Sinister: Dad nearly joins the army, and Robin discovers he's gay

[Robin Stout]

     I got another phone call from Jerry Singer on Friday, but I wasn't 
in. He's certainly persistant. Thanks to everyone who emailed me 
about my dilemma; it seems that everyone's a closet inventor. I was 
thinking about how stupid I am, phoning up for things just because 
they're free, when I remembered that my Dad had told me once, how 
he'd done something similar when he was twelve, and nearly ended 
up joining the army.
     He'd been on a school trip to an army assualt course, and had 
eagerly filled in a form to join their Youth Recruits, thinking it would 
be like the Dennis the Menace club and he'd receive a membership 
card and badges and pictures of sweaty young men in uniforms. 
Instead, he'd unwittingly signed up to the army for five years and 
they kept sending officers around to his house, trying to conscript 
him.

     I've just been into town, thinking that I might go to the bank, then 
as I stepped from the bus I remembered it's a Bank Holiday. So I 
went into a shop and read the letters in the NME. There was a quite 
intelligent letter defending B+S by a chap with the rather excellent 
name, Trevor. The NME's angry reply was that Trevor was too 
"intellectual", and used lots of big words, like these bastard Belle 
and Sebastian fans do. So it seems that their main argument against 
Belle and Sebastian is that they're not stupid enough, which seems 
like a rubbish argument to me. Out of protest, I read the paper in the 
shop, and put it back on the newspaper stand. This is a good way to 
protest. In fact I've been doing it for years, even when I haven't 
really got anything to protest about. I like to think of myself as being 
one of the old skool protesters. Give me Papercuts any day.

     Someone told me last night, that when she first met me she 
thought I was gay. Apparently, this is because "you take care of your 
appearance". "Which makes me gay?." "Of course." Actually I think 
I'm the only person who doesn't think I'm gay, so maybe I am. Even 
my Dad used to think so, but I think he just used to hope it was true 
so I wouldn't go and join the army.

     Jeepster have put sound samples from FishyFlaps on their 
website, if you haven't heard any of it yet, and I saw today that 
Virgin already have it on their listening post. Although I wouldn't 
bother with the one in Nottingham because it doesn't work very well, 
and sounds like the headphones are made from a couple of tin cans 
and bootlaces.

      Only a week to go now. I'm getting quite excited.

      Robin x
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