‘We can’t all be heroes, someone has to stand on the side and clap as the heroes go by,’ and that person would be me – seal boy. Always the first to put the frozen chips into the hot fat.. I’ve been clapping someone or other for as long as I can remember. It started at school. Miss Kennedy my infants teacher would say ‘that’s enough Stanley Evans there’s no need to be overly appreciative, Sandra Muggins has only put the top back on the glue, carry on with the big brush painting an unrecognisable farm animal .’Dad would be less eloquent. “Shut it Seal Boy, he’d bark over the Liverpool Echo. He was a keen fisherman me Dad. Let me explain that properly, when I say keen fisherman I mean as he worked on the docks,there’d be days when he’d spend his undeserved lunch hour (11.00 'til 3.30 or there’d be a strike) with his hook and worm in the River Mersey. One night he brought home a full bucket of mackerel caught fresh that day and every time I clapped at Richard Whitley’s wit on Countdown or one of John Noakes’ extraordinarily stupid stunts on Blue Peter Dad would throw one of his iridescent-backed blue fish at me. It didn’t work, as everytime I got a slap on the chops with a wet fish, I got the urge to shout ‘good shot Dad' and start another round of applause.
Unfortunately for those in my odd sock of a life less keen to show and receive appreciation, my enthusiasm for applause has carried on through into my adult life. I’ll spontaneously clap anyone, at anytime for anything. If Trev on ‘Tonight with Trev’ (The nations most trusted Man Of Colour – a round of applause for that Trev) sums up the serious Trev Monday night issue with a particularly moving statement down goes the bowl of Angel Delight and I’m away, stood up filling the room with the warmest hand-related congratulations possible.
Of course not surprisingly all my relationships have suffered, the joy of a first lip combat was ruined when glue top expert Sandra Muggins walloped a Barbie perfumed kiss on my boy soft cheek in the school library. Appreciative, as ever of this secret ‘wet one on the chops’ my hands swiftly engaged in a full round of noise, much to the embarrassment of Sandra and much to the annoyance of Mr.Kuntz (Terrible name if he was your neighbour and you had to answer someone asking who lived next door) the Library Master who then promptly but silently by way of a hastily scribbled note sentenced me to the perverted slipper attentions of the headmaster and the now beacon cheeked Sandra to Playtime library duty. High school held more of the same during the Maths lesson they made me wear thick woollen gloves as the Maths teacher Mrs McCourt had nearly suffered a nervous breakdown as a direct result my constant and surprising appreciation when her back was turned for every chalked correct answer or surprising mathematical fact she carved onto the blackboard.They worked well the gloves but I couldn’t help stamping my feet as well – but only when the thudding of the wool wouldn’t suffice. I blame the gloves for the ‘whoop’ years. The “Whoop’ years
lasted until I was seventeen.
The lack of noise from the thick gloves seemed to trigger off an involuntary yet highly annoying vocal WHOOP WHOOP . Like croutons in the early eighties, coming from nowhere yet for years suddenly everywhere, only stopping when the boyfriend (of a girl
ho walked past me with a the tighest t-shirt full of promise I’d seen on the top deck of a bus or without a staple in her belly button) punched me in the throat after I had clapped and given her a double WHOOP.
Unable to breath for two minutes and unable to speak for a month, when my bruised larynx finally worked again I’d become whoopaphobic and a whoopaphobe. Not so with the applause though. It’s been difficult at times but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me, Collette Adams my first serious girlfriend (Body by Rolls Royce Brains By Mattell) wanted me to go and see a doctor about it after the incident at a family dinner at her parents house when her twin brother ‘came out of that big old closet; to a full table about to start dessert that he was a transsexual and I stood up like one of Jerry Springers' finest clapping and shouting and gyrating the hips ‘go ladyboy, go ladyboy’. There’s a time and place for spontaneous outbursts of congratulatory applause my second serious girlfriend Sandra Rosenblatt (Brains by Stephen Hawking body by British Leyland)tried to educate me after at a Council dinner it was revealed Liverpool had come top of a League table for domestic Violence. There I was stood amongst the councillors and a couple of women with bleached hair and black eyes and frosted denim jackets pushing that clapometer needle to maximum before realising it wasn’t an achievement and it certainly wasn’t the time or indeed the place for ‘ a spontaneous outburst on congratulatory applause’. There were plenty of places though I could hide, mingle, go unnoticed. Everton Football matches where I could indulge in an orgy of gratuitous applause for the young elephant
Wayne Rooney,Everytime the wonderkid touched the ball I’d join the 33,000 others in putting our hands together for the lad. Any sort of political meeting, I’ve clapped for every Party including The Green Party and a proper Green Beard who wanted us all to boycott supermarkets and grow our own ‘country kitchen’ vegetables. I clapped him wildly even though there isn’t enough room for more than three tins of soup and a edium box of Quaker oats in my bedsit kitchen let alone a row of organic cabbages and a line of spud plants. Some people feel sorry for me, but it could be so much worse what if I was a spontaneous Booer, Booing wildly would make things very hard indeed, every ime a villain appeared on TV every time I saw a politician, what a nightmare.I consider myself lucky, - in fact in the words of a the Aussie princess of pop ‘Lucky Lucky Lucky’. Sometimes showing spontaneous appreciation you get the appreciation returned, like last Thursday.The Karaoke Bar could rely on me as an enthusiastic member of the appreciative crowd. And when this ten Gin Kylie murdered ‘Can’t get you out of my head’ I was the only one who could be heard. Catching her eye and later a taxi back to the bedsit with this lady who loked like a mexican prostitute and who who smelt of cigarettes and margarine. We made pale skinned,council estate love and exchanged love bites and phone numbers. I got very
lucky lucky lucky indeed. Or so I thought.I now sit here at the clinic and await the reason for my now elephant man style genitals

“Mr Evans –Please come this way”

“Yes Nurse”

“Mr Evans”

“Yes Doctor “

“the results are in bad news I’m afraid, as I suspected it’s V.D.?”

“Uh?”

“Venerial Disease Mr. Evans”

“Uh”


“Veneral Diesease – The Clap

– why are you smiling?”


The End