My Family, Avril Lavigne and the Al Qaeda connection

May, 2008. Elisha, my 12 year old daughter and Mel, my 16 year old niece, after months of preparing the moment in their beautiful, day-dreamy heads were, in a few endless hours, going to meet Avril Lavigne. Me, my brother Paul, long in our fifty year old teeth, pointed the car towards the Cardiff arena, the whining voice of Avril on a continual and painful loop for the hour and a half journey from Clevedon. As we had promised this would be their day. The cost of meet-and greet tickets didn't matter. They'd be safe in the v.i.p. area. We'd have a wander, a meal then meet them outside the pub directly opposite the venue. What could go wrong?

It was 1pm when we left Clevedon. It was 3pm when we parked the car on the top tier of the empty multi-storey car park. Crawling down the jammed ramps later that night, choking on the exhausts of the hundreds of cars below us, would give the two adults in the front seat ample time to reflect on the others lack of foresight. We were just too eager  to get out of that car to notice 'our' mistake. And even when we finally did slam the doors I wasn't quite sure whether "Skater Boy" was leaking out of Paul's ears or out of my nose. I only know I can still hear that fucking song now a year and a half later. My brother, who is an accomplished jazz guitarist, has been in therapy ever since; the melody to that particular song sometimes slipping into the solos of "Lady Be Good" or "Night in a Caravan" as he performs Django Rienhardt to the knitted brows of Swing purist,  unsure as to whether they've been subliminally fondled. I, myself, think the marrying together of Avril and the deceased digit-shy French virtuoso could be, disregarding my psychologically damaged sibling, unintentionally groundbreaking.

Having had a quick snack we approached The Arena, Paul and Mel slightly ahead of me and Elisha. Elisha seemed subdued. Apparently Mel was positive a bomb was going to go off during the concert. I think I made quip something like: "Don't worry, sweetheart. Lavigne's really big in Kabul."

"Don't be such a twat, dad. It may be irrational but Mel's really worried!" is quite an admonishment coming from a twelve year old girl. And so we gathered around a table outside the pub overlooking the building that by evenings-end might lie in ruins...or not...to discuss the pros and cons, from a perpetrator's point of view, of a strike that may bring about the wrath of the Welsh dragon.

Obsessions, irrationalities and what-ifs can be the curse of bright young people. Free-floating anxieties filling the voids of logic in some teenagers with debilitating results sometimes. Mel was experiencing such a stage and nobody, not even the appearance of a clean-shaven and contrite Ossama Bin Laden, was going to convince her what her curious thought processes were telling her was true...But suddenly, and bravely I thought, in that calm period between one panic attack and the next, she said she'd give it a go. Elisha, who had been trying to be supportive while at the same time longing to be among the other excited fans singing songs on the steps, breathed a sigh of relief. I looked at Paul. We both knew this wasn't going to end well.

We were allowed in the foyer before the main throng, the high price of the meet and greets justified at last. There were probably about thirty kids and a few young adults escorting them. The kids received tokens which they hung around their necks and a carrier bag containing a cap bearing the Avril tour emblem. They would be led, it was explained by a very sharp man in a very sharp suit, to a room where they would have their photographs taken with Miss Lavigne...general whoops filling the anticipatory buzz. Then she would sign, pen provided in bag, 1 article or piece of clothing. Everyone stood in an orderly line. Paul and me looked at our daughters as we were about to be ushered away. Elisha had her cap on, beaming...Mel was focusing suspiciously on a holdall between the feet of an Avril-capped young man, who appeared to be by himself. Elisha didn't wave to us as she was too enthralled by the event. Mel looked rigid but waved dismissively in a way that said: "I will get through this."

We'd been sitting at our table outside the arena for about ten minutes before Mel emerged, followed by Elisha floating in tears. The young man with the holdall had been speaking into his mobile in a foreign tongue, probably signaling a controller somewhere to detonate the bomb in his bag. It didn't make a dent in the logic that he may have been speaking welsh and ordering a pizza for after the show. I looked at Paul, we looked at Mel, we looked at my sobbing daughter. Fifteen minutes later, a token around my neck, I was standing with Elisha in line to meet the person responsible for the corruption of my brother's arpeggios.

Bags and coats had to be left outside the room. The "terrorist" went in, un-frisked I must ad, and came out of the room beaming, his cap proudly scrawled on in red by the hand that had penned "Skater Boy."

"Fekin mint!" he exclaimed, as he passed us, continuing the mantra along the envious hallway.

I was clearly double the age, if not more, than the oldest person in that queue; a gray-headed, weather-beaten incongruity in a wall of smooth epidermis. A huge guy guarded the doorway. Elisha, brandishing her cap, was led in trembling with excitement. I took off my coat as directed totally forgetting that underneath I was wearing my black Richard Dawkins T shirt which bears a huge red A across the front, thus informing everyone that not only was I an aging teenybopper but a godless atheist, too. I smiled weakly at the huge guy hoping he wasn't of the evangelical ilk when Elisha emerged with a face like the sun.

"Guess your next, buddy," said the huge guy in an American drawl, emphasizing my anomalous status.

My barely five feet eight inch frame was ushered into a pink room crowded with even huger men. On my entrance any conversations were replaced by wide eyes and snickering as the crowd parted and I faced Avril, my virginal cap crying for ink. This would be the least I could do for my niece.

Agape, I looked at this young woman made garish and grotesque by stage-makeup seemingly catapulted at her rather over-large head from a distance. If this cranial observation seems a little churlish I can only excuse myself by saying that the smirking eyes of Avril wandering over the large red A on my chest made me self-conscious of the nascent man-boob situation. I felt a strange compulsion to explain that once, I nearly had a six-pack, but had found the weight of a twelve pack under my arm more compelling than the gym. I wanted to tell her that the sweet bird of youth would one day fly away and, no matter how much make-up she managed to remove, her head would always be too big for her body.

Instead I blurted out as I approached: " The A's for athiest, Avril." to chuckles all around the room. But there was one man, lapel labeled Andy, who wasn't amused. Andy, a massive, black bodyguard behind Avril raised two fingers to his humourless eyes then pointed them at me.

"I must looked like some middle-aged groupie," I laughed as I handed Avril my cap. She signed it slightly leaning away. Perhaps this was to give Andy's huge maw access to my throat should I pull out a knife or try to cop a quick feel. I could feel his hot breathe warming my bald patch. There was an awkward pause as I turned to leave. Then I spotted a man with a camera. Of course. Mel would want a picture. I was hovering in a no-man's land between the camera man and Avril. "Do you want a picture or not?" said the cameraman. It didn't occur to me immediately that the last thing Mel would want as a reminder of the day was a picture of me and Avril. It was only when I was standing next to Avril once more that it did occur to me...in all it's absurdity. "Wait!" I yelled, like a reluctant defendant not wanting to be papped, hands over my face as the flash went off. "I made a mistake. All I wanted was the cap!"

As I left the room, probably also having left Lavigne with the seed of an new album called: The Grey Headed Stalker-Man, I turned to the baffled huddle in an attempt at some kind of explanation. Before I could open my mouth Andy signed me the I'm watching you sign once more. I left, passing on the way out, a younger more acceptable cap-clutcher to realign the balance of a tilted universe.

"Wasn't she brilliant, dad."

"Feckin mint."

"Did you talk to her. I was too nervous." We were about to enter the auditorium.

"She's going to write a song about me. Maybe an album."

Paul, meanwhile, was adjusting to the situation well. There wasn't much adjusting to do. It had been agreed that Paul could have a few pints and I would drive. Only now It was Mel not me drinking the orange juice. Some conversations between parents and children are sacred. I can only imagine my brother's anguish, and feelings of empathy at the inner turmoil his lovely daughter was going through. It was in the middle of one of these deep, meaningful conversations, sitting with an intimate arm around around Mel's shoulders that Paul became suddenly aware of a predicament that a lot of men must find themselves in. How do you comfort a child on the cusp of womanhood, part mini-skirted goth, part Avril Lavigne fan, in a public house surrounded by the suspicious eyes of ill-informed tumbril-pushers and the lustful eyes of drunken young men. Paul had stroked his gray goatee and decided the cinema was probably the best place to wait out the concert.

Mel wanted to see a 'comedy' called: Forgetting Sarah Marshal. Forgetting "Forgetting Sarah Marshal" would occupy my brother's mind for the rest of that evening, after he'd ushered his daughter out of the cinema, having watched Russell Brand "Yahooing" like a rodeo cowboy as he banged one of his female co-stars doggy-style. He should have had an inkling to the content of the film as he settled down in the stalls among a group of couples with Mel, his popcorn and ice cream in hand. I can imagine Paul's discomfort, having extricated himself from the embarrassing pub situation, only to be faced with the huge, dangling penis owned by the star of the film and on show for the whole world to see in the opening shots. He told me later, that ever since, he's had Kafkaesque nightmares usually involving a trial, where Russell Brand, in a flood of faux, Victorian quippery, accuses him of bad parenting skills as Avril Lavigne scowls down from under a black cap...unsigned, of course.

Having left the cinema before their ices had began to melt Paul and Mel sent a text saying they'd be spending the rest of the evening in the car.

This text arrived just as I was trying to avert my eyes from the crotch of one of Avril's female dancers who was thrusting her stuff a few feet away, almost directly in my line of vision. Behind me are thousands of screaming fans and I can feel their venom. They want to be where we are near to the stage separated from the main crowd by the expensive, if too flimsy in my opinion, barrier. This is the V.I.P. area. Elisha has left me and is trying to get even closer to Avril, trying to get pictures on her mobile.

I've already had to put up with the shreaking of a support band called the Jonas Brothers, three young men hurled together by the Disney corporation. There's never a terrorist with a bomb when you need one. When Avril came on I'm sure she shot a glance to the wings when she saw me leaning nonchalantly on the barrier trying not to eye the young dancers. And there he was in the shadows, Andy, her protector, fingering me the 'I'm watching you sign.' The things we do for our children!

Maybe it was my presence that evening but I thought Lavigne was just going through the motions. Or maybe it was me, too old and out of touch to appreciate what all the fuss was about. Probably I was too self-conscious and paranoid under the illusion that all eyes were not on the strange, painted alien on the stage but on the strained, uncomfortable man trying to look invisible.

During Avril's last song I saw the man with the camera again. This time he was toting a video camera. He was filming the crowds. As he panned it my way a huge screen lit up behind Avril...and there I was...a slack-jawed, washed out gray ghost looking out at myself mid a sea of animated schoolkids. I hope it never goes to DVD. I can imagine the drunken talk among my peers in the pubs of Newcastle. So, that's what happened to Joe Reynolds.

It was only then I noticed the person standing next to me, his eyes looking directly back into mine from the screen. He was talking into his mobile over the noise in a language I couldn't understand...And then he winked at me in full cinema scope, as if a dirty secret had been shared. I turned and noticed the holdall still between his legs. Maybe Mel was right. Maybe there was a bomb in that bag. The whole cap signing thing may have been part of his sick plan...The bastard had had only wanted a photo of him and Lavigne to taunt the world in the aftermath...It turned out he had a bag full of dodgy T shirts and pop paraphernalia...and wanted to buy my Dawkins T shirt. For forty quid.

It took us two hours to get out of that multi-storey car park that night. Elisha, signed cap over her eyes, was wrapped in Tour posters listening to Avril on her Ipod, thankfully. Mel was wondering how much she could get for her cap on E bay. Weary and battle-scarred we pulled out of the car park, the headlights holding in their beam the frame of a large black guy who pointed two fingers at his eyes, then, smiling, pointed them towards the car.

"Who the hell's that?" asked Paul.

"That's Andy, that is." I answered as I put my foot down.

It was as we were driving down a brightly lit Cardiff street that Mel shouted: "There's that  man with the holdall. Look! Outside the kebab shop....He's got the same T shirt on as you, uncle Joe."

GOD AS AN ATHIEST...

...is sitting looking at the white oblong of his empty blog post...not unlike the black empty space he was compelled to fill when he first became conscious of his boredom. I know this because I created him. Just as he created me. Two solipsistic souls doubting the others existence but each harbouring a niggling feeling of being watched. Nose-picking, arse-scratching and the arbitrary dispensation of generosity to one cause at the expense of another tends to exacerbate this feeling...Not to mention uncreative masturbation; although this last desperate act of ennui may have been the precursor to the creation of the Universe: a knee-jerk reaction to the wasting of Divine seed...Although, that very act itself, considering the total lack of stimuli, would have been the greatest feat of imagination ever performed.

Of course, this is only supposition. I only created him. A figment I came up with millions of years ago to explain why I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I was getting a bit bored banging unreceptive gibbons on the plains of Africa.There was a definite yearning for something a little less hirsute. A bit more curvaceous and less malodorous. Marilyn Monroe sporting a Brazilian emerging from a bed of honeysuckle was probably an image too far, back then. But Playboy, anti-perspirant and vague notions on the benefits of Imac were definitely wedged into my DNA somewhere on the plains of the Serengeti. Existential angst had arrived. What in ? name was I doing living with a gang of gibbons who hadn't learned how to appreciate foreplay or even comb their hair. I was suffering. And God was born. An apelike but fragrant God bearing, over millennia, an anthropomorphically uncanny resemblance to Norma Jean Baker.

It would be a valid criticism of this blog for anyone idle enough to cast a weary eye through it's content to comment on it's paradoxical nature. All I can promise you is that albumen came before the yolk encased in the calcium deposit that made the chickens arse sore. Trying to look for first causes can lead to philosophical toothache and metaphysical arthritis. Just take my word for it! I invented God. And He doesn't believe in me. How could He. He isn't real. You aren't real. You exist because I exist. The Bible, the Koran, the Torah exist along with Freud, Jung and The idiot's guide Buddhism because I got bored banging gibbons. And you know what?
Sometimes. When I'm struggling with the idea that at the centre of nothing there has to be something and at the centre of that....Well, I sometimes miss sitting in the crook of a tree, unselfconsciously scratching my testicles, surrounded by my harem of gibbons.

Till next time