Cambridge. As, last night, they celebrated 800 years of geeks on bicycles being trained for the rat race in a Proms concert, I travelled to the Saffron Brasserie on Hills Road for a curry with Bug.

It's not a bad place to eat – but nothing special. I went for a prawn rogan, which was adequate without being anything particularly bitchenly amazing, and although the raita was bland – it's supposed to be a little more than just dumping yoghurt in a jar – the whole thing, at £30 for the two of us, did the job fine. I wouldn't rush to go back there but I wouldn't complain if I were taken there either.

Bug's an extremely easy person to talk to and get on with. Subjects discussed included gerbil-sexing, Gog and Magog, Marmite, social isolation, naked parties on sofas, jam, subjectivity vs objectivity, and whether one could make a career out of poking people with toast.

source

Thank you, Bug; see you next month for some weird-Red-Dwarf-person thrills…

———————————————————

And a bit more to put in my [seemingly now starting to blossom and fill up, thankfully] diary; "comedy and clowning" workshops at the little theatre in [townabituptheroad].

This is run by the same guy who did the workshop last year that gave me the taste for "showing off" onstage, so I know it'll be a hoot.

The only thing I've got to check is exactly what comes under the aegis of "clowning". As a generic term for slapstick/broad-humour comedy, I'm all for it. If, however, we're talking actual clowns, in the circus tradition, then no frogging way.

- *picture deleted to save several people from having nervous breakdowns* -

Coulrophobia, from my admittedly anecdotal evidence, seems to be one of the most common background nervous conditions – perhaps even more than arachnophobia.

All the people I know have it in its "mild" form – they'd choose not to go to places where they know there'd be clowns. It's only in its extreme form – where they would avoid going out at all just on the off-chance a clown would randomly be there – that it becomes pathological and requires treatment.

The sight of one is likely to make me "chunder" like I'd had three bottles of Thunderbird Red; another side-effect is that most sorts of facepaint are for me particularly nauseating, and there's been several times even just on things like Facebook I've had to quickly resort to Adblock [or the kitchen sink] when someone's posted a pic of their kids having been painted up. [Nor, as a side-issue, do I enjoy women who plaster their faces like a bloody air hostess.]

One possible reason for this is how clowns, outside of circuses, are actually most used in a vain attempt to give places like hospitals [and McVomits], which would otherwise be scary to children, a "fun" atmosphere.

Rather like putting up Xmas decorations in an insurance call centre, this window-dressing doesn't work and actually creates the counter-effect of giving people negative associations with the figures. The clown on the wall may be laughy and smiley, but there's a guy with a three-inch long needle waiting to give you your diphtheria shot behind it.

Do this at a very young age – before one can intellectualize the logical reasons you're having a metal spike shoved in your arm – and you're creating associations with mild trauma, to be teased out in deep counselling thirty years later.

That's how it worked for me, as far as I can know, anyway.

Either that or I'm repressing some extremely nasty memory about the time Ronald McDonald teased me round the back of the diner with a couple of chicken nuggets…

——————————————————-

Today's Big Question: What do you avoid or can't look at because of some bad childhood experience?

[Important Note: This question is designed to find out about your mild hangups. If answering it would bring up bad issues for you, then please skip it.]