07.06.2006 08:00 - A Rude Awakening
When I was at school, my teachers and parents used to constantly warn me that if I didn't buck my ideas up, I was in for A Rude Awakening. What none of them would tell me was what was actually involved in a rude awakening. Being 14 years old, with a mind muddled by testosterone, Star Wars and Pop Music in equal amounts (and with certain amounts of crossover : Carrie Fisher in that bikini in "Return Of The Jedi", for example), I gradually pieced together a theory as to what a rude awakening would actually involve.
Naturally, it would start in the land of nod, or, more specifically, in that sort of awake, but not awake no-mans land. The nether regions would be peculiarly cold, as though someone had just removed the sheet, and any intervening clothing. A peculiar, but not unpleasant, feeling of moist warmth would spread through my loins. Upon opening my eyes, my gaze would be met by a currently-in-vogue young female actress, pop starlet or sex-kitten (insert name here), busily supplying the warm moistness (just how the warm moistness was supplied I shall leave to your foetid imagination), and who would then presumably exhort me to ever-more gynaecological behavior. You can't get a ruder awakening than that, and it was the cause of many an extra washing-load in the years to come - if you'll pardon the expression.
Faced with this exciting future, is it any wonder I've done my best not to buck my ideas up? Yet, funnily enough, I am still surrounded by people who accuse me of living in a fantasy world, of needing to buck my ideas up, and, yes, warning me of rude awakenings to come.
Anyone would think that there's something bad about a rude awakening, the way they go on.
