Uncanny/Milkshake

I had a quintessentially British moment the other day:

Two of my friends from my Music and Theatre class went out to lunch in the break between our two three-hour sessions. They came back covered in mud. In the best way, these are the kind of girls who are energetic enough, and human enough, to still play in mud. "What happened?" everyone asked, and they said they'd found a big patch of mud behind the Imperial (the nearest pub, across the street in fact), and they'd had the sudden unresistable urge to tackle each other and goof around. I just realized this could sound sexual, looked at in the right way. It wasn't. It was utterly pre-school. They spent the next few hours laughing crazily, saying how it had been such a release for them, to just go and play in the mud and have fun.

After class, they implored me to come play in the mud with them. Hesitant, I obliged, saying I'd just come and hang out, and not play in the mud myself. The mud was literally just a patch on a hill behind the pub, between some tables set up outside. It existed because patrons walked on it a lot, and the weather was, as usual, wet. I decided, what the hey.

The game was run at the mud as fast as you could, and then jump onto your knees and see how far you could slide. This included sliding on your side, chest, face, etc. I managed to get just my jeans completely covered. This is what happens when you don't have SNOW IN THE WINTER!

After about five minutes, someone from the Imperial came out, and in the plainest and calmest of all voices, asked what on earth we were doing. My friend tried to explain that they were playing in the mud, to cheer up the other girl with us. Again, plain and calm, though the ire lurking in wait was starting to become visible, the man fussed at us about the sod costing hundreds of pounds to redo each year. My friend answered that it wasn't much damage at all that wouldn't have come up from people walking on it anyway.

Then, politely (but boiling - my friend insisted he was laughing inside), the man told us to sod off (i.e. fuck off, for those unfamiliar with the term).

And it hardly detracted from the experience at all. If anything it made it funnier. I even thought of a good comeback five minutes later:

Mr. Impy: Sod off.
Me: Sod off, get it? Get it? Cause we're on his grass. Sod off. No? No?

I think it's funny.

Anyway, in retrospect, this just rang true to me as inherently British. There is some kind of rigid authority, Victorian in its love of rules and not showing feeling, who can't see past the commodity of the grass to the joys that the younger, more innocent (dare I say, Dickensian?) children see in the mud. And the children play in it, not caring about what he thinks. And he yells at them, though material arguments don't make a dent. Finally, he concludes with the most polite equivalent of "go fuck yourselves" that I, as an American, have ever heard. And this discipline does not matter at all, it's in fact just a way of life, part of the game. We packed up and went home after that.

My jacket still has a patch of mud on it, and I wear it like a badge.

***

Ken took us to a milkshake place that he found recently, called the Shaker Maker, or something like that. The central conceit of the store is that the "menu" is really just a big wall of practically any kind of candy, biscuit, fruit, ice cream, whatever! You name it, they'll stick it in a blender with some ice cream and milk and give you a milkshake. I had a milk-chocolate-hobnob milkshake. They'd never made one before, so they took three milk chocolate hobnobs, put in some vanilla ice cream, some milk, blended it, then let me try some to see if three hobnobs was enough, and asked if I wanted more. I settled for three, which ended up being a good number. It was amazing!

I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!

***

And, for your viewing pleasure, here's an old favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNVYWJOEy9A