PINS - Rule Forty-nine: Don’t be Daft

(What good will that do you?)

PINS is a game, after all, and games can be fun. Unless you insist it was Professor Plum with the lead piping in the Library and deny all evidence that it wasn’t, despite being shown the cards, but they take these games too seriously, these men. It’s a silly game after all. And it's time for Gardeners World. 

Eat an entire fruit bowl’s worth of ice cream and pass out on the floor of your friend’s kitchen.

Try to set fire to a petrol pump with a sparkler.

Throw chicken bones at a picture of King George Fifth.

You decide to find the house in Rishton that is in fact an Egyptian temple. According to your mate, who’s not really trustworthy, there’s a terraced house just past the cricket club - near the turn to Harwood - that has a miniature pyramid devoted to the worship of Isis, and the fellow who lives there dresses up as a full blown priest with one of those loin cloths and pharaoh’s beard stuck on his chin.

Fall down the stairs of a famous Soho restaurant (now long gone) and explain to the startled politician (a Labour grandee) that it’s alright, you have lumbago. It’s the first word that comes into your head. You also explain to him that you’re down for the day from Accrington.

The big stones in the front garden of the house you rent are from the river up the road. They used to be the crossing stones before the bridge was first erected, which means they must have stood in the river before the nine-hundreds. They have some kind of power that drives people daft. Every night the children from the estate go and stand on them and look through the living room window at you. 

You make a papier-mâché badger with a friend for another friend’s wedding. He’s settling down early, and he’s bought a house, something you didn’t think possible for someone who’s your age. You find it hard enough getting yourself together to go somewhere like Leeds, or Manchester. Your mother consoles you; “early sowing means an age to reap,” she says, and she raises her eyebrows meaningfully. Still, it’s a time of great uncertainty, the second summer of love and a few summers after have slowly dissolved into a new decade that feels like it’s going to be a slog, what with the prospect of doing something with your life after university, but this summer is very beautiful and worth wasting. The badger has wobbly eyes from a joke shop, ears and a tail cut from a corner of your bedroom carpet, and the legs from your bed. You attach casters to the bottom of the legs so the badger can be trundled along. Your friend writes four songs for the badger and puts them on a tape. You write the lyrics. One song is called ‘Things I Don’t Like’, which is as perfect a summation of your permadaft state of mind as anything ever could be. You take the badger for a pint in a country pub on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border and try to buy it a half of mild. During a stop-off whilst driving down to the wedding, which is in the south of England, you somehow superglue your thumb to the car’s dipstick.

Don’t stand on the tortoise. Avoid his mother with the adze.

Your dad pulls over to your pal’s house. Everyone knows your pal’s a bit eccentric but by the looks of it he’s got half a kitchen range scattered on his lawn. He tries to persuade your dad that he can weld some of it together to make an ideal portable range for the camping trip you're going on. Your dad tells him to put back everything he’s taken from his own kitchen, but the Calor gas and the portable stove. “Otherwise, no lift to Settle for you, young man!”

You have driven twenty times round the main roundabout going out to Intack. Your mate’s dad is singing along to an old George Formby song blasting out from the car’s cassette player. He looks over his shoulder at us from the driver’s seat. “Just looking out for someone, lads,” he says to us.

This’ll make the tots laugh, there’s a violin down the side of the back bedroom wardrobe, next to the rolled up Subbuteo mat and that old tennis racket. Who thought someone would play tennis in our family? I’ll just go and get that violin though, and pop in and surprise them in the back room with my incredible playing! Their parents are playing some card game or other, not a proper one, and there's beer bottles everywhere. I think we bought this violin for one of the lads. I can work it out, I played a tuba in a trad jazz band in Newcastle, one instrument’s the same as the other!  I’ll get told off for being daft by She Who Must Be Obeyed, but the two bairns will love it and it’s Christmas Eve and Nine Lessons and Carols will be on soon and then I’ll have to see to that bleddy turkey and baste it, bane of my life this past forty years. Here goes, a bit of a scrape now, lean against the door to open it, and hunch over and pretend you're an old vagabond!

Bobby Shafto's gone to sea,

Silver buckles at his knee;

He'll come back and marry me,

Bonny Bobby Shafto!

Bobby Shafto's bright and fair,

Combing down his yellow hair;

He's my love for evermore,

Bonny Bobby Shafto!

Bobby Shafto's tall and slim,

He always dressed so neat and trim;

The ladies they all kick at him,

Bonny Bobby Shafto.

Bobby Shafto's gettin' a bairn,

For to dangle on his arm;

In his arm and on his knee,

Bobby Shafto loves me.

Oh he is so annoying with his “pronouncements” at Do’s. Thinks he’s down the club. / She threw handful of peas off her plate at me afterwards, just because I led with a double nine!

Don’t be daft, she’s just big boned! (Don’t forget to issue this instruction with a roll of the eyes. Lip synching is also allowed with the words, “big boned”.) 

Some dafty cut and burnt a huge AC/DC logo into the grassy slope on the playing fields. We play cricket next to it, throughout the nineteen-seventies.

Look at him in the bower with a cigar and the paper, stroking that dopey cat sat on the stone owl. He thinks I can’t see him and he does look daft. Next door can see his bald patch, too.

A went to Blaydon Races, 'twas on the ninth of Joon

Eighteen hundred an' sixty-two, on a summer's afternoon

A tyuk the 'bus frae Balmbra's, an' she wis heavy laden

Away we went 'lang Collin'wood Street, that's on the road to Blaydon

Oh, me lads, ye shud a' seen w'us gannin

Passin' the folks alang the road just as they were stannin'

Aal the' lads and lasses there, aal wi' smiling faces

Gannin' alang the Scotswood Road to see the Blaydon Races!

We flew past Airmstrang's factory, and up to the "Robin Adair"

Just gannin' doon te the railway bridge, the 'bus wheel flew off there

The lassies lost their crinolines, an' the veils that hide their faces

An' aw got two black eyes an' a broken nose gannin' te Blaydon Races

Oh, me lads, ye shud a' seen w'us gannin

Passin' the folks alang the road just as they were stannin'

Aal the' lads and lasses there, aal wi' smiling faces

Gannin' alang the Scotswood Road to see the Blaydon Races!

I think you’ll have to go round next door and explain things. I just walked in unannounced with a bottle of wine in each hand with just my bra and knickers on under my coat; the door was open, I thought you’d opened it for me! Anyway I walked in and went, “surprise!” and flashed my bits and there they both were, looking at me in total shock. They were having their tea. Houses shouldn’t look the same, should they?

My sister had lost her virginity at fourteen, she told me when I was twelve, and after that it was all I could think of. I’d do a dance every full moon wishing for luck.

Oooh he’s a daft sod, snoring all the way through everything with his arm straight up in the air, and now he’s got that new haircut, he looks like Hitler when he does that, I can’t believe I’m married to him sometimes.

An accompanying post to this Rule, with relevant illustrations, can be found in the Museum of Photocopies.