satire

Those of us of a certain age – and in particular those of us who played in bands ‘back in the day’ – will be familiar with Rob Reiner’s ‘mockumentary’ (the very first of its kind) – “This is Spinal Tap“. It was obligatory in the mid 80s for us to have seen the film (often many times) – to know it sufficiently well that we could quote chunks of it by heart – and to claim that it must somehow have been based on our own band’s experiences (usually completely missing the point that it was a satire… Yup – we took ourselves pretty seriously!).

Now – I must confess that, though I have certainly seen the whole film, I have a feeling that I have not ever done so in one sitting. I also have a feeling that I may not be alone in this. No matter!

Why am I bringing this up now?

Well – though the main characters in the spoof band were played by talented actor/musicians Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer (who went on to voice a number of key characters in ‘The Simpsons’) – one of the jokes was that Spinal Tap had worked its way through an infeasible number of drummers – most of whom had died in unusual circumstances (two from spontaneous human combustion onstage and one from choking on “someone else’s vomit”). Yet another had died in a “bizarre gardening accident” which was supposedly described by the police afterwards as a mystery “best left unsolved.”

Yes – you’ve guessed it! I was on the InterWebNet looking up unusual gardening accidents. There are – of course – many ways to injure oneself whilst tending to one’s estate (pretentious? moi?) and most of them do not bear thinking about. Some – however – just hurt a lot and make one feel particularly stupid. Such was the minor incident in which I was involved the other day.

I was mowing the lawn – which I am obliged to do with sufficient frequency that I should by now have achieved ‘black-belt’ status in the noble art of grass cutting. I should certainly know well enough what I am about that the following should not have taken place.

I stopped the mower to empty the clipping bag. Having done so I set things up again and gave a vigorous tug on the starter cord. Unfortunately I had not noticed that I was positioned rather too close to the corner of our garden tool-shed (Canadian: shop) and as I jerked my arm back the point of my elbow impacted with the corner of the building.

“Ouch!” (That is – of course – not the word that I used at the time…)

What a numpty!