Bring me the head of baby Jesus.

 There are certain things that I will take with me to the grave. Some will see me chuckling all the way. Currently it’s Grey Poupon. If I pass you on the street and I start to smirk, don’t get paranoid. I’m just thinking about mustard.

I like to think I’ve met a reasonable cross section of society. One day it may be a porn actress, chatting about anal sex, another, the Archbishop of Canterbury, discussing ethics. I think this is what drew me to Roller Derby in the first place, not the anal sex or ethics, but it seemed to be odd enough to fit in with my interests. I’ve always been interested in sub-cultures and it seemed to attract a certain type of person. The type of person with an interesting story to tell.

Adam was an odd sized chap. One of those people that seem mis-shaped. Overly tall with a stoop, where he’d given up trying to stand up straight after passing though doors. He was from a mixed heritage background.

I was at art college. Things had started off normally that day. We were working our way round the art disciplines and that week my group were on life drawing. We had spent the previous four days drawing models, and on the fifth, the tutor had decided that we would draw the two hundred year old alabaster statue of the virgin Mary and baby Jesus which resided on the fourth floor of the college. We were on the second. He selected four members of the group to carry it down the two flights of stairs. Adam was one of them. The statue was duly brought down and sited at the far end of the room. We would be drawing it for the next eight hours.

At the end of the day it was time to take the statue back upstairs. It was heavy, and so the tutor picked an additional four people to help carry it back up. They positioned themselves around it, bent their knees, straightened, and lifted the statue. They made their way rather awkwardly out of the room. I was clearing away my materials when I heard the crash. Shortly the door opened. The tutor burst through almost in tears. It was apparent what had happened. They had dropped it. Smashing it in to a thousand pieces. The group stopped, looked up in shock. The next scene is the one that I will take to me with my grave. Adam emerged through the doors. His seemingly huge brown hands cradling the perfectly white head of the little baby Jesus. This surreal image still makes me chuckle and reminds me why art college was such a good time.

I still have the drawing.

I’m hoping that World Cup will allow me to meet suitably interesting people and imprint images in my mind that will make me smile in the years to come.