Good morning (or good afternoon/goodnight – wherever you are)!
This week, I’m basing the blog off three questions because, even at 31, there are still things in life that you think a person should know and yet, here I am, horribly unaware.
Question 1: How do you overtake a hearse?
No. No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s not like I was sat in a lengthy queue, all of a bother because I was running late for my nail appointment – although, I don’t blame you for thinking that because that is generally how I live most of my life. Here’s what happened…
I was back in Leicester for my dentist appointment (yes, I have to drive two hours for the dentist because getting into an NHS dentist as an adult is like trying to break into Alcatraz. And, no, I don’t know why you would want to break into Alcatraz but I tried to think of gaining access to a top secret society as a metaphor and ended up down a rabbit hole of the story of William Morgan and his exposé of the Freemasons, then searched most ‘sexure’ prisons because apparently I lack skills in both spelling and imagery and, well, Alcatraz).
Anyway, I was in Leicester, driving down the notorious Mental Mile (I read that once in an article on Leicestershire Live and have never heard it since so it might be a stretch giving it notoriety but here we are) and found myself hurtling towards a hearse.
Now, when one normally comes across such a vehicle, we pay our respects, we drive slowly and we bite our tongue for the delay it causes us. Someone died, how awful, the pain and sadness of a funeral bears no resemblance to the mild disruption this has caused to my day.
However, I have never found myself on a dual carriageway with a hearse. I didn’t even know they were allowed on a dual carriageway, what with their slowness, but I guess that would really limit their services.
I approached the hearse (them on the inside lane, me on the outside lane) but felt a huge sense of disrespect whizzing past them, so I slowed down. I slowed down as you might do when passing a horse on a country lane. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to do this? But I did it. And then it felt weird. So I tried to acknowledge the dead (?!) by looking into the car and offering some kind of respectful look and nod. Once passed, I increased my speed back to normal and left the hearse in a cloud of dust.
On reflection, I can see how that’s perhaps not what you’re supposed to do because here’s what the poor family in the hearse experienced: A car bombing it down the A6, overtaking them, slowing down to match their speed, revealing a young woman wearing two pairs of glasses (because I don’t have prescription sunglasses and sometimes I forget I’ve done it and how weird it looks) ogling them and their coffin and speeding off.
Can someone please inform me of dual carriageway hearse etiquette?
Question two: Can you, just using your voice, make the sound of the dawn chorus?
This question was posed to me by Hannah, my best friend, boss and landlord, as she was preparing for her music class that afternoon. It was the final of three questions, the first two of which I absolutely nailed.
1. Can you, using just your voice, make the sound of an alien life form?
I responded with some robotic, crackly, R2D2-type incoherence, as we all know aliens sound, right?
2. Can you, using just your voice, make the sound of the ocean?
Er, yes. I closed my eyes (really got into this one) and made the shallow ‘shcchhshchh’ noises of the tide washing up on the shore.
3. Can you, using just your voice, make the sound of the dawn chorus?
And here’s where it went horribly wrong.
I took a second to compose my idea and then, really passionately, sang a small tune that is not too far off Ariel when she gives her voice to Ursula – although horribly out of tune and Hannah wasn’t sat there shouting KEEP SINGING at me while she harnessed my chords. In fact, Hannah sat there, eyes agog, watching me with great concern. When finished, she responded with, “I’m sorry, what is that you think the dawn chorus is?” “Well, I just imagined what the sun rising would sound like.” I said, proudly.
“The dawn chorus is the birds waking up in the morning, mate, not the imagined song the sun sings when it rises.”
“Says who?”
“Everyone!”
My pride fell away instantly and left us both in fits of laughter. We tested this on my mum who came to visit that evening and she passed all three questions, giving us a tune of chirpy tweets for the final answer.
Hopefully, by reading this, I have saved at least one of you the embarrassment of singing the sun rising song when you should be tweeting like a bird. Here is a video of four hours worth of dawn chorus, in case you want to revise.
Question three: How much do you know about Alan Partridge?
My answer was literally nothing. However, that didn’t stop me from attending an Alan Partridge quiz on Friday night with my friends – who also know nothing about Alan Partridge. I don’t know what I thought an Alan Partridge Charity Quiz would be, but I didn’t think it would be a quiz all about Alan Partridge. I thought maybe it would be hosted in the style of him or would have one round on him but no, the ENTIRE quiz was all about Alan Partridge.
We sat in an old brick warehouse under a giant disco ball while the room filled up with Partridge fans. It was a very niche audience and we stuck out like a sore thumb. There were people in Alan Partridge masks - predominantly males with a strange amalgamation of rocker/Oasis style aesthetic. DJ Rasp played an eclectic set of music against a backdrop of Alan Partridge montages while we perused the picture round with the same approach one might take to an escape room – looking for clues in the dark.
We were treated to an opening video from Steve Coogan himself and even entered the raffle to win two VIP tickets to Peter Kay. We did not, however, enter the ‘fretless air guitar’ competition (complete with a woman in a teddy bear hat thrusting and gyrating into/against a traffic cone), nor did we win the ‘pitch your idea to the BBC’ competition (Animal Crime – the world’s most unsuspecting criminals was robbed of its Terry’s Chocolate Orange Prize by something inaudible that the host and most of the audience found hilarious).
It was a bit like how I imagine some of my ex-pupils felt when they sat their exams and left their pages empty. We knew nothing. And, let me tell you, there’s only so many times you can write Elton John for an answer before that’s not even funny anymore.
We waited on tenterhooks while the raffle prizes were drawn, won absolutely nothing and left before the answers were read out. It was all for a good cause though as, the last we heard before our departure, the fund-raising total had reached £1000 for Young Lives with Cancer.
For Alan Partridge fans, I’m sure it was a wonderful night out – although the table next to us that smashed through 4 bottles of wine and a round of shots might not remember it. I am obviously able to pass comment on that as I’m still traumatised from not remembering my own highly anticipated, long-awaited, niche-fan night out the other week.
To summarise: there may or may not be etiquette involved when overtaking a hearse on a dual carriageway, the dawn chorus is not, in fact, the song the sun sings when it rises and, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it probably is just a quiz all about Alan Partridge.
What I’m reading: The Bee Sting – Paul Murray
A whopping 625 page novel. I’m loving the development of the characters as the family navigates their troubles. I’m early on yet, but the book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and has received raving reviews.
What I’m listening to: What My World Spins Around – Jordan Davis
I’m away to see him Feb 16th and I cannot wait to belt this one out.
Enjoy your tea.
Gx
Please enjoy this video of me trying to apply some logic to the Alan Partridge quiz...
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