Well some
kind person (or perhaps sadist!) has brought to our attention the fact
that it's that time of year again ….. the Road to Recovery (cult)
group Plymouth celebrating yet another year of dumping its message
onto the - by now - very long suffering alcoholic. Can you imagine
it? Twenty years of sitting through ….. and having to listen to
…... what would Wayne call it? Crap! Yep! That's the word we were
looking for. Well the ordeal itself lasted 71 minutes and 36 seconds
(at least according to the length of the audio file recording this
momentous event). Now we'd like to say we're the kind of fellas
that'll go to any lengths, that 'half measures avail us not at all'
etc but when it comes to listening to clone speak we're afraid all
such noble sentiments quite abandon us, and we're reduced to a mere
gaggle of 'shivering denizens'. In fact, if truth be told, we only
managed to stick out the first ten minutes of this 'performance'.
Luckily for us (or maybe not) the first speaker was none other than
the local guru (or is it ex-guru?) Wayne P. From the context it
sounded like he'd been dragged out of retirement to address the
huddled masses. The prologue to the whole thing was delivered with
characteristic Roadie efficiency albeit lacking rather the élan one
would normally expect at the commencement of the latest drama to
unfold at this popular cult venue. The secretary proceeded through
the usual announcements with some occasional references to the
traditions (although we have no idea why – this is not a group that
pays too much attention to them). But our ears did prick up at the
mention of an entirely novel prohibition: e-cigs
(hence the title of today's post). Apparently one is exhorted not to
light up one of these during the course of the proceedings (can you
'light up' an e-ciggy?). Naturally we looked up the relevant
information on the subject (see above) but could find nothing to
indicate why this should be the case e.g. no mention of passive
'electronic' smoking etc. We can only conclude that given a couple of
fairly recent reports of these things going whizz bang (albeit in
unusual circumstances) the secretary was keen to avoid such goings-on
during Wayne's (et al) peroration. But by now it was time for the Great
Pretender to do his piece although unfortunately from his
'performance' it does seem Wayne has somewhat lost his edge. During
his allocated slot on stage he managed to mention sponsor/sponsorship
only seven times which is well below his usual one-a- minute average.
On the other hand God, Higher Power etc got 'nul' points with
“spiritual” scoring only two. But no one was left in any doubt
as to who played the role of Higher Power in this group! (we'll give
you a clue – it begins with 's' and ends with 'r' and the word is 7
letters long!). Wayne rambled on for the designated time but seemed
quite unable to inject any kind of originality into whatever
'Godless' message he was trying to communicate. In the end it
amounted to just a series of standard cult slogans strung together in
a kind of half-hearted fashion. The word “tedious” we think was
repeated on at least a couple of occasions and 'tedious' would be
about the most apposite way of describing this particular
performance. However he did wander at one point in his monologue
(rather dangerously we thought) into references to past misdemeanours
in his drinking days as he contrasted these with his own present,
rather splendid, sobriety ie. cheating on girlfriends, a defect of
character which unfortunately his Higher Power (ie. Wayne) is finding
harder than most to remove! Ah well! Business as usual! Words and no
action has always been the cult way!
Cheerio
The Fellas
(Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
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