A Fish Whose Middle Name Begins With 'J'

Seamus is disappointed I have not updated my memory project recently, so it is only appropriate I rectify matters by posting my memories of how we first became friends, one blustery September in 1992.

Picture it: Otley, 1992. I had just entered the sixth form, ready to study my A-Levels. While everyone else was allocated to large classes of bright students, I ended up in one which comprised Seamus, Timothy Brabham and around fifteen braying, toothless BTEC students who had somehow stayed in education despite their obvious inability to retain a single fact. There was no question I would avoid the BTECs like the plague, and while I was already good friends with Tim, it was quite apparent I would have to make friends with Seamus or die of boredom.

I had known of Seamus since we first joined the school in 1987, when he was a short and very eccentric smart alec who barked rude questions at the teachers all the time and with whom I thus felt a warm affinity; however, things were never that simple. I had also spent the past five years walking to school with Sheila Polhammer, a somewhat temperamental young girl who was quite enamoured of Seamaus, and who spent half the time singing his praises and the other half - when paranoia (and Seamus's straying libido...) took effect - plotting his torture and eventual death in exquisite detail. I thus had mixed opinions of him.

On Day 1, sitting at our desk in the middle of our form room and twiddling with the gas taps, Seamus idly announced that if we could only conspire to bring to school a handkerchief and a salt cellar, he would show us a magic trick that would blow our minds. Intrigued by the idea, on Day 2 Tim brought in the cruet and I located a handkerchief and Seamus prepared his powers of sorcery.

He wordlessly held up the salt cellar for the audience to inspect, nodding wisely, and then placed it down on the desktop. He then produced the handkerchief and waved it flamboyantly in the air, before carefully stretching it out and laying it across the salt cellar. (I am sure that by this stage, the BTEC crew had as much contempt for us as we did for them). A sudden look of confusion crossed his face, he sneezed and grabbed the handkerchief to blow his nose, knocking the salt cellar to the ground.

"I forgot what I was supposed to do," he said very earnestly, "And then I had to sneeze".

I knew then we could be good friends.

Our friendship developed, as most do, with us sitting on the swings after school discussing the things that made us laugh (things David Harrelson said) and mocking the things we distrusted (David Harrelson). This continued for two years until school ended, and the long vacation before university opened up before us. I suggested that Seamus come up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to stay with my brother and, apparently attracted by the idea, Seamus accepted.

I imagine if I had phrased it differently, Seamus might have declined. If I had said, for example, "Come sit in a coach with me for seven hours and I'll say anything that comes into my stupid cunt head". Or perhaps, "Come visit my brother's small and filthy student flat and sleep on a urine-stained matress on the floor of a psychotic Christian". Well anyway, as it turned out we ended up having a lovely time, eating freshly baked bagels, drinking beer in the Pleasance Bar (somehow, back then, we always got a seat) and watching shows of various types such as Travesties, which was super; Equus, which was dull; and gay American comic Scott Capura (with the subtle opening line, "I'm a dick smoker [pause, audience patiently waits for punchline] ... When I say that in the states it gets quite a reaction, but here I guess you're just thinking 'hey, he's a American, how much worse could it get?").

Of course, all of these activities were secretly just ways of avoiding having to go back to the filth of the flat. It is fortunate we are both early risers, as at 7am each morning - upon waking, when our brains finally allowing the stench of my brother's flat to reach our conscious minds - we had no option but to dress and leave immediately. There was no point having a shower, as the bathroom was layered in so much crud we would have come out filthier. We would stay out as late as we could, and ended every evening with the late-night showing of Kenny Young and the Eggplants at the Pleasance Upstairs, guys we'd enjoyed since first seeing them for free at Fringe Sunday.

At the end of the trip, halfway through the coach ride home, we famously ran out of things to say to one another and we took it in turns to open our mouths as though to speak, only to recall that this particular thought or anecdote had already been shared. Twice. As a sign of how low we had sunk, this point of silence came after we had developed the song about a fish which had become a prostitute*.

We wisely retreated to our own worlds, disappeared into separate folds of Oxbridge and did not seek to make contact again for a full year, by which point thank goodness we had some new anecdotes to share.



* Thus:

SM: "Dikrwu, Dikrwu sing me a song."
RD: "There is a fish whose middle name begins with... C."
SM: "Clarence!"
RD: "Clarence is his name, And he dresses like a dame, And (I have heard from sources close to the subject) he's working on the game."