James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes

by James Acaster

  Then afternoon registration rolled around and Mrs Andrews had an announcement to make. Siobhan was very upset, and the reason she was upset was because someone had left big soapy streak marks all over her new coat. Inside my five-year-old brain, all hell broke loose. I didn’t know soap left streak marks!!! I had no idea there would be even a shred of evidence left behind!!! This was meant to be the perfect crime!!! I then felt a feeling way worse than the dread I had felt when I realised I’d forgotten my towel. For the first time in my life I felt a crushing sense of guilt. Guilt and fear, actually. I’d felt fear before, obviously. I was five and ever since I’d started school I’d been afraid of everyone and everything, but this was way more intense. Until then I’d only feared things that I didn’t deserve, like death or the TV breaking, but this was the first time that I was feeling fear because of something I had brought on myself, and that if something bad happened to me as a result no one would give me any sympathy because I one hundred per cent had it coming.

  I couldn’t quite believe what was happening. It felt like a dream. And then I saw, in slow motion, Simon raising his hand, his hair all straight on his head, and telling Mrs Andrews, in his posh little voice, ‘It was James Acaster.’

  My whole world was falling apart.

  I couldn’t believe he would turn on me like this – I only chose Siobhan because he said he hated her! Mrs Andrews told me off in front of the whole class. ‘You should know better’ were the words I still remember to this day. Over and over: ‘You should know better’. If I was articulate enough I would’ve told her that I was five and so of course I did not know better. The only reason I had been caught was because I didn’t know better. Why would a five year old who has never been in trouble or done anything naughty in his whole life know better than anyone about anything at all? The only person who should know better in this room, Mrs Andrews, is you! If we caught you wiping your hands on all of our coats then it would be acceptable to say, ‘Mrs Andrews. You, a woman in your fifties, should unquestionably know better.’ But I have only existed for five years. So if you want to tell me off you should say, ‘James Acaster, because you do not know how the world works, you have understandably made a huge mistake. I’m now going to punish you for it so you don’t do it again. If you do do it again I will tell you that you should know better. But this time, you did not and that was your undoing.’

  As everyone got up from the floor and sat down at their desks for the start of the lesson, I turned to Simon and said, ‘But you said she was your least favourite person in the whole class.’ Simon smiled, put his bag over his shoulder and replied, ‘Second least favourite.’

  Juggling

  Fast-forward a couple of years and not only am I not getting in trouble in school any more but I’ve also got a buzzing social life due to joining the Cubs. The Cubs is Scouts for seven- to ten-year-olds. Before the Cubs I was in the Beavers and then after Cubs went on to become a Scout. I am not sure why it happens in this order. In the wild a beaver does not become a cub and a cub does not become a scout. They are all different species. Also, a beaver would be older than a cub in the wild. Unless it’s a baby beaver, but a baby beaver should strictly be referred to as a kitten. Obviously, I understand how it would be confusing to rename the Beavers ‘the Kittens’, because then everyone would think about cat babies. Even if you changed the Beavers to ‘the Beaver Kittens’, not everyone would feel comfortable with it. I just think the Scouts should pick a species and follow it through logically. I vote to replace the name Beavers with ‘Cubs’ then change Cubs to ‘Tigers’ and Scouts to ‘Older Tigers’. This would be a better name for the Scouts because, like tigers, the number of Scouts is rapidly depleting and the common Boy Scout is on the verge of extinction. Bear Grylls is doing everything he can to keep those knot-tying pipsqueaks alive but maybe all they really need to do is update the brand and then numbers would pick up. The same goes for actual tigers. If tigers changed their name to Stripy Lions then we’d all be interested anew.

  Every now and then, my Cub Pack would put on a performance for the mums and dads. The performance would usually be themed and involve singing, maybe some dancing, and whatever skills the Cubs had up their sleeves (imagine how much cooler this story would be if I was saying ‘Tigers’ instead of Cubs right now. Imagine how much cooler still this story would be if I was saying ‘Stripy Lions’ instead of Tigers). The only performance I remember taking part in was the circus-themed show we did in my first year. We would be performing in a small room to about forty parents, and each one of us had to perform a different circus skill. I wanted to be a clown (naturally) but the clown roles got snapped up pretty quickly. In fact, all the good parts were going pretty fast. I think it was for this reason that I lied and said I could do something I couldn’t do, just so I got a decent part in the show.

  ‘Who can juggle?’ asked Akela (named after the wolf in The Jungle Book just to further confuse anyone trying to figure out what the theme is here. All the leaders were named after Jungle Book characters but why I just don’t know. The theme of the Cubs is as confused as whatever theme Alton Towers thinks it’s selling these days. They both appear to go for a bit of everything and hope something sticks and if they weren’t so much damn fun to go to then they’d definitely get taken to task for it). When Akela asked who could juggle, two hands went up: a boy called Matthew who had learned to juggle at an after school club, and a boy called James Acaster who didn’t know what juggling was.

  Since nobody else raised their hand, both Matthew and I were chosen to be the jugglers.

  It had been a big year for me in terms of live performance. Just a couple of months previous I had landed the lead role in the St Andrew’s Primary School Christmas play, The Woodcutter and the Christmas Dove. I played a little character known as The Woodcutter. Calling it a big deal would be downplaying it. The previous year I had played a schoolboy (which isn’t acting when you are also a schoolboy in real life) and had one line during the first two minutes of the play before never being seen again (the line in question was, ‘He could even wear glasses’ when talking about a sheepdog.) Now I was THE Woodcutter in a play that I assumed was known to the entire world as a true classic. The Christmas Dove (played by promising newcomer Jenny Cottrell) was on a mission to deliver the good news of Jesus’ birth to another character in the play (I forget who) but tragically got injured outside the woodcutter’s house (I forget how). Being a wonderful man, the woodcutter nurses the dove back to health so it can fly again and as a result bags himself an invite to the birth of the one true Christ but annoyingly fails to get a shout out in the Bible.

  I was not prepared for a solo. As in singing on my own. The melody of ‘A Woodcutter’s Prayer’ still haunts me to this day. Usually when I’m about to go to sleep I hear the refrain ‘A crib full of emptiness, a woodcutter’s prayer’ faintly, as if drifting ghostlike across the moorland of my troubled mind. I bottled it. In rehearsal I literally could not make audible sound come out of my mouth every time I was supposed to sing that depressing, high-pitched song about how the woodcutter was unable to have kids and so will give all his love to a dove he found half-dead on the floor. On the day of the performance the teacher directing the play decided that the song would become a group number and even then I opted to mime along while standing centre stage holding a tiny plastic axe in one hand and a toy dove in the other. I am convinced that my appalling interpretation of the character of The Woodcutter is the main reason I have never seen another production of The Woodcutter and the Christmas Dove advertised anywhere else since. It was my one shot and I blew it.

  This meant I was even more determined not to blow it a second time at the Cub Scout Circus Show. I had chosen to be a juggler mainly because they didn’t have to do any singing, but had overlooked the fact that I had never juggled before. So I did what any boy who’s bitten off more than he can chew does and I went home and I asked my father for help. ‘Dad, can you juggle?’ I asked, and he confidently replied, ‘Yes
. Yes I can!’ Because as it turns out, I’m not the only liar in the family.

  The next morning I went out and bought a set of juggling balls with my pocket money and took them home to my father. He opened the box, looked at the three balls inside, picked one up and announced, ‘Right, we don’t need this one,’ and threw it over his shoulder. Alarm bells should’ve started to ring at this point but I was seven years old and this man was the wisest person I’d ever met so I assumed he knew what he was doing. That was clearly just the spare ball. Which makes total sense – I’m going to be throwing these balls all over the place, it’s only a matter of time before I lose one of them and so a spare ball is almost certainly essential. And then the lesson began. Now, you may not know how to juggle. Maybe you’ve seen other people juggle but never given it a go yourself. So just in case you were thinking about taking it up, here is the technique my father taught me all those years ago:

  Step 1 - Stand up straight with a juggling ball in each hand.

  Step 2 - Throw the ball in your left hand high into the air.

  Step 3 - While the first ball is in the air, PASS the second ball from your right hand to your left hand. Do not throw the ball – PASS THE BALL.

  Step 4 - Catch the falling ball in your right hand.

  Step 5 - Repeat steps 2 to 4. You are now a professional juggler.

  In less than a minute I had mastered this technique. I was standing in front of the mirror, throwing and passing on a loop, and once I had been doing this for two minutes my father raised his hands nonchalantly and said, ‘And that’s juggling.’ End of lesson.

  I had learned to juggle in no less than two minutes, so I was sure to nail the Cub Scout Circus show. If I’m honest, though, I did have some doubts – the way I juggled didn’t look the same as the juggling I’d seen other people do. But my dad seemed 100 per cent sure that what I had done was identical to, if not better than, any juggling I had ever seen, and there was no way this man would send me into any situation without every tool I needed to ensure my success.

  The night of the big show came around and the Cubs were gathered backstage (by backstage I mean another room in the church building we had our Cub meetings in), all of us dressed in our various circus costumes. I was sitting on the floor holding my two juggling balls, wearing a shirt, school trousers and a waistcoat, because I was a juggler and that’s what jugglers wear. Matthew was wearing the same outfit as me but I noticed he was carrying three juggling balls and not two. I couldn’t believe it. What an idiot! He’d brought the spare ball along! Oh boy! Best of luck, Matthew! Honestly, what a wally, he’s about to humiliate himself in front of all the mums and dads. Oh Matthew, you poor, poor Cub Scout, Baden Powell would be spinning in his grave.

  It was showtime. Akela (the Cub leader, an adult) was the first onstage (the patch of floor in front of where the parents were sitting). She welcomed the audience to the big top (drafty church room) and introduced the acts one by one. The clowns came out and did an amusing routine where they pushed each other over and laughed silently; there was a kid dressed as a lion tamer and another kid dressed as a lion whose chair act went down a dream; one kid was a tightrope walker but instead of a tightrope he walked along a rather wide bench – what an amateur.

  ‘And now!’ announced Akela in a big booming voice, ‘it’s time for . . . the JUGG-ER-LORS!!!!’ Matthew and I marched onstage and stood right at the front, me on the left and him on the right and then we began to juggle. In our own individual ways. I launched into my honed routine with ease – throw, pass, catch, throw, pass, catch, throw, pass, catch, throw, pass, catch – never dropping a single ball, standing up nice and straight throughout. The parents, however, didn’t appreciate what they were seeing. They looked sort of amused but hardly impressed. Then more and more of the parents started looking over at Matthew; in fact, pretty soon all the mums and dads were looking over at Matthew, and I presumed he must be making such a pig’s ear of things, what with bringing the spare ball along and all, that they were all watching him out of morbid curiosity. I decided to look over myself. It felt cruel but I had to see what kind of mess he’d got himself into.

  In my memory he was the best juggler the world has ever seen. Passing balls underneath his legs while he did high kicks, his arms weaving over and under each other like an octopus, doing that trick where you catch the balls from the top rather than the bottom and drop them so it looks like you’re juggling upside down. I think he was even shouting ‘Woo!’ every so often to get the crowd hyped up even more. It was at this point that I began to suspect I was not a juggler and that, although what I was doing may be technically considered juggling by a tiny minority of the world’s population, in this church hall alongside a boy who may have legitimately run away with the circus, it was nothing more than moving two balls from one hand to the other without dropping them on the floor.

  Matthew did his big finale, all three balls thrown high into the air at once then incorporating the triple catch with a bow, and the crowd went wild and crazy. There were cheers and stamping of feet, whistling too, and then the kid who was dressed as a lion jumped out from behind a cardboard cannon and pointed at Matthew with two hands just in case the parents weren’t 100 per cent clear on which juggler they were applauding.

  A Lion Cub

  I looked out at the parents all losing their minds over Matthew and saw only one person looking at me – my dad, standing at the back, looking extremely proud and giving me a solid thumbs up.

  Eureka!

  I want you to know that my father was a much better dad than that juggling story made out. Not that the previous story even shows him in a particularly bad light; upon reflection he helped me out as best he could and tried to give me the confidence I needed approaching an impossible situation that I alone had gotten myself into.

  When I was eight my father made a deal with me that if I saved up twenty pounds he would make up the difference so I could buy a cymbal for my drum kit. A lot of details in that sentence point to him being a cool dad. For starters he had let me not only learn the drums but also have a drum kit in the house. He had also paid for me to have drum lessons instead of teaching me himself as there was no way I was going to let him teach me for fear he had me lightly pat the drums with my palms and make drum noises with my mouth before raising his hands nonchalantly and saying, ‘And that’s drumming.’ Also, making this deal with me was a great idea because back then I found it impossible to save up my pocket money and would instead spend every penny exclusively on sweets, and if it wasn’t for my father making this deal with me I’d probably be spending my entire annual income on pick ’n’ mix to this day.

  During this time the family visited Eureka!, an interactive science museum for kids, in Halifax. Before I continue this story, may I just say that Eureka! is a fantastic place and a wonderful day out for children of all ages. I myself had an amazing time there, until the very last minute when my life turned to shit.

  I don’t know if this is still a feature at Eureka! these days but during my visit there was a section of the museum all about the workplace and how science plays a role in different working environments. In the ‘science in the workplace’ section of Eureka! there was an assembly line to demonstrate how machinery works and how the things we take for granted in everyday life are made. When I say assembly line, it was really a small collection of simple machines that, if used in the correct order, could make a basic Styrofoam lunchbox. And it was up to us kids to make these lunchboxes. There were four machines: the first one cut out the two halves of the lunchbox, the second one made the holes for the hinges and handle, the third put the hinges on the lunchbox and the fourth put the handle on it. Kids would go into the room in groups of four and work the machines for ten minutes, and by the end they would understand a little more about how machines work, a little bit more about what it’s like to have a job, and possess a lunchbox that would fall apart in the car on the way home.

  My brother, sister and I went in together
along with some kid we’d never met before and sat at the machines. A Eureka! employee entered the room to welcome us to work and explain how all the machines operated, and then they sounded some sort of foghorn signifying the start of the working day. We started to work slowly, making the Styrofoam lunchboxes, one step at a time. I worked on the machine that put the hinges on the lunchbox, in my opinion the worst machine of the four. Cutting out the two halves looked fun, the second machine was basically a giant hole-punch and the fourth machine gave you the finished product. Putting on the hinges was D-U-L-L. I was just eight years old and here I was, pulling a lever which would put the boring hinges on to the boring lunchbox. Man alive. My sister was loving working on the giant hole-punch machine. You could see the satisfaction in her eyes every time she pulled that lever; she was so lucky. I loved hole-punches as a child but never had cause to use them. The amount of children doing their own filing is startlingly low. I often think it’s a shame that hole-punches are so much fun but are seldom used by the people who’d appreciate them the most. Hole-punches, much like swivel chairs, are wasted on adults. A child looks at your average office and sees a playground; an adult looks at an office and sees a prison sentence. Then there are adults who love swivel chairs and hole-punches but can’t openly enjoy them because they aren’t children any more and their playground days are over. The universe is cruel.

  At the end of our shift they sounded the foghorn again then, to our surprise, handed out payslips for twenty pounds. Twenty pounds – the exact amount of money I needed to save up in order to get a cymbal for my drum kit. There is a God.

  ‘Here’s your pay for the day!’ said the Eureka! staff member cheerily. ‘Take these down to the cash machine next to the main entrance and you will be given your wages!’

  All the kids got excited except for me. I wasn’t going to celebrate just yet. Unlike these other punks, I really needed this money. But even at the age of eight I knew that nothing in life comes this easy. I stayed behind after my co-workers had left the room to ask the boss a question.