I have decided on a new career path.

Fuck psychology.

I have enrolled on a law conversion undergrad course that starts in the autumn.

This may seem rather sudden but, based on some of the more high profile legal cases of late, I reckon that being a QC would make better use of my dry and deadpan humour.

Take the ongoing Diana inquest and Al Fayed’s appearance yesterday. Imagine the fun and games to be had there:

“So, in essence, what you’re saying Mr Al Fayed is that Tony Blair, MI5, MI6, Prince Charles, the Duke of Edinburgh, the British Ambassador to France, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, Paul Burrell, James Andanson, Henri Paul and Nani were all involved in a conspiratorial plot that resulted in the death of Princess Diana and your son. In addition, you believe that Prince Philip is a Nazi and should be sent back to Germany where he belongs”.

*raises eyebrow*

“Yes, yes. You bloody establishment idiot, or something?”

Then there’s the Sally Anne Bowman trial:

“M’lord, my client did not in fact commit a sexualized murder on Ms Bowman. He merely happened to chance on her lying in a bloodied state in a driveway. My client's first assumption was that she was having a particularly heavy period and lying prostate in order for men to capitalize on this point in her menstrual cycle, at which point his genes took over and transmitted the urge that is the reason for the continued existence of homo sapiens. It was only after he’d finished and she continued in her unresponsive state that he believed she may in fact have been murdered BY SOMEONE ELSE! He was not in any way snogging Ms Bowman's corpse but administering the kiss of life."

*raises eyebrow and waits five seconds before lowering it*

Then there’s Macca and McMills.

…

If I was representing McMills I think I’d just have my eyebrow stitched a couple of inches up my forehead for the duration of the case.

Of course, I should have realized the comic potential of ‘the law’ some time ago. My work experience as a 15-year-old was spent on the local paper, and a morning of that was taken up by reporting (ok, watching a reporter report) on some of the more interesting court cases. In court that day was an alleged Mrs Robinson, supposedly having corrupted an underage boy by forcing him to perform sexual acts on her. Unfortunately, the defence had a star witness in the form of the 15-year-old’s best friend, who provided the defence with the following damning evidence:

“The defence believes the accused should be exonerated of all charges of coercion for the following reason. On the night of 15 February 1991 Mr X rang Mr Y and in a particularly jubilant manner declaimed: ‘Oi, mush. I got my oats last night’”.

*raises eyebrow and wiggles wig*

In an earlier post I’d mentioned my difficulty at suppressing humour at tense moments, so you can only begin to imagine how I coped with my first funeral service as an adult. This is somewhat longer than my posts tend to be, so I’d advise you to make yourself comfortable…

My aunt was not a particularly nice woman, and the beatings she used to administer my cousin (which there was no moratorium on even when we had family trips to Auntie Pat’s during childhood) are one of many reasons why there’s no need to feel any twinges of guilt for laughing.

The afternoon before the service my cousin (eventually) picked me up in Hendon, and the first topic of conversation on the drive up to the Midlands was the songs chosen for the service. I correctly identified Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler on my first go, but it took a couple more to get the second (Celine Dion, My Heart Will Go On). The latter seemed an odd choice because the reason we were driving up to her cremation was that her heart hadn't gone on. Both songs, in my opinion, are mawkish dirges, which suffer the same flaws of my (former) best friend’s chat-up technique in being rendered completely insincere by trying so hard to be sincere.

My uncle was unhealthily dependent on my cousin at this time, and part of her duties (and by association now mine) was to try and convince him to attend the funeral parlour before they nailed the lid shut. After some gentle persuasion we headed off to the funeral home. I’m bracing myself on the journey over as I know light relief will be in short supply.

So you can imagine how I felt when we pull up opposite the funeral home and I notice there’s a Jewson ('the UK's leading supplier of building materials') next door to it.

For understandable reasons, I’m the last to get out of the car, and am just about getting my composure together when a text arrives from my sister:

Yo bro. Where are you? We’re completely lost. Mum and dad are fighting over the map, and the dog keeps barking and puffing in my face.

At this point I had to duck under the dashboard and laugh with the safety catch off.

Realizing that I’m prolonging my uncle’s discomfort, and I am after all partly responsible for his being here, I step out of the car and head for the funeral home (trying hard not to look at the Jewson sign on my way in).

We’re greeted by the undertaker, whose sympathetic burr was somewhat undermined by him telling us how he had his mum prepared in his own parlour (cheapskate).

My aunt was a battleaxe of a woman, but the final stages of her illness caused a dramatic loss of weight in a short time. Hence preparing the body was a challenging job for the undertakers.

Which might go some way to explaining why they fucked it up.

I’m not particularly looking forward to my final game of chess with Mr Death, but my aunt seemed to have taken the defeat badly. She looked seriously pissed.

I’d expected her to look as the ‘deceased’ do in open coffin funerals on TV. Instead, I’m greeted by a scowling corpse.

The jarring incongruity of it makes me want to laugh, which I obviously can’t do, and this just adds to my physiological urge to laugh. All I’ll say is I told my mother not to attend the funeral home before the service (she’d been told by her other sister that there’d been ‘difficulties’ with the body).

The service was held the following morning, and after staying over another aunt’s we drive over to my uncle’s to form the funeral procession.

I didn’t expect my cousin to perform a particularly dignified and commanding role during the proceedings, but him and his little clique of friends were shocking. Rather than turn up in Sunday best they’d dressed in Saturday night best, or whatever it takes to get into a cheap ‘smart trou and shoes’ Midlands hard house club. My sister later categorized them by what dance music she reckoned they were into and accordingly what drugs. I simply factored them into the catch all category of ‘pikeys’.

The long black limousines arrived to take us to the service, barely on time.

Which was more than you could say for the service in front of us.

The drivers had obviously been instructed to take the long way round, which after a time became evident to me, must have been painfully apparent to my uncle and cousin in the leading car, and after a while becomes embarrassing when you’re chugging along at 30mph. You obviously can’t overtake a funeral service, so after a while we had half the Midlands toiling behind us.

Arriving at the service, I noted the mourners from the late-running group ahead of us filtering from the back of the crematorium, and the strains of Wind Beneath My Wings drifting from the front.

Walking into the service was one of the hardest moments of my life. I am somewhat self-conscious at the best of times, so having a whole congregation turn around and stare at the immediate family as Midler warbled was tough. It was like they were all daring me to laugh at them.

Rather than a somber occasion it all had the strange sense of unreality of Scott and Charlene’s wedding in Neighbours, or the surrealness of the televised bit of Phil Neville’s wedding when brother Gary was doing the Bible reading.

The minister conducted the service in the familiar sing-song cadence that men of the cloth insist on. He was obviously pissed that there were no hymns during the service, which might go some way to explaining why he made basic biographical errors during his tribute. It wasn’t quite up there with the Curb Your Enthusiasm newspaper obituary typo of ‘beloved cunt’ (well ‘a’ and ‘c’ are quite close on a keyboard), but wasn’t far off.

I’d been tipped off by a friend about the point in the service when the coffin disappears from view and makes its way to the furnace, which he’d christened the ‘foot pedal moment'. While everyone was praying with bowed heads I had one eye open waiting for a discreet stomp of the foot.

Which didn’t come.

Instead there was a jabbing gesture at the podium, like someone trying to poke a small child in the eye.

And a curtain call.

The curtain began to gradually close off the coffin from view, except rather than a smooth circular curve the curtain pole was almost jagged. It took an undignified amount of time for the curtain to close, and I was just waiting for the point when it snagged and the minister had to release it by hand.

The service closed with My Heart Will Go One (there were no encores). Oh, and as we were emerging from the crematorium the next group of mourners were already filing in.

So having maintained my composure there was just the post-service spread to get through.

I couldn’t help but think to myself: ‘Is this how it ends?’ Just 30 minutes after being cast into the wind and your ‘mourners’ are pushing their way towards tables of food and piling their plates with sausage rolls and triangular sandwiches.

Maybe I’m just a newbie when it comes to the etiquette of these things. Do you just reach a certain age at which point funerals become such a frequent social occasion that you just think: ‘fuck it. I’m grabbing that last piece of cake before the second cousin twice removed grabs it’.

Wanting to smoke my cigarettes in peace without my parents doing that fake coughing that non-smokers insist on, I went outside to carry on my existential brooding (about not getting the last piece of cake).

I don’t really do tears or anger, which is why laughter is one of the few emotional safety valves I have.

So at that point, on my own round the back of the hall, I chain-lit another fag, leant against the wall and laughed cigarette smoke out of my mouth.

Because you can say what you want about laughter, but it’s nearly always life affirming (unlike cigarettes).

That Jesus fella. He had some ideas, didn't he?

I particularly liked all those parables when I was kid. Granted, I'm an atheist now and they didn't have a lasting effect, and that illustrated Bible looks tacky as hell (ok, not really His fault), but he knew how to get a message over.

So although I didn't buy all that God business, I did gleam that a winning anecdote can really get a point across.

Now a week ago, after our biweekly group supervision, I was talking to a fellow volunteer from Islington MIND. She's very attractive, yet quite severe at the same time (maybe the two attributes are related?).

She was telling me how she'd 'lost' a mini social battle of wills with a guy at an arts project she had been to a week ago. This had seriously infuriated her. I decided to step in and make a point so, taking my leave from Jeez, I unfold the following tale:

"A few friends and I were in a university bar getting loaded. (This may seem a poor relation to the loaves and fishes story, but stay with me). Illuminating the evening was a radiant barmaid (absolutely no one dodged getting a round in that night).

The best part was when she came over to our table to collect the glasses.

So I sidle over, suck the stomach in a little
(hhhhummmmmmppppppppppppppppppphhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrr!) and get chatting. Admittedly she's not as attractive as I thought she was that night in the bar (can't think why that might be...), but I think to myself what a coup this will look to my friends if something happens.

'This is my mate, TKK. He works in pornography'".

(At the time I was not in the slightest bit amused, but, hey, here I am nine years later reaping the benefits of this unfortunate episode.)

Anyhoo, although she laughed at this bawdy and redoubtably left-field punchline, I realized it quickly needed to be followed up by a summation of laser-like relevance to avoid my being lost in the land of La Non Sequitur.

Thankfully, I had one lined up when I started the story.

Except I forgot it just after the punchline (I wonder if the great man had moments like this?).

So my mind is spinning frantically; it felt like trying to pedal when a bike chain has come loose.

This is all happening within the space of maybe a couple of seconds, probably the time it took for a mild crinkling of panic to cross my face and then fade, but it felt loooong. And socially awkward. And not sexy at all.

Then it comes back to me. The panic subsides. I'm no longer socially awkward. And damn am I sexy!

And the point I was trying to get across?

Don't ever expect to be in control of every situation.

Back in the day, I contributed an article to my SU magazine about my favourite place in London.

The toilets at Farringdon station.

Trust me. It’s more innocent than it sounds.

Behold:

Possessing a bladder capacity that would shame a sparrow (my sister has the same condition so I can blame it on the genes), late nights carousing in the capital can often leave me in a desperate situation. Never is my relief greater than when I alight at Farringdon station and race up the stairs to the bogs. Despite Ken’s best efforts, London is a real public inconvenience when you’re far from home, nature calls and you’re nowhere near a mainline station, or too shy (and principled) to sneak into a McDonald’s and use the amenities without buying something. So God bless Farringdon, one of the only non-mainline stations to have its own public toilet. Sure, the old girl is battered, graffitied and the mirror long lost its powers of reflection but, as a seaport when a storm is a-brewin’, it’s a definite save haven.

Of course, Farringdon’s status as the very first metro station to open in 1863 (with much of the original architecture remaining), its open air platforms and rail-line (a relief when emerging from the grime of King’s Cross) and its location on Clerkenwell’s doorstep (home to some of London’s best clubs and bars) are mere incidental factors when I’m tugging at my zipper and fixing my eyes firmly forward...

Zipping back to the future, on Tuesday night, on the tube home after several drinks, I realised my bladder was filling fast. Thank God the Northern Line appeared to be having a rare good night.

Then normality disaster struck.

The train inexplicably stopped in the middle of a tunnel. And I was nowhere near Farringdon. Heck, I wasn’t even on the same goddamn line.

I started scanning the station list above me to select an appropriate spot to, er, alight. I wasn’t going to be able to hold on ‘till King’s Cross, but wasn’t sure where the toilets were at London Bridge station.

To add to the discomfort caused by my tightly crossed legs, a woman on the seat across was drinking a Coke, which seemed to top up my bladder even more.

Eventually the train got going, with a shudder that uncrossed my legs and took the safety catch off my bladder.

I was getting desperate, so desperate that I was eyeballing the empty Coke bottle the girl had discarded on the seat opposite.

Deciding that I'd like to finish the evening with some dignity, I race up the escalators at Old Street. They have toilets there, but they're generally closed late in the evening, but I know the area well enough to relieve myself without too much of an audience.

Then, like spying an oasis in the desert, I noticed the grille to the toilet entrance was open.

What a relief. Ahem.

So Farringdon is now no longer my favourite spot in London.

All hail the Old Street station toilets!