You may have noticed something of a gap between posts. Partly this is because I have been playing here: http://moobz.vox.com. Mostly it is because I took on the challenge of a tag tossed at me by Emma. The challenge is to tell you 5 things about me that you do not know. Given that I have been blogging for a while now that is rather more easily said than done. What I have not spilt out here I have drizzled into comments left on other sites. Furthermore, some of you are either related to me or have been friends since school so it is unlikley that there is anything that I can reveal about myself which is not so scandalous that it would be likely to lead to expulsion, ex-communication or revoking of privileges. All I am willing to say therefore is that I have done my best. As usual I have gone on at length so that the answer will appear in two parts.
(1)Â My Real Name
It may come as a surprise but Moobs is not my real name. I have toyed with making it my real name but that would get in the way of my lifelong ambition to change my name to “Mr Deed Poll”. My real name is Seán.
Well, I tell a lie, in fact it isn’t but I’ll come back to that.
My mother, being from Dublin, was homesick when I was born and wanted to call her firstborn something that reminded her of home (I guess I am lucky she didn’t name me after Ireland’s premier fast food outlet: Abrakebabra).
Mum chose the gaelic form of the name and so began a lifetime of spelling my name to idiots. Here is a scene from childhood: I am lying in a hospital bed awaiting my appendectomy. On my head is a pair of disturbingly sticky heaphones through which I am listening to the sonic delights of Hospital Radio Colchester. HRC has only one song recorded after 1946:”Will You” by Hazel O’Connor in which a woman plaintively entreats her man to stick around and satisfy her needs rather than “just politely [saying] goodnight”. By this point I have heard that song 70 times. Everything else in the station library was either danced to by Fred Astaire or else sung by soldiers on troop ships. As the sedatives take hold I hear the following exchange between the two DJs:
DJ1: “Hot Dog! We have a request here for a SEEN in Ward 4 …”
DJ2: “Er, I don’t think it’s SEEN I think it is pronounced ‘SHORN'”
DJ1: “Well it says S.E.A.N like ‘bean'”
DJ2: “I’m pretty sure that it’s pronounced ‘SHORN'”
DJ1: “Whatever. I’m sure she’ll forgive me.”
DJ2: “Actually, I think it’s a boy’s …”
DJ1: “Here is Hazel O’COnnor with ‘Will You”.
As I was sedated I found I couldn’t gnash my teeth and punch things as I wished to. I was reduced to dribbling angrily. It was as a result of that that I founded “The International Brotherhood of Seans” back in 1993.
I said that I lied about my name and I did: my real name is not Seán. Instead, my real name is Séan as my own mother mispelled my name on the birth certificate putting the accent over the wrong letter. Bah!
(2)Â I am not English
Despite my bowler hat, furled umbrella and sock suspenders I am not actually English. I was born in South Africa. My parents emigrated there shortly before I was born. So I was squeezed bawling into the world in Durban. My father was a ship’s captain trying to become a pilot.
During the first 18 months of my life my experiences included steaming along the African coast in the ship my father commanded. I am told that I became so used to the roll of the ship that I was once found, having fallen from my bed, rolling back and forth across the cabin floor fast asleep. To me the idea of the voyage seems hopelessly romatic. Unfortunately, by the time I was capable of remembering anything about my day to day existence we had washed up in Gravesend in Kent, which was every bit as glorious as the name suggests. Gone was the sight of dolphins breaking the water at the bow only to be replaced with a view across the marshes to Tilbury power station.
One afternoon, back in my schooldays, I was sat in French class with Chaz Ward, one of the more humourless members of the teaching staff (a very exacting standard). We were reading a jolly passage about a parrot and an African villager packed full of racial stereotypes so egregious that they would these days undoubtedly lead to prosecution. After the passage had been read aloud, the textbook provided a number of comprehension questions. To my delight I heard my teacher call out my name and then ask “Etes-vous Africain?”. “Oui” I answered “Je suis Africain”. Chaz’s face darkened. “I have had enough of you insolence boy. Get out!”
Having been expelled from class I had to stand outside in the corridor and await a “talking to” when the lesson was over. I knew the drill and insolence was usually my downfall (except once where the problem was farting – but that is another story). I enjoyed the moment – not because I enjoyed being booted from class but because I knew that the moment I left the classroom a hand would go up and my fellow pupils would delight in informing the still fuming Chaz that my answer had been an entirely accurate one and that he had some major climbing down to do. He managed that task with an awe-inspiring lack of grace. That memory alone more than compensated for the many teenage years I spent crapping myself that the South African Army might decide that I had to spend sometime shooting at people by way of military service.
I must tell you how jealous I am that you had “sonic delights” just before your appendectomy experience. All I had was a lanky nurse who, unfortunately, sounded just as nervous as she looked.
Loved this post.
Ah…. the mystery is revealed. I’ve missed you, man. I am glad you missed the South African Army – that would suck. I love that you told Chaz in French that you were African and not English. There’s just some odd sensiblity to that.
Bingley’s premier fast food outlet is called Kebab Ranch which always sparks a romantic image in me of paddocks out the back of the high street, where the kebabs run free and handsome kebabmen rope them in whenever there’s an order.
that’s all very interesting (actually, it is) but …. WHAT IN THE NAME OF PANTYHOSE IS THIS VOX THING? i’m all of a pother trying to fathom it out. i’ve also been tagged, incidentally, by stuart from the safety of his kitchentable but am undecided as to whether or not i’ve built up sufficient immunity since the last one to dredge up a whole new raft of facts. maybe i can just recycle (hopeful squeak?) from last time. please advise, brother moobs?
Catherine – Was this Tonsil Nurse?
OGC – Me too. I’ve never been up for a Heart of Darkness experience.
Kate – If you can rodeo a kebab into submission to you get oot for nothing?
MM – It’s only 2.5 interesting things each!
Intriguing that you are actually a Saffa, when you seem as quintessentially British as cold lumpy custard with a thick skin on it served over semolina, as was the culinary highlight in most schools of our youth. No, maybe that is not quite the right analogy…you are sweet but not lumpy, although you are covered in skin. In any case….look forward to finding out three other things!
Ok…I keep ‘meeting’ fake English people who have actually been born in South Africa.
Really. I think you are the third.
I just read a beautiful book called (I think) My Mothers Dress) and she was from SA.
So really…tweak your tales and you could be the next Conrad or Orwell!!!!
And Emma! Oh man…..that is a description that will stay with me for a long time.
And Moobs/SHEEN!..I had bad experiences with a french teacher too. Mainly because being fresh of the boat I spoke her beloved language with a very strong Scottish Accent. She used to get all frothy and spittle would fly from her mouth and she hugged Life Savers candy at me.
Sean Bean’s folks must’ve been really confused. Or possibly sadistic.
(Seen Been or Shorn Born – what d’you reckon?)
Pog, I don’t know why, but that comment just made me shoot tea out of my nose.
Pogster. Your question was addressed here:
http://www.ibos.org/seanfame.htm
I was going to make a sensible comment but then I got distracted by the mention of Sean Bean.
*sigh*
Dear Mr Sheen, I am very impressed with the way you cleared up all the confusion about poor Mr Bean, not just with an explanation, but with a demonstrative link! I call that “leave a comment” service!
Blimey moobs!
Mind you, I don’t believe a word of it …
No, Moobs… appendectomy nurse… 20 years ago. Tonsil Nurse was Da Bomb.
I enjoyed this tons.
And I loved your use of ‘drizzled’, too. Nail, head.
….
If it’s any consolation, everyone must eventually pass through Gravesend at some point in their life. And you’ve got yours out the way.
Aaaaahhhh….Brotherhood of the Sean’s. I suppose a couple of those Sean’s are dated are members of that! 😉 There has GOT to be a Sisterhood of the Jennifer’s somewhere….
I like the visual of you rolling back and forth along the cabin floor…makes me think of the morning after our Christmas party this year. Me…rolling back and forth across the bathroom floor wondering why WHY did I have that second bottle of wine? 😉
if it was sheen – like martin sheen – that wouldn’t be so bad. and then there’s always the extended heart of darkness/apocalypse now analogy. hmmm – let me look at that photo of you again?
Some of my ancestors came from South Africa too. So I’m fond of saying that I’m African, especially since my whiter than pasty bread coloring seems to say otherwise.
I loved the Chopin piece. Thank you for sending me over there. And I loved that your mother misplaced the accent. You are truly one of a kind!
Getting names slightly wrong must be an Irish mother thing, as my grandmother also misplaced the fada in her sons’ names. She also accidentally called three daughters Mary, and gave one girl the middle name Catherine, after her own mother. Her mother’s name was Christina.
Was that five?
Hey Shawrn –
That piece of music you posted on vox is…is…I don’t have the words for it. Which is why it’s music, and not poetry.
I’m ordering the sheet music as we speak – figuratively speaking.
I’ll learn it for your 75th birthday.
seen and not heard?
Thanx for introducing yourself. I’m Lucy – U dont wanna know my life story as it’s not as interesting as that.
Good post.
Ahh some insight…
But how did you come up with Moobs as a monniker is my question of the day?
Lucy – Mwahahaha now I know who to tag
Pendy – Moobs is slang for male mammaries
Shean huh? I never would have pegged you for a Sean.
Great writting as always. Can’t wait for Part 2
Moobs, this is wonder ful – as usual.
I have to say, though, I was distracted most of the way through by the thought of your sock-suspenders………
I think that tells you a lot about me, doesn’t it?
Just to clear things up, I’m English through and through. No foreign trips from my youth to speak of. Unless you count a week’s holiday on the Isle of Wight? No? Didn’t think so, somehow.
I wish you could put the IBOS site back up, it was hilarious…
Been a fair few years since i chuckled at it, I hope your dentists appointment helped free up the planned armed insurrection…
Obviously – being some 9 years since this thread started, i’m assuming that i may not hear back – hopefully I will though.
I’d like to put it back up again too.