You know when you just have to laugh out loud and the more you know you shouldn’t the more you want to?
We were driving to see my nephew who is on tour playing with Ian Siegal world renowned singer and blues guitarist at The Met in Bury. We were in Packman’s Lord Smudges dad’s car because it’s more reliable not to mention bigger than my old rattletrap. Sitting inside its black leather interior is a bit like being swallowed by the belly of a whale, especially in the dark. Luis was sitting in the back because even though I’ve told him a million times he can’t keep coming to ‘hingland’ unless he gets some front teeth and learns ‘hinglish’ being the stubborn Spanish hombre that he is, he has completely ignored me. Therefore he is still front toothless and having great difficulty mastering the Lancashire dialect in which Packman is fluent, albeit at times indecipherable, with his tuts thuts and onts.
Me and Packman were chatting away in broad Blackburnian and eating fruit pastilles in the front – all very rock n roll! Brilliant, a parking space right outside the gig; then Packman noticed a sign saying taxis only, so we sped off quick before we got a ticket. Lost in Bury’s notoriously confusing one way system, we were getting further and further out of town. The stuck up Sat nav woman with her posh voice seemed to have dropped off. “Wake up you snotty up cow, we’re going to be late,” I was screaming at her to no avail as we were forced to follow the ring road with no hope of doing a u turn. Eventually, some twenty minutes later, we made it back into town and parked up next to a pub, not far from The Met. Got out and waited for Luis to climb out of ‘belly of whale’ back seat. But no Luis.
“Maybe he’s nipped into the pub for a pee?” we scratch heads. “But can’t have done, we would have seen him wouldn’t we?”
We peer into belly of the whale. Luis definitely not there. Where the f*** was he? Packman opened car door and had a feel around on the floor. Luis not on floor or anywhere to be found. We shake heads in confusion. “How can we have lost him?” we ask ourselves, “He was definitely in car when we set off,” we confirmed. On saying that, Luis never talks much in company (unless he’s pissed) because ‘hinglish’ not too good, so how would we know?
We hurried off towards The Met and there standing outside the main entrance was Luis.
“Khow you get here?” I ask him laughing.
“Kkkkhow the (Spanish swearword) you think I get khere?” Luis definitely not laughing. Apparently, desperate for a fag he’d got out when we’d pulled up in the taxi rank.
“We didn’t notice,” I laughed, thinking it was quite amusing. Shouldn’t have laughed, was not a laughing matter, at least not for Luis.
“Muchias gracias,” he snarls sarcastically. Luis is hurt, on his Spanish dignity because we hadn’t even noticed his absence, a torrent of Spanish swear words issues forth from his frozen lips – it must have been quite cold waiting outside The Met for twenty minutes. He turns his Latino back on me. Had to stop laughing immediately and put on straight face. “Sorry,” I apologize, but it was killing me trying to suppress the snorts of forbidden laughter. We went inside and took our seats in stony silence, but I could hardly contain myself, it had to come out as the actress said to the bishop, so I sent Luis off to the bar to get the drinks in. What a relief. “It was soooo funny,” I cackled to packman as soon as he’d gone, “when you looked on car floor. How could we have driven all that way and not noticed? Oh shush, he’s coming back.”
Poor Luis, he doesn’t ‘alf cop it in my blogs, although he says he doesn’t really mind. But then again, maybe if his ‘hinglish’ was a bit better he might! The gig was brilliant by the way and we all really enjoyed it, even though it got off to a bad start when Ian Siegel grabbed the mic and got an electric shock causing him to briefly lose it! Think it must have just been one of those nights for losing it – or in Luis’s case, Luising it!
Some relevant laughter quotes
“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will I’ll go to it laughing.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.”
― Billy Joel
“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”
― Victor Borge
“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
― William Shakespeare
“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.”
― Michael Pritchard
