In a couple of weeks I’m heading up to Newcastle, I don’t really need to go but I was invited to an old primary/ junior school chums meet up and rather than say I didn’t want to go I said I had to go to Newcastle that day.
I bought myself a train ticket to Newcastle so that I wouldn’t be telling an untruth that I couldn’t make it.
I’m not a one for sitting in pubs at the best of times and I don’t want to reminisce about the ‘good old days’. We met up earlier this year and I don’t feel I need to do it again.
I know I could have just said I couldn’t go but it’s a day out and I do get to see Fenwick’s Christmas window which I’ve been told is excellent this year.
Is there a better way to get out of things you don’t want to do?
I hope you said you had some coal to deliver.
I routinely use my “I can’t eat that and I don’t drink alcohol” to get out of Mrs F’s works dos. I’m happy to meet her colleagues over a cuppa, but an evening spent watching the corporate world celebrate is one of those where time seems to slow down, if not stop still.
And I routinely turn down on-site gatherings at work. “I’m immunosuppressed and you want me to spend a day in December in a meeting room with people coughing and sneezing?”
But I did spend a summer evening in a pub with a couple of school friends. We hadn’t seen each other since 1992 and, apart from gaining some weight and losing some hair, we hadn’t changed much. It was a lot better than I had feared, although I did leave when conversation turned to “do you remember that psycho Geography teacher we had in 1985?”
It’s literally what I’m doing right now.
Local guy died last year… Brexit, Daily Express, talked about the war all the time, ‘Donald Trump is a clever man’, ‘No such thing as Covid’ etc. etc… told everyone that my mum had a doctor’s appointment on the Thursday, the day of his funeral… it had been on the Tuesday.
I read the Order of Service which included a quite awful poem about his town not being the same, foreigners everywhere etc.
Did not regret my decision for one second.
I would imagine he tried his best to get the ‘poem’ printed in the local paper.
Newcastle? That’s a bit extreme, depends where you live I suppose. I would just tell a white lie. Washing my hair or something that evening
Reminds me of Peter Cook being summoned to meet with Prince Andrew and Fergie. He wrote back “Sorry but I find I am watching television that evening”.
Apropos of nothing, but I’ve just been reading Ben Macintyre’s excellent new book, a moment-by-moment account of the 1980 Iranian embassy siege. One of the more gobsmacking facts to emerge was that at an incredibly sensitive and delicate moment in proceedings, police were being repeatedly bombarded by requests from Buck Palace. Apparently Andrew wanted to come down to site of the siege, inspect the ground operation, get a full briefing by the chief of police and be given lunch.
Oh I shall look out for that.
Only an hour and a half on the train, reasonable train ticket price and I have friends there so it should be a pleasant day out.
Meeting is during the day so I needed a full day excuse.
Still reading a few of the excuses given gives me some idea for next time.
A bit like when Chandler got on a plane to Yemen as an excuse to get away from Janice.
I prefer the Phoebe approach.
“What’s the address there, Chandler?”
“Er.. 15… Yemen Road… Yemen”
I regularly take the soft option and use Mrs B as my excuse – “Mrs B isn’t feeling well”, “Mrs B doesn’t like crowds”, “Mrs B just lot a leg in a freak accident”…..that sort of thing. Recently I was persuaded against my better judgment to meet up with some former work colleagues. I spent several hours listening to stultifyingly trivial gripes along the lines of “he said, she said, you won’t believe what he did…..” etc. etc. Retirement never tasted so sweet.
There have been swingeing redundancies where I used to work and one of my old team rang me for advice. Whilst I was happy to help, hearing all the old names and frustrations made me wish I hadn’t – I had happily forgotten all that dross.
You don’t need to invent elaborate excuses, tell lies or find something else to do to provide you with an excuse.
Simply say you can’t go because you’re going to be somewhere else. If that somewhere else is your own home, that’s your business. If they push and want to know where you’ll be and why, then it’s them being rude, not you.
I’d just like to add that sitting in a pub as I have done with other members of the Afterword is a most pleasant way of passing the time, it does mean with ambient noise I have to put my hearing aids in.
I just say that I have a clash. And then I play London Calling at the appropriate time to make it true.
I’m stuck in Traffic
I’ve got The Cramps
I’m on a Mission from Berlin to Chicago
I’m caught in a Crowded House
I just can’t get out of The Doors right now
I’ve got The Feeling I’m not in the mood
There are Four Brothers here who have my full attention
There’s been a Massive Attack at the local Cornershop. It was Madness with Fun Lovin Criminals, until The Police showed up on The Beat.
Have an up, Sal.
👏👏👏
Bravo!
I have a collection of photographs of positive Covid tests, “I’d love to come but see attached photo”.
It also works well for stopping unwanted guests who invite themselves to visit.
The last bit about unwanted guests reminded me of an Oscar Wilde line. Someone said to him thar they went past his house the night before and Oscar replied, “Thank you very much”
I’m really sorry, I won’t be able to make it – I will be in the middle east on a covert job; if I told you any more I’d have to kill you.
Just tell a bunch of people you don’t want to see that you don’t want to go.
What’s the worst that can happen? They won’t invite you next time? Bonus.
The hardnut approach.
I like it.
I am pretty unsociable (like #6 in “The Prisoner”, I am “unmutual”).
Nobody invites me to anything, anyway.
You are on the spectrum, aren’t you. 😉
I am on a spectrum of my own, Tiggs.
Not to be confused with the one Captain Scarlet is part of.
I’ve no problem just saying No although I might phrase it differently like “it doesn’t appeal to me”, or “that’s not my kind of thing”.
I’ve had friends going back to primary school and secondary school that I maintained contact with even while away in London. I tend to be a point of contact when gatherings like funerals or school reunions are happening. My friends don’t all want to associate with each other but we recently expanded one of my two hander pints by adding two old school classmates who I’ve had intermittent contact with over the years and it was so successful that we’re now a regular group. One of the newbies was given a rotten time as far back as primary school because he was obviously “different”. Now as a loud and proud gay man, we’ve been able to talk about this as grown ups. Mostly we’ve been laughing our arses off with precious little talk about the old days. I get that this isn’t for everyone but pints and talking shite is my idea of a good night out.
The flipside to this is I have a self-employed friend who will do almost anything for a free lunch, and has somehow been to every Class of 1974 school reunion, despite not yet being alive in 1974. I suppose everyone there thinks she’s ‘doing well for her age’ and is too polite to ask. I’m not sure if she goes to the class of 1984 lunches as well.
I did once emigrate to Australia in order to get out of a job move to that London. I have absolutely no regrets.
That possibly is taking things to extremes.
I ducked out of a lot of jobs that I hated, before I joined the railway. Come to think about it, I resigned from another job 12 years later and went off to Australia again. No regrets about that decision either.
Reminds me of the story* of the lad who was encouraged by his parents to join the Royal Navy. On returning from his first ship posting, after spending a few months at sea, he was surprised to discover his parents had emigrated without telling him and left no forwarding address.
*Might just be a story and not really true. Good story, though.
At the moment I have the perfectly genuine excuse still guaranteed to have everyone backing away. “Sorry I can’t come – I’ve got Covid”.
The last time an old school “friend” (couldn’t stand her) called and wanted to get together I told her, possibly a little bluntly, that I don’t have time to see the few friends I keep in touch with so certainly wouldn’t have time to add any more to that list.
She never called again, thankfully.
You could use the same approach as Harold Pinter when he responded to Tom Stoppard…..
“Dear Tom,
Thank you for your invitation to host a fundraising dinner in the private room of a top London restaurant.
I would rather die.
All the best,
Yours,
Harold”
Slightly related, in that the senior partner at one of the surgeries I did my training at, was being particularly pestered by a patient, ringing up for a home visit, from said doc, every day. (It was clearly long ago; he worked every day and did home visits.) l recall being in the reception area one day, as a receptionist, on the phone to said patient, looked at Dr X in askance. “Tell him I’m dead” was the belligerent response.
“I’m washing my hair.”
If you post me your wig I’ll wash it for you.
There are enough hold ups in the British legal system that His Honour Justice Thebald will have to persist with grubby headwear for now.
I’m not sure Grade 4 O-Level is sufficient Latin to achieve such lofty legal heights, @salwarpe.
Oh, I think they’ll let anyone in these days…
Caesar adsum jam forte
Brutus aderat
If I had one, Peter, I would.
In that case I could always tweezer the lice out of your merkin instead if you’d like.
You’re too kind, @pencilsqueezer!
Should I ever invest in such an accoutrement and find it thus infested, I’ll be sure to pop it in the post.
To save postage and @pencilsqueezer ‘s time just pop it in a sealable plastic bag and place in the freezer. Leave it a few days remove brush and re-wear, though warm it up first before reattaching.
Voice of experience?
I don’t like to boast.
Not entirely sure I’d call that boasting 🤔
A friend of mine decided to go to Oxford because he didn’t like the lift system at Leeds Uni (which is where his Dad wanted him to go). He figured, correctly, that Oxford would meet with parental approval.
I immediately suspected, and a quick Google suggests I was right, a paternoster lift. I went on in in Prague where it was a low key tourist attraction at the time and stepping on and off it the first time was a scary experience.
I remember seeing nursing staff using a paternoster at St Thomas’s Hospital. It is a really quick way to move between floors.
It certainly moves faster than you expect if you’re not used to it. My other half made the mistake of waiting for me to step on then took the leap herself, leaving her in a heap on the floor as she threw her trailing leg in to avoid it being trapped by the rapidly approaching ceiling.
Re the paternoster at St Thomas’s, a source of great fun for medical students, all told you go upside down, as you go over the top. An urban legend of sorts, the more predictable reality was that it threw you up into the sky, via a chute, to make an uncomfortable landing, a dozen stories below. O, how we laughed!
There’s a paternoster lift in the co-op building here in Stockholm, where I had my first after-school job in my teens, for their test kitchen.
I was a food tester, and in the teen group we were mostly fed cookies, chocolates, fizzy drinks and sausages, and got paid for it! 😀
Then, when we’d spent an hour eating and jotting down notes on the products, we’d spend as long as we could going up and around in the lift, and jumping in and out of course – that was the fun part – until some adult finally caght us and sent us packing, until the next week when we did it all over again. Happy days!
The money I earned ended up being my spending mony when I visited England for a month in the summer of -82.
There was one in Northwick Park Hospital when I was a kid. We used to ride it all the way round to experience the sideways movement.
We have a friend we call Hayley Maybe, because she doesn’t commit to social engagements, so it’s “Jo, Jim, Angie and Hayley Maybe” coming to the gig tonight. It’s actually quite a good quirk if your friends will tolerate it, because you don’t need to invent an excuse if you don’t want to go. You just don’t show up.
We had a friend who always sounded excited and very very keen to meet up but hardly ever made it. His surname became a verb for that kind of behaviour.