I love words. And this one is possibly my favourite. Old and almost forgotten, but I chose it yesterday, from the list I keep scribbled across the kitchen walls (as if I’d be allowed!!!) because its funny. ‘Being idle, lying around, dawdling, lazy’. And possibly the only worthwhile addition the Americans ever made to OUR language. The rest of it they ruined but for lollygagging, I’ll give them some credit. I love a word that you simply know what it means when you first hear it because it expresses itself perfectly. And to use it yesterday to refer to my own brother was even more perfect.

Because I first heard it in the movie Blazing Saddles. My ‘ultimate’ film. Hilarious, insulting, offensive and about as politically correct as raping a one-legged Palestinian trans woman whilst in black-face. And as subtle.

The truly wonderful Slim Pickens uses the word on one of his black slave railroad builders who had just hauled himself out of quicksand and was lying exhausted and just about alive. ‘Stop lollygagging around getting a suntan and get back to work’.

That movie came out in 1975. A year after the other ‘most perfect movie of all time’, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

And sometime after that, a year maybe?, they were showing, for one night only, a ‘double bill’ at the ABC Barkingside, of those 2 films. Together. This was ‘an event’. Remember ‘double bills’? The 20th century version of ‘binge-watching’. Life before Netflix. But it was the most irresistible combination. So resist we didn’t. I went with a bunch of mates and Richard went with a bunch of mates. Which was quite a common occurrence in those days. Being the younger brother by 3 years meant that in the period between going out on pushbikes together with him ‘looking after me’ and me becoming ‘an adult’ (something I still aspire to), I was beneath contempt. But at 17 and 20, our interests began to converge once more and our ‘gangs’ kind’a blended together. So for a ‘big event’ like that double billing, we’d be 20/25 strong. Because everyone wanted to see those films again. Even though we pretty much knew every word in both films from previous viewings.

It was therefore ‘the funniest night of my life’. Until that night Arsenal lost 4-nil to Yeovil Town in the League Cup. Which I might have dreamt, but still hilariously funny.

Now I’m going back to doing more lollygagging.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx