much dignity as she could, and go back to her wicker chair. No one spoke for a long time - we were embarrassed about the leaping and the screaming and the unpeeling and the shifting and the scary clowning...in fact it felt like no one spoke for hours, everyone staring at family photos and the ceiling and the ground...as far me, I had made a girl cry and had another girl jump into my lap and I had a vague realisation that this was the peak of my attractiveness. My friend had even lost his smirk, so upset was he that he had lost his cool. The Elizabeth Berkeley was just glad she didn't faint, and upturned nose girl was mortified that her righteous proto feminist demeanour had faded under pressure. Someone though eventually had to say something, I mean, Mum wasn't coming for another hour...

...and you can probably guess what I said, and how it went...still, it's their fault, they could at least have tried it...