A Bonnett Introspective

[Bonnett]

Okay, I'll be honest, I'm not going to go into this thread with the enthusiasm I have in the past. I used to feed off of people's opinions and reactions to my various (mis)adventures but these days I just seem to live for myself and not what people think of me. I believe this has made me a better person as I'm less of an attention whore and paradoxically more understanding of others' feelings.

Nonetheless I'm going to leave the floor open, I'll list a load of things that have happened to me over the last two years or so since I've frequented the boards and I'll write either what seems the most popular or what's requested by people I remember or like - this is not a popularity contest though.

Right, I'm not going to bother sorting the chronology out in my head so here's the stream as it flickers around in my synapses.

I have:

walked across corsica
gotten into an 18 month relationship
worked on a dairy farm for a few weeks
worked on the new Typhoon jets for two weeks (limited information available but I can give outlines and funny dits of course)
been skiing and almost cheated on girlfriend
cycled to geneva
almost shagged a room mate (I may have mentioned this before though)
become an atheist (to a certain extent)

So there's your lot. There's not going to be as many laugh out loud funny occurences though there should be some if you still like the way I write. I think, depending on how I'm feeling, that some of the essays could be very long and contemplative and I'll probably constantly contradict myself as I'm at a spiritual crossroads in my life but I think I'll be able to get something out of it even if you fellas and chicks won't.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the new batch of stories, anecdotes and essays and that you can learn something from my experiences.

[Vyacheslav]

we are all waiting for your tales master bonnett

[Bonnett]

hey, if anyone can resize this: so I can use it as my avatar they'll get first dibs on a story by the way

[Vyacheslav]

is this acceptable my lord? i made it small as i could

[Bonnett]

no linking from this host

rehosted picture just click the link

[Vyacheslav]

surely this shall work

[Bonnett]

Originally Posted by Fat Vyacheslav

surely this shall work

that isn't animated dude but I truly appreciate you effort, make a request and I'll type it up in the morrow

[Vyacheslav]

can i have a story of a girl who cried a river and drowned the whole world

And while she looks so sad and lonely there I absolutely love her When she smiles

Now how many days in a year She woke up with hope But she only found tears And I can be so insincere Making her promises never for real As long as she stands there waiting Wearing the holes in the soles of her shoes Now how many days disappear When you look in the mirror So how do you choose

Your clothes never wear as well the next day And your hair never falls in quite the same way You never seem to run out of things to say

This is the story of a girl Who cried a river and drowned the whole world And while she looks so sad and lonely there I absolutely love her When she smiles

Now how many lovers would stay Just to put up with this Every day and all day Now how did we wind up this way Watching our mouths for the words that we say As long as we stand here waiting Wearing the clothes or the soles that we choose Now how do we get there today When we're walking too far for the price of our shoes

Your clothes never wear as well the next day And your hair never falls in quite the same way You never seem to run out of things to say

This is the story of a girl Who cried a river and drowned the whole world And while she looks so sad and lonely there I absolutely love her
When she smiles



Well your clothes never wear as well the next day And your hair never falls in quite the same way You never seem to run out of things to say

This is the story of a girl Who cried a river and drowned the whole world And while she looks so sad and lonely there I absolutely love her

This is the story of a girl Her pretty face she hid from the world And while she looks so sad and lonely there I absolutely love her

This is the story of a - girl Who cried a river and drowned the whole world And while she looks so sad and lonely there I absolutely love her When she smiles When she smi-iles!

[Bonnett]

what song is that?

[Mos Def]

story of a girl >.>

[Aeroblacktyl]

i sadly knew that song too =[ i'm almost ashamed of myself

[Vidd]

The dairy farm story sounds good.

[Vyacheslav]

Originally Posted by Fat Vidd

The dairy farm story sounds good.

mine is better

[DM]

I'm very seriously interested in the one about atheism

[NESgamer]

In the other hand i want to know if the room mate was male.

...in case of female, if was hot.

[Bonnett]

Okay Vidd got first dibs then.

You'll probably hear a lot about this if anyone asks for details of my current relationship but to cut an extremely long story short I am going out with a girl whose family run a dairy fun in west Wales and as such, when I have visited there I've ended up working on the farm.

In terms of interesting shit that's happened on the farm there's a tonne of it so I'll try and filter out the inane or the uninteresting and just crack on with the funny or interesting stuff.

So, I got the train into Carmarthen and lo and behold there's my girlfriend Hannah there to pick me up. After a thirty five minutes or so drive through the pleasant Welsh countryside and the rather surreal spectre of this tree we were at Dyffryn-Arth, which means ‘Valley of the deer’ and is also the name of Hannah’s family’s farm. I obviously knew who was going to be there and I’d been given the customary warnings – my sister is a bit spoiled, my brothers are a bit crazy and will take the piss out of you, my dad may not like you, my mother’s brain is every so slightly off the boil, my grandfather may chase you with a stick – but nothing really prepares you for meeting someone and the proof, as they say, in invariably in the pudding.

I walked into the house with my bags and was introduced to everyone and one of the first thing I remember is being asked by Han’s younger brother Gwyn if I liked Top Gun – as a university air force cadet I was prepared for this kind of thing – and I just laughed it off. But, and I realise this may well be commonplace in America, but in the UK there are not so many people with the access to the equipment to do this kind of thing, the second thing I remember was her father Gerwyn taking me to see his firearms. The first thing he said was ‘Come here boy’ and then the first thing he did was to show me his rifles. I took this all in my stride and just talked about my experience with firearms while at the USAF academy etc but I have to admit that, especially after all the stories (which I had laughed off as over-the-top license) Hannah had told me of the real and palpable hate of the English that existed in that part of Wales for, and I quote, ‘the wrong type of English’, with most of the conversations going on in the cocktail of unintelligible noises that is the Welsh language, I did feel a much greater pressure than I have at many different and arguably more stressful social meetings not to be ‘the wrong type’, as I was, inescapably so, fairly English.

It is testament then to the openness, friendliness and provision for the earning of respect that exists so strongly within my prospective in-laws, that I now come and go from Dyffryn as if I were part of the family. On this first visit to the farm I milked both sessions every day I was there and helped out with the mechanical side of things whenever I could. This gained me the respect I now feel whenever I visit. But that isn’t interesting, I just thought you might all like to know that there’s a happy ending to every story if you try hard enough – the unhappy ones just haven’t ended yet.

Milking is a very simple process. Cows eat grass and various types of feed. Cows defecate some of this input out. Other parts they convert into energy and other parts – if they have calved in that particular year – they convert into milk. If they are not converting any parts into milk then that is the domain of the bull and I think it best that you ask your parents to explain what happens there. So, when a cow is producing milk you then milk it, store this milk and then pump it onto a tanker to be taken away and used for human consumption and cheese making etc.

In the morning you wake up around seven, you don’t bother with a shower at this point as you are about to get covered in shit, and you head down to wake up the cows. This is actually a fairly simple process and the only accessory you really need is a stick with which to strike the rump of the cows while you shout ‘Ho! Come on!’ You then send the cows up the slope to the parlour.

The parlour consists of a main building which is fairly high and somewhat resembled an aircraft hangar. There are three walkways, two on each side of a third lowered one in the middle. The lowered one is cut off from the cattle and contains all of the milking equipment, the pumps etc. There are twenty-five pumps in the Dyffryn parlour which means that you can pump twenty-five cows at any one time. There are also various hoses every three or four pumps for spraying away the inevitable mountains of shit and piss that the cows pass into the parlour or onto a milker. It is one of the joys of milking that if you are attaching a pump to an udder and the cow starts shitting on you, you have to finish attaching the pump first, however much shit gets in your eyes, ears, nose or mouth. Your momentary discomfort is less important than the viability of what is essentially 1/730th of the yearly income of the farm.

The process goes as such, you send the cows down both the walkways, you put one side on to milk, in the morning the cows are covered in shit and straw and piss and saliva and cum and vomit and pus and bile and plasma and parasites and so you have to wipe every udder individually with antiseptic cleaning wipes so that the bio cell count for the milk is not too high for human consumption as this has an associated penalty in terms of the price paid per litre of milk. By the time you have put all of the cattle on to milk the first that you put on is generally finished and so you put on the equivalent cow on the other side of the parlour on to milk and so on backwards until all of one side has been milked. This side is then let out of the parlour and sent back down to the stalls. You then refill the empty side with cattle, by which point the first cow on the other side should have finished milking and so on and so forth. In the evening the cows are cleaner as they’ve been in the fields all day wiping their teats on grass so you don’t have to wipe but it’s otherwise the same deal.

So that’s milking. Any in depth questions then let me know and I’ll answer them as fully as I can.

In terms of the family and my experience of being an outsider in what is the most Welsh part of the planet I have a tonne of stories but only a few that I’ll divulge here and now.
On my second visit to the family, by which point they’d all warmed to me somewhat because of my generally good work ethic and blasé attitude towards being constantly covered in shit, we were sitting down to dinner one evening when I had a hell of a shock. I was sitting in the kitchen at the table, as is always the custom for meals in the Evans’ household, with my back to the window; I turned around for whatever reason and found myself face to face with a disheveled, damp and tattooed old man staring at me from the other side of the pane. I damn near jumped out of my skin and Gerwyn went to see what was going on. It turned out to be the drunken brother of a friend of the family who was attempting to walk the fifty miles home and had gotten lost then recognized the farm. He was seated and given some food and that’s when the fun really started. The following is mostly paraphrasing but in general it is what happened.

Gerwyn (Hannah’s father): So Sean, what brings you to Dyffryn
Sean (drunken man): I was in the pub at Cross Inn and I had to get out of there, there were English everywhere and I didn’t want another night in no bloody cells
Gwyn (Hannah’s younger brother): What are those tattoos on your arm there Sean?
S: They’re from my time in the marines (begins crying) you, you come to my house and I’ll show you my beret and, and, I’ll show you my pi’shures
Ge: You shall Sean, we’ll drive you home when you’ve had your supper
Helowyn (Hannah’s mother): Yes Sean, it’s over in Llampeter you live still is it?
S: Yes, thankyou for your kindness, it’s great, you don’t find this anywhere these days, a good Welsh family will look after you but that’s all you can hope for. (Turning to me) So who’s this fella then?
Ge: That’s Hannah’s boyfriend Luke, he’s an Englishman

For this I could have killed Gerwyn at the time, though he explained later that he liked to test the mettle of any man who fancied himself good enough for either one of his daughters. Sean was by no means a small man, though probably into his sixties he was still in some semblance of the shape the marines had knocked him into despite his rampant alcoholism – again probably a symptom of his time in the marines and I didn’t fancy being ripped limb from limb by an enraged Welsh marine who’d been rudely treated by English tourists in the pub down the road.

(Sean stood up at this point and pointed at me) S: And what do ye think you’re doing in this house, this beautiful house, this house where normally we would only speak in Welsh, I should have known, I should have known there were a reason we were speaking this filth! And what is it that you do then my fancy English friend?

At this point I knew that I had to think fast, being apologetic was not going to help, saying that I was a student was definitely not going to help, being confrontational might have helped and would have either been laughed off or ended up in a fight, but, due to his tears and emotional state I didn’t see any chance of things being laughed off so I pulled an ace out of my sleeve.

Me: I’m in training to be an officer in her Majesty’s Royal Air Force

At this point Sean pushed Gwyn, who was sitting next to me, out of the way and stood over me. I was already balling my fists for the inevitable punch up and was about to stand to meet this huge, stinking, drunken hulk head on when something extraordinary happened. He flopped down next to me and embraced me. The rainwater still on him had mixed with his drunken sweat under the lights of the kitchen and dripped off of him in big filthy dollops onto me and into my food but I was stunned out of action and frozen in his embrace. He then started sobbing profusely, the tears and snot joining in his moustache and beard and wiping against my cheek as he withdrew from the embrace to address me again, still sobbing and occasionally wailing (apparently in some agony).

S: You lad, lad I tell you, my uncle, my best uncle, he died, oh he died, he died and he was killed and he was in the RAF so I say, he died and you will die and I feel for your family and you and my uncle and I loved him and he was a good man and you are a good man and the air force are all good boys and you’ll be a good officer lad and even if you’re English you are a good lad and I tell you my uncle was in the RAF and he died

From then on the same words continued coming out but more intermittently as the sobbing and wailing increased and Gerwyn and Helowyn got up to take him home. We all sat there for a little while, Hannah and her brothers and sister staring at me there fairly soaked in tears and spit and rain, until finally Gethin (Han’s older brother) started laughing and we all laughed for a good while.

That is the closest I have come yet to being assaulted in Wales for being English and I have no doubt that something unsavoury would have happened had I not had my get-out clause, but I do believe that I could have had a million different get-out clauses but none would have worked if I had been condescending. I know I didn’t say much but what I did say I said only matter-of-factly not uppitily. When dealing with potentially violent drunks one must be at all times respectful and occasionally subservient but never overbearing (unless you’re certain you’ll have them in the ensuing fight).

I have further anecdotes about the following farm related activities/occurrences:

DDay grandfather and germans
Birthing a calf
picking up a dead cow
cleaning rats out of an engine

but I think I’ve written enough for now, so I hope anyone steadfast enough to read it all enjoyed it all and that you got something out of it.

As I said, any questions let me know in the thread or pm me if you have anything private you want to know.

[DM]

Just like always, I love your writing. I'll read whatever you write next, I don't care.

[Sheaziken]

Originally Posted by Fat DoomMullet

Just like always, I love your writing. I'll read whatever you write next, I don't care.

As someone who really wasn't around when you did your initial flurry of stories. I second his request. Whatever story you write will entertain us.

[Bonnett]

Originally Posted by Fat Sheaziken

As someone who really wasn't around when you did your initial flurry of stories. I second his request. Whatever story you write will entertain us.

I think the india thread and the one about chick anecdotes are still archived somewhere

[Shen]

I enjoyed reading all of your old stories, and these new ones promise to be just as interesting. Whatever you choose is cool.

[Bonnett]

Every story has a beginning, middle and an end. Stories often have appendices and prologues and epilogues and get rewritten or re-edited for different generations and different cultures. But I think that in general a good story has a beginning, middle and an end.

In the beginning there was church. The one time my mother remembers missing church on purpose was when she had been to church on a Sunday and told everyone that I would be born that week. When I still hadn’t popped out by the next Sunday morning she was too hormonal an embarrassed to show her face and her rotund self at church. I think it is quite fitting that my belligerence, even while unborn, was the cause of this malpractice of faith on my mother’s part. Church is an hour a week every week of the year. Church is an extra hour every now and again for feast days of ‘obligation’. Church is a whole lot more people that you are not used to seeing showing up at Christmas and Easter. Church is sitting together as a group and feeling the tribal unity that has bound us together since we were ooking and screaming even moreso than we do these days. But for me church has never been much about any kind of communion with God or feeling of enlightenment. That is not to say that I do not enjoy church. I have a fabulous and volumous voice and I will always enjoy going to church and being the loudest and most tuneful person there, it’s like having a gig organised for me personally every Sunday. But whatever good feeling I’ve had at church or because of church is because of people, not because of God and not because of religion.

And I covered church first because of a very important fact. Most kids are shipped off to church before they’ve got any inkling as to what any kind of religion is about, let alone the very specific one in which they are embroiled. There is no such thing as a Christian or a Muslim child; children do not have the capacity, learning or experience to decide that they believe in a certain religion. There are only children of Christian or Muslim parents. I was baptised as a baby, made my own promises at Communion at the age of nine and then at fourteen was expected to make an adult decision to stick with my faith for life. At fourteen I was still trying to figure out the mystery of why climbing trees and playing rugby and computer games was suddenly not as important to me as wanking to pictures from my mate’s FHM and trying to get my then girlfriend to let me touch her underneath her clothes – I had no inkling of the gravity or the complete lack of brevity of a decision to follow one, or indeed any, religion for life.

As a 21 year old who has almost fathered three children and who has been most of the way round the world and done some reprehensible and regrettable things but learned a lot from them I feel that I now have the capacity, the learning and the experience to make my decision on religion.

When my mother was diagnosed with cancer I was in Colorado, thousands of miles away playing soldiers in the wilderness with the USAF. By the time I’d gotten home and been filled in on the details (they didn’t want to spoil my trip by telling me) everyone had had their time to be sad; I had to catch up pretty quickly. My immediate feelings were of anger. My mother is not just a religious person, she is a good person. She could have no religion in her life whatsoever and she would still be following all the rules of every major religion when it came to being a good person because she has an infectious love for those around her and she is most often loved by everyone around her. This should have been enough surely to spare her from being killed but she was also a devout Catholic who loved God and Jesus and his Holy Saints and his holiness the Pope and his henchmen in heaven and on earth. Nonetheless the Lord God in all his wisdom chose to infect her uterus with cancer.

But fear not reader, she was fine after the hysterectomy, there is no more cancer. And all because she prayed so hard and everyone prayed so hard. Everyone was happy, I was happy, everything was great. But it struck me: in all the time that we had not known, that I had not known, I had never prayed once. I had been angry and I had been despairing and I had looked at the chances of success of surgery but I had never prayed. My mother puts her complete recovery down to the power of prayer. I don’t doubt that because she prayed so hard and because she knew that so many people were praying for her that it helped her get through the disease and speed her recovery. What I do doubt is that the prayer itself had any effect whatsoever. If I had prayed for her to die would she have? I think not.

When I was walking across Corsica earlier this summer I had a conversation with a friend and we reached this conclusion: when one is in a state that they are sufficiently educated and intelligent, in order to believe that God exists one must suspend all logic; but while this may be illogical it isn’t necessarily irrational. This may not be a sufficient explanation for some people and when we first reached our epiphany while walking across some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth I’m certain we worded it better than that but that is my belief. And I have come to feel that I am erring more on the side of not suspending my logic just for a God who has never done anything tangible or palpable for me but has been witness to and one of the root causes of some of the worst atrocities I have personally encountered.

So there it is: I am most likely an atheist. I’m not an agnostic as I think that’s the wimp’s way out. It’s like a scientist encountering a problem and just saying there’s no solution, it’s like standing in a desert and saying you will never see water or life again and it’s like being alone as saying there’s no one else in the universe. If you seek you shall find and I have sook and personally found that I’m a better person if I don’t worry about pleasing God and just concentrate on pleasing myself and those I love – and to a lesser extent people in general. In this way I should live a good life and so if God does by some strange quirk exist then I’ve got my bases covered anyway.

This is not the end of my story when it comes to religion. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more pitfalls and realisations but it’s a good place to stop for now, as I can’t see myself discovering anything more that will suddenly undo everything I’ve seen and experiences over 21 years. If you’re a faithful person then I’m not trying to look down on you, I’m just saying that you’ve taken a decision to believe in the unbelievable and though that may be illogical, it’s not irrational or immoral, so crack on as long as you’re not hurting anyone.

[Bonnett]

Originally Posted by Fat Sheaziken

As someone who really wasn't around when you did your initial flurry of stories. I second his request. Whatever story you write will entertain us.

yeah, check this: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2244 thread out, probably the cream of the crop are in there

[Gouki]

I don't know you, but honestly you seem like a really cool guy

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2244
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6570

his old threads for anyone that has the patience

[Doomsday]

Awesome first story. I don't care if your tales are funny or not, your writing style is beautiful and pulls anyone in. Keep writing! I'm going to read your second tale (the one above) later because in a few minutes I'm laeving.

Also, indian masterpiece thread.

[DM]

4 links two 2 threads. Nice teamwork guys!

Bonnett, how does your mother recieve your new feelings about God (if she knows about them)?