Making a mess on the window of the garlic farm
including some outright begging, a questionable social media strategy and a great joke about a number in French
Hello. It is September 2024. This is the twenty-first monthly instalment of Interesting Skull, a newsletter of magnificent jokes and needlessly-detailed mundanity written by me, perspiring dismalist Mike Rampton. Are you relaxed? RELAX! RELAX AT ONCE!
FIRST AND FOREMOST AND EVER SO IMPORTANT: My book There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question is out on October 10th from Nosy Crow and the University of Cambridge. It’s big and heavy and beautiful and expensive, and involved lots of people working really hard. It is available (comparatively) cheaply on Amazon, and less cheaply but also less evilly on Bookshop.org, Waterstones and more. I don’t really have an audience of any kind — this newsletter reaches slightly fewer people than just yelling out of my window — so any and all help getting it out there would be enormously appreciated.
I just found out that both Adrian Chiles and Boris Johnson have books out on the same day. I like Adrian Chiles, but he’s already been paid for his Guardian columns, which are all available online for free, so if considering buying his book, why not buy mine instead? And, if considering buying Boris Johnson’s book, why not stop being an absolute toilet with your life?
1
“I’ve just had a pleasantly meandering conversation with a friend about their time competing in cheese marksmanship.”
“Shooting the breeze?”
“Yes, and firing arrows at the cheddar.”
2
“I’ve been on a campsite, talking to some people about their favourite parts of tents.”
“Nice guys?”
“That’s something they were all fans of, yes.”
3
A French friend asked me what kind of beer I liked.
“Cans,” I said.
“Sacre bleu!” he replied, “Fifteen is so many!”
August is always knackering, but for reasons I’d be a real jerk to moan about. I went on three summer holidays — a fortnight in Spain, three days camping in Kent and a week in a caravan on the Isle of Wight — so most of my exhaustion is for really fun reasons. There was a half-hour period the other week where my daughter and I were dancing in a town square to a Shrek-themed covers band that was, I think, the happiest I have ever been.
(They’re called the Ogretones and exclusively play music featured in the Shrek franchise — basically a terrific wedding band that finish with Smash Mouth’s greatest hit. Absolutely amazing. Get them on the cover of Q at once.)
In terms of finance and productivity and stuff, though, what a nonsense way of spending a month! Typing in a swimming pool: difficult! Filing copy from a tent: challenging! Keeping hold of your basic faculties in a static caravan with six other people and a large hound: simply not on the cards!
Fun though. I went to a donkey sanctuary, a goat sanctuary, a garlic farm, the National Poo Museum, the theatre, an absolutely terrifying cable car and many beaches. I started a fire with a flint, climbed a lot of trees and won a game of pirate-themed mini golf. I threw my daughter into swimming pools, played darts with my dad and ruined a potato peeler using it for whittling. I also watched my daughter perform a show for the family involving cuddly toys and a very convoluted story which she began by farting loudly. Cancel the paternity test. Great times. Please commission me for some work!
(A good game in a pool: hold your child in your arms and loudly ask someone a question to which the answer is some kind of synonym for launching — “What do you call the rug-like things some people have on their sofas?” or “What might someone called Charles be known as for short?” or “What’s another word for vomit?” — then, when you get the answer, throw your child in the pool because you’ve been told to and say “Okay, I’ve done that, now will you tell me?” It is an excellent game, which I invented and would be within my rights to monetise but am giving to the world out of the goodness of my heart.)
4
Peer pressure is often seen as a bad thing, but it’s one of the best ways of cleaning poo from the back of a toilet.
5
“I learned to skateboard at public school in Oxfordshire.”
“Radley?”
“No, the skateboarding I did at The Oratory School, Woodcote was very poor.”
6
“Some monks have vows of silence, while others recite stuff repetitively in a semi-musical way. Will you tell me which type you prefer?”
“No chants.”
“Oh, go on.”
Like, pressure from a person who pees. Yep. One of the odd things about my newish career as a children’s non-fiction author (buy my book) (I have, no joke, written four more books which are coming out in 2025, 2026 and 2027) is that both the “children’s” and “non-fiction” part feel like caveats. We think of an author as being, primarily, someone who writes fiction for grown-ups. This means I sometimes find myself saying things like, “I suppose I might get into adult work eventually.” This isn’t a good thing to find yourself saying. It’s very easily misunderstood.
I have reluctantly begun posting on the social network Bluesky. I used to spend too much time and effort on Twitter, and can’t afford to end up doing that again, but I feel like I should have some sort of social media profile so I’m trying a one-way, broadcast-only approach where I’ve lined up loads of posts (mainly jokes from previous issues of this newsletter, some of which I’ve been mucking about with in some form for a decade) and will check in periodically to, I guess, agree with people praising my excellence.
It’s very selfish and not really in the spirit of things, but social media bums me out so this is about as much as I can handle. You know the bit in Midnight Express where his girlfriend visits and he makes a mess on the window and it’s all unthinkably bleak? That’s my social media strategy! basically the approach I’m taking. If you use Bluesky, follow me on it. And then I’ll… succeed… somehow?
7
I bought some 13th-century Mesoamerican parchment and was offered a receipt. I said, “We don’t need to bring Incan paper into this!”
8
“I went deep-sea diving looking for the remains of broken ships but only found toilet paper.”
“Andrex?”
“No, just toilet paper.”
9
“The educational institution where I learned what a many-sided shape is called has been renamed, rebranded and doesn’t really exist anymore.”
“Polygon?”
“Yeah, it's De Montford University now.”
August in numbers: Did one full day of working, except actually I didn’t, because I had to run out of the library to be sick, which I blame on a very cheap coffee that I drank too fast. Made a note on my phone about how “you can lead a hearse to Goethe but can’t make it stink” that can in no conceivable way be turned into a good joke. Nicked two half-pint glasses from a pub because they were adorable. Read a bunch of The Rock’s autobiography waiting for a pub quiz to start and then didn’t win because he’d made me stupid. Taught my daughter how to do sudokus. Wrote the name Pineapple Brownish on my phone, which I think I thought would make a good name for a detective, which it clearly wouldn’t, but I was ever so tired. Not a lot of this is numbers now that I think about it.
Project updates: I really need to get some more books going, as I’m up to date on everything. I live in hope that either (a) once the beautiful one comes out next month I just get asked to do a bunch of very easy, well-paid, quick-turnaround work; (b) I get something off the ground that doesn’t require illustration so takes half the time; or (c) an eccentric billionaire just sort of makes me rich. If you’re an eccentric of more modest means, feel free to PayPal me £5.30 for a lovely pint. Buying the book is great, please do that, but you know, this is very direct. Or, just tell me I’m good!
Next issue: October 4th. By then there is a real possibility I’ll be scheduled to do some promotional turns, like standing in front of people and talking about my book, which is very scary. One of the ideas with occasionally doing stand-up was to get more comfortable doing stuff like that, but there’s a big difference between delivering edutainment to an audience of schoolkids and yelling toilet gags at an audience of soaks, so I don’t know how helpful it was. I also thought it might help me make some local friends, but that didn’t pan out either, and I’m merely on nodding terms with some of Cambridge’s most cocaine-addicted punt operators. It’s a stupid life. LOVE YOU BYE!
10
WHAT I AM CURRENTLY READING
Catalan Shoes by S. Padrilles
Pre-Currency Transactions by Bart R. Ingsystem
You Can Surf The Internet On That by Adele Laptop
Lovely Painting Of A Stag by Monica D. Glen
I’m New To Marine Biology by Luke A. Fish