Happy Birthday To Grumpy

My most recent Grumpy columnsoon to grace the pages of Tsunami. Had a bloody nice dinner with friends at Spice Temple, then went and partied and had some very big laughs. Not sure why I wrote this in the third person, just came out that way. Read. Enjoy. My lovely editor did. She also "adored" my piece on local band The Beards (also out soon). She lets me indulge in a very casual style, which seems to make for fun reading (certainly fun writing). I adore my Ed.


GRUMPY

Grumpy is freelance writer Lee Bemrose (leebemrose666@gmail.com) He had a nice birthday recently.



Grumpy doesn't like birthdays. He doesn't mind other people's birthday parties, he just doesn't like his own very much. Something probably happened to him on his birthday when he was Little Grumpy that made him sad.

But some friends made plans to have dinner on his and The Dreaded One's birthday on the weekend. He thought this would be nice. There was also a club night he wanted to go to on that night but Grumpy and The Dreaded One thought they probably couldn't afford to go. Sigh.

But then just before the weekend, Grumpy got home from work and The Dreaded One told him she had won a competition she hadn't even entered – two tickets to the clubnight plus accommodation in a 4 star hotel. The club was in the hotel complex, and there was a spa in their room, and there was a rooftop pool – right on top of the roof.

Dinner was very very nice, but Grumpy was very keen to get back to the hotel and crack into a massive night of partying. Grumpy likes hotels. He also likes massive nights of partying.

The hotel was excellent. The club was excellent. Grumpy has largely gone off clubs in favour of outdoor dance festivals, but sometimes clubnights work. This was one such night. Oh the fun Grumpy and The Dreaded One and all their friends had.

At one point, someone gave Grumpy & Co a birthday treat, and 10 minutes after having their birthday treats, the music stopped - the club was closing much earlier than they expected because it was in a hotel. Uh-oh.

Disappointed, the friends went back to their hotel room where suddenly they found millions and millions and millions of things to talk about. They laughed a lot and liked each other lots more than usual.

At dawn they went to the roof-top swimming pool, which was pretty cool. They had morning drinks as the sun came up, and soon the day was bright and fresh. And soon after that, Normal People came up to work out in the gym. The gym looked out onto the roof-top pool from behind big glass windows, and while Grumpy and his friends blobbed about in giggling heaps, The Normal People pedalled and ran and rowed and did funny things on a big steppy pully up-down thing. The Normal People were much funnier than they realised.

Soon some of Grumpy's friends decided to show The Normal People how funny they were. They went down to the big windows, stared right at The Normal People, and started pedalling and running and rowing and doing funny things on imaginary big steppy pully up down things. It was the funniest thing Grumpy and the rest of the party people had ever seen.

Then the funny friends became angry drill masters, shouting through the glass at The Normal People who were just not putting enough effort into it. “Pedal harder!” they shouted. “Run faster! Row harder! Go more crazy on that steppy pully up-down thing!”

One of the friends even ran on the spot in front of the treadmill-running person, looking over his shoulder in fright as though he was being chased by the running Normal Person.

It was around this time that Grumpy remembered that the theme of the night had been Aztec; half of the very loose people by the rooftop pool who were falling about laughing were dressed as Aztec warriors in leathers and feathers and runny make-up. The rest were just regular doofer types, dressed in leathers and feathers and fluff. What must The Normal People have thought?

Grumpy was pretty sure it was one of the better birthdays he'd had. If every birthday could be this surprising and this silly, he might celebrate them more often.