5.30, Saturday evening. I’m walking with my girlfriend into town, across Malling Rec. It’s muddy, so we’re on the path. From behind, an alarming scraping sound and a male voice shouting ‘beep beep’. We look around and let a twenty-ish-year-old blond guy on a bicycle through. He’s towing another guy, same age, on a pair of rollerblades. They stop at Willey’s Bridge, and we overtake them again, walking over the river. Before long we can hear the sound of the skates coming behind us, so we step off the path. I make an overly courteous sign with my arm to show the guy he can go on through. But he doesn’t read it quickly enough, and tries to stop. In slow motion, he skates to the wall to support himself, and his feet go from under him and he lands slap bang onto his arse on the path. His mate on the bike, who’s arrived on the scene, let’s out a roar of amusement. I’m laughing heartily, so is my girlfriend. The guy gets gingerly back on his feet again, and can’t do anything but laugh himself. The pair cycle-skate off in front of us. The incident has really added cheer to the early part of the evening.
Funny that, isn’t it? Society has progressed exponentially over the last few centuries, and we’d like to think our sense of humour has progressed with it. I hope there’s some sort of cutting edge to my humour. I love wryly smiling at post-modern irony; catching an allusion in a literary friend’s conversation, ‘getting’ a cartoon in Private Eye or the New Yorker. But there’s nothing that makes me guffaw, makes me really laugh out loud with no control, than a bloke falling flat on his arse, especially when he’s trying to look cool. Charlie Chaplin or Ricky Gervais?. Give me Chaplin every time. Enjoy the week.