Covered myself in glory yet again. After a complex morning negotiating the Kafkaesque architecture of the state and its automated phone minions, I headed out to a disconcertingly civilised lunch.
Washing the cares away with several bottles of a questionable local vintage, things got flamenco really fucking quickly. By the time my daughter had arrived from school, I was wearing an improvised belly dancing outfit held together by gaffer tape and denial, introducing the neighbours to Rick Astley and generally smashing the shit out of the afternoon.
Having clocked that Zara (my daughter) seemed a touch underwhelmed by her father’s magnetic charisma, I downed three sambucca shots and set out for the building’s swimming pool, strapping a small, tinsel dressed Christmas tree to my head and belting out ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’.
Despite my conviction that she’d beam with pride as her friends queued up for autographs, it turned out that I’d misjudged the tone of the swimming pool. Met with a wall of confused stares and a daughter mouthing ‘Fuck Off’ from behind her hands, there was only one thing for it….. Double down hard with a frisky Irish jig.
Now I don’t know if Guinness has some sort of stabilising enzyme in it, but sambucca and dodgy plonk definitely do not. About 7 seconds into the jig, I went for a bit of cultural fusion with some freeform ballet leaps, and while they were undeniably graceful as fuck, the timing may have been a fraction off.
Long story short, I ended up in the swimming pool, fronted it out with a half drowned rendition of ‘The Boys are Back in Town’, pretended it had all been part of the plan and then exited stage left by taking multiple bows to a group of deeply sceptical children.
It wasn’t until about ten minutes later that I realised the Christmas tree was AWOL, and while heading out sheepishly to retrieve it, I discovered that it had been adopted by a 3 year old called Taha – who had – no word of a lie – named the Christmas tree ‘Silly Fat Santa’
I think my work here is done.
Cyrus Bozorgmehr 