...ruffles...

Forged in the fearsome torrent of the stream next to Asda is a friendship which has lasted 13 years and is still as strong as it ever was. Australia Jo and Katie remain two of my closest friends even though they choose to live 22,000 miles from my doorstep. Everyone had a favourite Jaggerfee moment, Katie’s story is really the Battle of the Raging Torrent, Jo’s lore is still to be told. What I’ll do is exchange Jo’s favourite Jaggerfee story, with mine.

Mine first, sometimes a passage of life drops into a groove that everyone can mainline. Out comes a rich pageant of noise and colour and happiness. Watch out for these moments, they’re pretty rare. At Jo’s birthday in the summer, Jo and Katie were back from Australia for Penny’s wedding, we’d not seen them in over a year, but without a moment to check our step, we were all in a restaurant talking rubbish, laughing hysterically bouncing ideas and thoughts and memories around. Or as Simon puts it…

“Ten people, sixteen conversations”

You can’t document it, or describe it; it just slips off into history. You remember everything, but you couldn’t retell it if you tried. During one Jaggerfee lesson with Dougie Humph we were all split into groups to discuss the ins and outs of something earnest and valuable. The girls, including Jo and Katie split into one group, the boys, me and Grahame and Daniel went into another. There was a third, but my memory of them is simply as faceless beings. I don’t remember them as people at all. Shame on me.

Discussions at an end, conclusions reached, Dougie asked who wanted to go first. “I will” I said getting from my seat. In a second Jo was on her feet “No, I will” she said. Without a blink or a word we both dropped into the groove. “I WILL” I said with mock annoyance. “No” said Jo mustering her best drama school acting “I WILL”.

Both on our feet, the next thing was to move, so we met, in the middle of the classroom. “I WILL” I said, Jo pursed her lips “I WILL” she spat. I offered to take it outside, she accepted and we made for the door eyeball to eyeball, two inches apart. Suddenly we were being forced apart by something jabbing in our stomachs, Dougie Humph, all 5 ft 4 inches of him was wrestling between us. “Take it easy” he said defusing the tension.

So we did, and the third group went first. I look back on that moment with fond memories; it was such a folly, such a pointless ridiculous thing to do. But without any planning or thought we acted out an unscripted comic scene for the benefit of nobody but ourselves. What Jo would describe as “Silly”.

Jo’s favourite story was very much scripted. Our case study was The Yangtze River in China that floods annually and destroys crops and homes of people barely able to eat. Our task was to construct reportage of what life was like when the Yangtze flooded.

Me, Grahame, Daniel, and David grouped together and purloined the video camera to construct a Newsround report for children. After much pre-production talk, it was obvious what we had to do first. We set up a studio in one of the classrooms and filmed Daniel as Phillip Schofield with Gordon The Gopher – made from David’s sock – introducing Newsround.

Following this was the report itself. We walked down to a ditch at the end of the playing fields which was to be the Yangtze. Daniel filmed whilst I interviewed, Grahame was “translator”, and David played “Chinese boy whose family have been decimated by flood”.

The premise was simple. I would ask a question in English, Grahame would spend 10 minutes relaying the question in mock Chinese to David. David, kneeling on his shoes to appear like a small boy, would reply in a squawky mock Chinese. Grahame would translate it into English, and I would nod. Each question would take 20 minutes to complete.

There were added nuances. David would sometimes spend 15 minutes gabbling an answer, which Grahame would translate as “No”. Sometimes he would be monosyllabic, and Grahame would embark on a 15 minute monologue translating David’s feelings. It was a one trick pony, but what a trick.

We didn’t get very far, it was so funny David could barely complete a single Chinese sentence without breaking down. The video camera shakes from Daniel laughing. At one point David disappears around the corner because he can’t handle it, and returns with a wee stain on his trousers. “I’ve wet myself” he says.

When we played the half finished masterpiece back to the class, it had the intended effect. It met the brief perfectly, so Dougie couldn’t say anything, when I looked over to Jo, her face was purple with laughter, tears streamed down her cheeks. Her laughs was fighting so fiercely to get out she was gagging on the hilarity.

She still asks me today whether I’ve got the video. Sadly Dougie took it, and perhaps watches it with a smile.

Labels: General me