18/11/06

I just got the following email from my Mum about the Ian and Shan's Guy Fawkes Party page and video:

So, I’ll just remind you,( and all your mates, whose own mothers can tell a similar story)  that I spent 9 very long months, having to give up booze and smoking, gaining stretch marks that all the so called “smoothing away creams” did jack shiit for, spent 48 excruciating & mind-blowing hours in indescribable pain that to this day I have not recovered from, and then spent the next 21 years being a slave to you, feeding, clothing, baking millions of biscuits and cakes and nourishing and wholesome meals in vast quantities, which was very difficult because I was usually on some “new” diet,  driving you to every tom, dick and Harry's house or into town, usually when I just felt like lying down and passing out with exhaustion, guarding you from every murderer, child molester and crazy fool in the country, doing ferocious battle with mindless morons of teachers who usually only had bad things to say (usually about you doing some science experiment on some other mother’s child) and when they did have some marvellous wonderful thing to say about you, your father took credit, saying “he must have got it from me”, and spending countless nights, wiping your brow and giving you cool drinks when you were sick,  (your father just slept right through the night), just so you could grow up into the healthy, well adjusted young man that you are.

(did I mention the countless, mind-numbing and downright BORING hours I spent sitting in an audience listening to the never ending school concerts, speeches etc, while nearly passing out with the heat and overpowering smell of little boys and girls farts.) (just kidding, you were absolutely fantastic).

So I remind you son, if you (and your mates) want to chuck all that hard work away – GO FOR IT.

Blow a hole in your heads, disfigure yourselves in some horrific manner and blind yourselves, not to mention all the other poor innocent people and bystanders, it doesn’t worry me!!     I have let go.

Love you heaps

All my love, Mum

I felt just a tiny bit guilty about what we had done (or the appearance of what we had done) so I'll tell you how I managed to get all the footage that I did without risking blindness and/or disfigurement.

Basically I and the rest of us stood behind a glass door on the balcony and I held the camera around the side of the door. See this pic:

As I told my Mum, "Doesn't make it right or not stupid, but I haven't spent the last few years of my life in blissful ignorance of just how easy you can get maimed or killed from doing the simplest of things".

Let this be a lesson to you all, your Mums care about you and don't want you to blow yourselves up or appear to do so.

Tony.