by Alex J Allen
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I was sitting at a checkout, eight minutes in to a nine hour shift working at a local supermarket. With only my brain for company, I had by this point realised that I was actually quite boring. A woman staggered towards me trying to carry three four-pint containers of milk. Exactly what reason anyone could give for purchasing that much milk was beyond me, and I just don't tend to ask anymore after a recent experience where a man attempted to buy 75 washing up brushes so that he could 'build a dinosaur'. Excellent. The inevitable happened, the woman dropped one of the containers. This I could legislate for, but she then tried to catch the falling container with the hands that were already holding the other two which was just fucking stupid. There were no twelve pints of milk on the floor, and apparently, this was my fault. Another member of staff suggested that I 'call a cleaner'. It's this type of situation where you can really feel the training kicking in. The best part of an entire cow seemed to have exploded everywhere, it was calcium enriched carnage.
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The conclusion I took from that episode is that stupid people come to supermarkets, and over the course of my employment at one I have learnt never to be surprised at the general stupidity of those people. I was, therefore, happy to receive that same level of indifference when the rest of the Rooha team and I went in search of five big bottles of washing up liquid and plenty of plastic sheeting that clearly wasn't going to be used for washing up or decorating. Far from it, we had a much better use for those items in mind. We were going to invent a new sport, well, more accurately we were planning on making a very boring sport interesting. Yes, Rooha brings you uninterrupted coverage of human curling for the next three pages.
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I've never been a particularly big advocate of the weather as a television programme. It seems to be fundamentally based upon guess work, perhaps with different varieties of weather being drawn at random from Lancelot the National Lottery machine, which, let's be honest, can't have much use during weekdays other than sitting idle in Philip Schofield's garage. It is then presented as accurate, factual information, with only a balding man with a comedy tie to save its credibility. A complete horror show.
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Had I been a more fervent supporter of the weather, I might well have noticed that it was going to be windy on Thursday, April 28th. So windy in fact, that when we attempted to construct our human curling runway, the plastic sheeting inflated like a small zeppelin balloon. Still not enough to make our guest contestant Rich, who was hanging on to the sheeting, gain any serious altitude, but more than enough to make the whole assembly part of the experiment more difficult than we would have liked.
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Fortunately, Tom had some lumber in his barn (not a euphemism), and the human curling experiment was temporarily salvaged from the elements. Of course we had bigger problems going on, because as it turned out, the small gardening trolley we had been piling heavy lengths of wood on to wasn't coping too well with the excessively heavy load. When I use the term 'not coping too well', what I in fact mean to say, is that the steering had become practically non existent. Attempting to pull an unsteerable gardening trolley loaded with heavy lengths of wood up a steep incline next to a lake proved to be as much fun as real curling.
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It was now abundantly clear that this was not going to be the close and accurate representation of curling that we had originally hoped for. For one thing, we had no brooms. We also had no target as such to aim ourselves at, not to mention the fact that it was becoming cold and slightly overcast. There was also an underlying realisation and apprehension amongst the Rooha team that if at some point during the near future rain was on the cards, then this field was going to be filled with a lot of soap. I did, however, have a scarf tied round my round, Tom was donning a red motorcycling helmet, and I thought that went a long way towards balancing the scales of credibility.
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With our runway eventually set up, and looking as best as could be expected in such circumstances, we thought we might as well get on with it. Fairly predictably, nobody seemed too desperate to go first. Eventually, realising that with the human curling there would be no editorial, and that with only two previous issues there was little chance of fooling anyone by regurgitating an old one, I unenthusiastically volunteered.
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Short of finding an unmarked syringe, an upturned rusty shopping trolley or remnants of a Happy Meal, I'd compare the experience closely to using an outdoor inner city swimming pool. Think phrases like unpleasant, cold, wet, poorly maintained and urine drenched (too far?) and you'll come a long way towards understanding just how much fun human curling was. Admittedly, my mood changed dramatically when the poor bastard hurtling down the human curling runway of death wasn't me, but there can be no overlooking the worthlessness of the whole activity. There were various techniques for sliding down the runway, contestants could choose either a body board, a sofa bed mattress, or to slide down on no raft at all. Each method over the course of the afternoon proved to be equally painful and useless.
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Perhaps it was the fact that there was no real way of winning, and even if there had been, all the 'winner' could expect to receive for their endeavours was a Mask of Zorro style gash down their leg. Perhaps it was also that as time continued to take its toll on the runway, a ratio began to shift dramatically. The ratio being that of soft, bubble laden slippery plastic to the comparative discomfort of the dirt floor beneath it. A few more token slides ensued just to make it seem as if there had been some validity to the whole project, and to make it seem worth carrying so much wood so far, but eventually common sense prevailed. Who won? Who cares? As with previous editorials, there were no real winners, just a common sense of shame and self loathing from each of the participants involved.
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Yet as I pulled myself up from my pool of soapy water, amidst those feelings of shame and self loathing I sensed a more sinister edge to the whole affair. It was freezing cold, and I was going to have to walk the short journey back to my house as all the local kids were coming out of the secondary school. Oh, and did I mention that I was covered in soap, water, and more soap? This was a small glitch in the planning stage of the editorial. Having been one of those kids not so may years ago, I was all too aware that they could be vindictive little bastards, who knew the levels of abuse I could be letting myself in for? As events transpired, there was only one comment, 'ha ha, you're soapy'. Cut me deep.
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In the end, what we must ask is whether our 'human curling' was better than the traditional version. The answer is unquestionably yes, a conclusion which really says more about the shitness (at this point a red squiggle appears under 'shitness', informing me that it isn't a real word. You don't own me Microsoft Word, I'll write what I please!) of the traditional game, rather than the comparative qualities of our slap dash remake. But don't let this editorial brainwash you in to form an opinion of a sport on the basis of one article, even if that sport does involve sweeping stones with a broom.
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