Saturday
Its a conspiracy, I swear.
Until recently I had been sleeping from ungodly hours of the morning till the afternoon, but on tuesday it was all changed.
It began with me having to get up early in order to accommodate a house viewer (why do they always choose the morning?) so I figured "No problems.. I'll just sleep later tomorrow" Wrong! because on Wednesday I have an early tutorial.. That's ok I figure, thursday will provide me with my sleep. Nope because we have ANOTHER house viewer. Friday I'm getting a train in the late morning so I can't sleep in either.
Saturday I am pulled out of bed by my siblings in order to eat breakfast with the family. Uurrrrg.. I'm just not allowed the sleeeeeeeeep I so urgently require as a student :)
Anyhow after breakfast and a lot of sitting around and reading The Times (which is pretty much my favorite activity at the moment) I get a call from Ben and Richard. Apparently they are driving around in the countryside for no very good reason and ask if they could pop round. Permission granted and we end up sitting on a sofa for an hour before my mother returns as I have offered to look after the little'uns whilst she's out.
We decide to head out and enjoy ourselves in Richard's new car. He's gone and bought himself a Ford Fiesta.. a first edition ford fiesta. a Bare Bones ford fiesta. Here are just some of the mandatory add-ons it doesn't have Tape player, central locking... I mean it doesn't even have a cigarette lighter!! For flips sake even cars produced in the eastern bloc had cigarette lighters in them :) None of us smoke so its not exactly vital but it does serve to show just how bare bones the car really is :)
We decided to head to the Cinema and watch a film. The good thing about not having the farm to use has been that we've all seen the films we want to see which has been a good laugh. This time round it was Equilibrium.
I don't like giving film reviews. Films depend on who watches them for their appeal. Equilibrium has quality action, some far-fetched statistics (He's got handguns with a 'fully automatic setting' and somehow rarely runs out of ammo) and an interesting Orwellian society to be destroyed. Its a fun film to watch, nothing great, its certainly not on a par with Minority Report but again its about what you like in a film. Entertaining I thought.
Anyhow after the film we head off to go and visit a few of Richard's friends in some underground loading area where he works. Ben and I are horrified to find they are in fact Gary Boys. If I have not explained the term 'gary boy' before indulge me in this brief synopsis of what you will notice when you encounter one.
1) He will be driving a 'gary boy car' this can be any of the following models:
Ford: Escort, Fiesta, Focus
Vauxhall: Corsa, Nova
2) The car will be decked out as if he is desperate to be an extra in "the fast and the furious" (a film which is their bible). With at least 4 "six by nines" (6" by 9" speakers) and a "sub" (a massive and completely unnecessary sub-woofer. Other additions include under-car lighting and utterly pointless LED's. Irrespective of the money spent the result will be a poor implementation and the car will look like crap.
3) He will be dressed in attire from both sports and racing companies irrespective of the fact that he has no actual affiliation with their brands.
4) He will never have heard of the term "Equalizer" and instead manages to spend £600-1000 on a completely unbalanced sound system which will sound like shit.
5) He will not need to have heard of the term "Equalizer" or have assembled a decent balanced sound system because the music to which he listens is shit.
6) If he has a girlfriend, she will be 14. This is primarily because that is perhaps the only age at which a girl can be so stupid as to think a guy who fits all the above descriptions is "an alright bloke", however one must not discount the role which Alcohol has to play in this scenario or the absolute incapability of the Gary Boy to get a girl his own age.
There are plenty more points but ultimately I think you now have a measure of the being I am writing about, you could probably infer the rest by taking the template and judging someone you know or have seem against it. If they fit it there is a good chance that the other facets of their character will also typify a Gary Boy as they don't tend to be too different.
Anyhow after we had walked around the 6 or so parked Gary Cars the drivers got into their vehicles and accelerated away at reckless speeds. Richard pursued and we were taken on a drive to McDonalds where we sat for about 5 minutes.
Then the convoy moved again, for no readily apparent reason to a deserted PC World carpark and parked.. Ben and myself were unfortunately pulled out of the car by 14 year olds whilst I was relating the whole event to Matt on the phone.
About 4 minutes of Gary Boys looking at each others engines (no mate it hasn't changed since you last looked at it 10 minutes ago) we drove off again.. To do a 'lap'. A 'lap' is short for a 'lap of town' where a gary boy will drive in the circuit which goes along the highstreet and Head street in order to look cool. It is the most ridiculously stupid event I had ever witnessed :)
Finally we returned to the underground.. So in about 20 minutes we'd done some driving and were soon to embark on some more random driving. To be honest I didn't really know what the F*** the appeal to this was but then those present weren't really capable of much more deliberation than "Do I want 'Alloys' or under-skirt lighting for my car next??".
Eventually Richard gave me a lift home and I slept..... Not for too long of course :)
I just bought Lilo and Stitch on DVD.. I also got a cuddly Stitch with my purchase.. I've already said how fantastic the movie is being something of a disney animation connoisseur and I'm going to watch it before I write some more.
Oh and by the way. Upmost respect for Tony Blair. He tried the diplomatic route and the French instead explored a policy of undiluted nationalistic interest. Saddam will be gone in a week and my friend Ranj will be able to return to his home nation with in a year and visit his uncle again.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at March 17, 2003 04:33 PM