Twelve Year olds and Father Christmas

So I had another driving test and I got Father Christmas as my examiner again.

“Hello Ed, my names Brian and I will be your examiner today.”

“Hey, we met before actually.” and I know your name isn’t Brian, its Santa you sly bastard. Been to Lap land recently?

I knew he would find some way to fail me again(the anti festive) and sure enough he did. All those glasses of milk, sherry and mince pies must have gone to his fat wrinkly head because when he gave me a major for fucking up a left reverse, I’m pretty certain he was trying to tick the box for major driving brilliance. However the stupid old alcoholic made a mistake and now he’s off to deliver presents for a month, so I recon I will have to wait a while for another shot at passing.

Thinking about it, this week has been a bit of a struggle. I don’t know if you are familiar with the board game Risk, it’s infuriating. You play for 3, maybe even 4 hours trying to take the world off your friend’s one country at a time only to roll a 1 when you charge into the middle-east. Bang! Before you know it you’re pinned down in Central America with no reinforcements. I am ashamed to say I actually lost my rag with the whole thing when Pete and Seth ruthlessly ganged up on me and butchered my little troops until I was wiped off the map completely. I stormed off swearing and declaring that I would never play again. So far I have not.

Another problem has been my youthful appearance. Unlike most people, who age conventionally, forwards from young to old, as the years go by I look younger and younger. It’s a lot like Benjamin Button except I don’t think I’m about to regress into Brad Pitt. Last year I was ID’ed for a 15; the year before I was asked to produce proof of age for a packet of soothers but neither of those humiliations came close to last night. B Dawg, Seth and I were chatting to these girls when one decided that I looked like her little brother.

“Oh yeah? How old is he?”

“12”

I don’t think woman realize how much they can crush a man simply by calling him young looking, cute or friendly. It’s like a dagger in the heart. We like to think of ourselves as James Bond or Maximus from Gladiator even if we’re not. So when you ladies call a man “baby faced” or “nice” you might as well be snapping off his penis. Unfortunately I don’t look like Maximus, I look like a mixture of Ian Hislop, Jedward and Pete Doherty and it turns out that mixture leads to looking 12. In fact I basically fell in love last night when a girl I know thought I was 22. 22 is ten years closer to looking like James Bond than anybody else is willing give me. She was really cool actually. I found out she likes The Who and so I’m putting her on the potential wife list.

Suggestion for taste bud moistening: Morgan’s Spiced Rum.