The Near Pavilion – Issue 60
Posted by Leopold in January's Magazine
Winter for many people can be a tough, mentally draining time. Inclement weather, lack of daylight and the annual shortage of decent quality poppers after the highs of the festive season mean downfall and depression for some…Not for Leopold Simpson though! My life is constantly great and luckily enough I am willing to share my good fortune with the entire lowly downtrodden Leither readership in an attempt to unburden your tragi-comic lives.
Many people dislike January and try their best to stay under the duvet until it goes away, but not me. If I start to feel even the slightest bit of tiddly, widdly, tiny disenchantment, I like to get on the blower pretty sharp and get some old pals round for a get together. For the last five years this has taken the form of a mass snowball fight between two teams from the worlds of sport and entertainment. This year is going to be particularly exciting and I think my team of Sir Elton, George Michael, Pete Irvine, Boy George and Chris Biggins, along with Kate and tiny Tom Cruise may well be in with a good chance of victory. We’re up against Freddie Flintoff, Shane Warne, Daryl Steyn, Daryl Strawberry, Daly Thomson, Fatima Whitbread, Sean Penn, Charlie Sheen and their captain, the ever determined, Lord Sebastian ‘suck my sporty lollipop’ Coe.
What if it doesn’t snow? This is an oft-asked question and I like to joke that I get on the phone to god and simply order some up – not far from the truth because what I actually do is courier up the snow machine that ‘Eltsie’ and George bought from the director of Wham’s Last Christmas video. Expensive perhaps but you simply can’t put a price on me having fun (and let’s face it the salary I receive from this publication makes pretty much everything within my reach). The pitch has taken many forms over the years – Murrayfield stadium, the Corn Exchange, Prestonfield House Hotel, CC Blooms, Martin Wishart’s in Leith – this year I’ve hired the esplanade at the castle and German hairdressing hardcore supremos Scooter to perform a naked two-hour set. When the snowballing and hardcore techno has died down it’s off to the pub. After the disappointment of The Windsor Bar last year we’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and go to the newly opened Tourmalet in Iona St. A supposed cycling themed bar it’s actually as camp as Christmas at Karl Lagerfeld’s mum’s house, but Sean Penn and Chris Biggins just love quality German beer, so who am I to get in their way. After the pub it’s all back to Malmaison for anything and everything – a simple solution to everyone’s needs.
Sexual conquest and Sean Bean
The other great news is that Winter Nets are back! Yes that’s right for two hours on a Sunday evening you can join your heroes at Leith Franklyn Beige and perhaps gain some sort of insight into the glamour, glitz and homoerotic glory that is the world of the East Of Scotland League Division 5 cricketer. At winter nets you will not only be charged £4 for your troubles but spend quality time with local celebrities such as Steven ‘steroid rage’ “Middsie” Middleton and bookish Ben Wood – the man who put the ‘owl’ into bowl. You’ll witness non-professional athletes at the very average of their game. You’ll meet, talk, and relax socially with determined sportsmen like Gavin ‘the Hairstyle’ Fischer, a man so single minded in his approach to sport, life, and sexual conquest that Sean Bean spent four months in his company in an effort to try and put flesh onto the bones of his ‘Sharpe’ character (eponymous hero of Sharpe’s Rifles and subsequently merely Sharpe). Such is the spirit that Bean divined from Fischer that rumours persist he introduced Russell Brand to the world of coitus, arrant rubbish. Intense sessions with Johnny Depp, Sheena Easton and my good self, in a hairdressing salon in the charming town of Villefranche-Sur-Mer near Nice, were responsible for that. Still, once the papers get a hold of something, well, you know what they’re like – they like to blow the simple things in life out of all proportion – I’ve read columns in some publications that are nothing more than a series of lies and celebrity names lined up for some fantasist’s satisfaction. For instance, I’ve never shared a bed with Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse – Sienna Millar pitched up and I had to show ‘Whiney’ the door.
Yours, in truth
Leopold Simpson