Today's class was held in Pitlochry. We were promised three months of rain over the course of three days and this was the first of those days, so I made sure I allowed for plenty of travel time in case there was an traffic disruption going on. Well, there was rain, but it was disappointingly average. None of the torrential downpours I had anticipated.
I arrived in plenty of time to get set up and apart from a couple of minor teething troubles, everything went very well. This venue wasn't used to having naked men, so wasn't geared up to providing the best possible heating conditions, but a radiator was quickly scavenged up and then everything went well.
A quick bit of advertising - because I have no problems with that. The bar was McKay's and it's on the main street in Pitlochry. The room we used was at the back of the bar and the staff were all great. I'll even throw in a special mention to Wendy, because she was very nice to me - and she's going to feature in this posting once or twice. And because - tutors aside - I usually don't name anyone else in my hen night postings. Just a minor nod towards client confidentiality. Like all the pictures (when I'm allowed to take any) don't completely screw that up all by themselves.
Today's class had a really nice moment of surrealism. It may have happened in two different poses and through two separate artists, but I ended up looking like Gok Wan in one picture and Chewbacca in another. It was great. When I saw the Chewbacca one, my first thought was Planet of the apes, but one of the girls noticed that the hen night sash I was wearing (borrowed from the bride) looked a lot like Chewbacca's gun belt. After that, the similarities were beyond dispute.
This left me wondering how Chewbacca would get on if he ever featured on How to look good naked. He's already naked, isn't he? Apart from the gun belt, anyway. And we've only got Han Solo's word for it that "he" really is male. But I've got issues with Gok Wan. I don't think he's really out to be as body positive as he claims to be, and I'm confident that poor Chewie would be sent for an intensive course of electrolysis at some point. And then what do we get? A bald wookie. And nobody wants that. Right?
The QI scoring style proved to be as much fun as ever. One girl did some amazing drawings, which - sadly - weren't funny. And it's the funny ones that win the competitions. She still ended up winning the overall competition despite that, even if she had to overcome a couple of other challenges. She lost her first three points almost as soon as she earned them, because - for some reason that I can't quite remember - I decided that she had earned a penalty as well. You wouldn't think it would be possible to forget all these details, but they routinely escape me. There's always just so much going on that when it comes to recalling it all later, I tend to struggle a bit - and then spend two paragraphs talking about wookies instead.
The competitive element among these girls was pretty high, too. One kept almost winning, but not quite - and then she started getting vocal about how her picture was of a high enough standard that it should have won. It was round about then that I started throwing in "runners-up" scores of two points each, but that still failed to appease her. She pointed out - quite rightly - that she was only getting a sympathy vote. She claimed I was being patronising. I tried to dispute that. Her pictures were good, but she was up against tough competition. But worse than that, she was up against a judge with very arbitrary standards that would shift and change from one minute to the next. A well-drawn picture doesn't matter anywhere near as much as a funny one or (better yet) a flattering one.
Also, she routinely drew me looking like I was in a foul temper. Which suggested her own, quietly simmering rage at being consistently overlooked was manifesting its way into her drawings. Actually, I wish I'd thought of saying that yesterday - it might have made for a funny comment.
(At this stage, I should probably point out there was no genuine ill-feeling involved among any of the girls and no genuine resentment at having lost any of the competitions. From my perspective, however, it was funny to write this article as though the animosity was genuine, rather than good-natured banter. The writer should take this opportunity to apologise to the girl in question for misrepresenting her and making her appear to have no sense of humour.)
At one point, the girls took a brief break from the drawing. All of them decided they'd have a toilet break or get more drinks in, so they all unanimously decided to set the class on hold for a couple of minutes, while they left the room. And as they walked out, the manageress of the bar walked in, called out that she wasn't looking and crossed the room quickly, so that she could set up the TV. Apparently, back in the main bar, there were some patrons who wanted to watch the football or the rugby or something, and she had to wait for a lull in the class before she could come into this room and set it up.
I had to laugh at that. Like all the other girls were allowed to see me, but she wasn't. I told her that it was cool and I didn't mind, so while we waited for the other girls to return, she hung back to talk to me for a couple of minutes. Her name was Wendy and she had come in briefly, back at the beginning of the class, when the girl who booked me had come through to introduce herself and talk to me about how to introduce everything. Back at that point, I had initially mistaken her for one of the girls. Towards the end of the class, she even posed for a photograph with me on my iPhone. I've tried to text it to her a bunch of times since then, but so far it hasn't transmitted. That might be the fault of the signal strength in Pitlochry, though. I hope I get it sorted out, because she was pretty cool and she made myself and the group feel very welcome. I'm definitely going to use that venue again, any time I get another booking in Pitlochry.
One of the other things I thought was surprising about this group was just how often they tended to focus in on the penis. I set the Draw-A-Giant-Man challenge to them and all but two girls focussed in on that area. I didn't even attempt to set the pictures down and put them together, because it would have been a torso, a head and six penises. I did, however, pick out the two best penises and award the girls two points each, rather than three points for the best single drawing. And that was only after a lot of deliberation - it just seemed like the best possible option.
I also returned to an old favourite - a challenge I haven't used for a while, now. The one where I get the girls to split into groups, then - within each group - agree on a specific area to draw. That one's always fun when the time comes to put the pictures together and see if they match up. This is the one that had the Gok Wan picture, which I really liked. I always love this one, when the time comes to see how good the overall result is. It's always good for a couple of laughs.
This time, I set my own camera down, activated a timer I downloaded a few weeks ago and set it to take thirty pictures - each spaced one second apart. Then I selected a few of the best ones (or the least bad ones) and tried to create a sort of sequence. Only one of the teams came out looking even remotely workable, though. That app is a bit hit-and-miss, sometimes. But when it hits, it does sometimes create a great sequence of natural pictures.
At the end of the class, I still had a couple of hours to kill before catching the bus back to Edinburgh and the girls invited me to join them for a drink, which was a fun way to chill out and wind down. I don't usually like to impose on the groups when the job is done, but then I don't usually get invited to join in, so it was nice to find the table and relax once I'd got dressed, tidied everything away and walked back into the main bar.
The girls moved on shortly after that, so I went looking for Wendy, made sure that everything was tidied up to her satisfaction - although, I only just remembered that I forgot to turn off the radiator that she brought through for me - and promised to text her the picture that was taken. Then I walked down to the bus stop, had a cup of coffee in a little tea shop just opposite it and finally set off for Edinburgh once more.
The three months of rain ultimately turned into little more than a bit of a drizzle, as far as I could tell. It definitely didn't slow any traffic down or create any real disruptions. And ultimately, it was another good day with another good class.
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