'Hampers': A Saga

[Hampers]

I was recently asked in the chat to tell the story of why I chose the name 'Hampers' for myself. I signed up on a whim in March 2007 [Incidentally, it was as an attempt to question the authenticity of someone's claim of having written a dare. I had been a user of the other dare site where this user had taken the dare from and so was able to say that their version of events wasn't correct] I had been a lurker for about six months, and a keen truth or dare player for a few years before that, and it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. So I signed up and had to choose a username. It was then that I remembered the 'Hampers' episode of my life from the previous year.

It's a long and complicated story, so it's going to stretch out a bit, but here it is. It was a few years ago, so as far as I can tell this is all correct.

Part 1: The First Part
When I started high school, I didn't really know many people, and so I quickly became friends with Paul, Ian and Angus from the year above. They always pretended to hate each other, but really they were good friends. Angus was always the sort of outsider, so me joining their little group balanced things out a bit. Paul was our leader, because he was the tallest.

We used to hang out outside the local library, because it had the comfiest benches. Every afternoon the four of us would go there and sit around for a few hours. We started out just talking, but after a while we noticed that there was fun to be had with the shops across the road.

We started with the newsagents, where we would hide money in packets of gum when the sales assistant wasn't looking, and then come in again and buy those packets of gum, and tear open the gum to pay for the gum. Wild stuff. We also went to the pet shop. We would ask if they wanted shredded paper for their puppies to live in. We spent about a week buying newspapers from the newsagents, and then sitting on the pet shop floor, ripping them up by hand. Each day, once we'd made a huge mess, we'd just leave it on the floor and run away.

The third shop we visited was the Gallery Florentine, which had lots of corsets and Victoriania sort of clothes. We went in, and were generally surprised at the elegance of the wares on offer. We all had a bit of money, so we bought an outfit each. I distinctly remember my first one was a frock coat, cravat, green waistcoat, and a top hat. The looks we got were phenomenal, walking round together. Especially once we got the silver-handled canes to match.

Sadly, the newsagent joke stopped working once we were all dressed up.

From that day on, we were always dressed like that. We still loitered around the library, but people didn't seem to notice as much; they assumed we were dressed up as 19th Century poets as some sort of permanent advertising campaign to encourage young people to read more. It also started to effect a change in the way we spoke. No longer would I greet Paul with "Hey, what's up?" but rather "How do you do, sir? And what news of my Lord Buckingham?"

This was about a year after we'd first started hanging out around the library, [Paul, Ian, and Angus were 16 at this point. I was 15.] so people hadn't really noticed such a gradual change. And neither had we, really. Until one day the organising committee for the bi-annual town square festival approached us one Thursday afternoon and asked if we'd be interested in performing in some way for it. [I say bi-annual, I'm not sure if there's a better word for it. It used to happen every year, until the council invested a lot of money in .com shares at the end of the 90s. After that economic bubble burst, a lot of figurative belts had to be tightened in the council treasury, and it was decided that a festival every year was a bit excessive].

It was the sesqui-centenary of our suburb officially existing, so the council were planning a big history theme for the festival that year, and had started combing the streets for things that looked historical. We were one of them. We actually had little interest in, or knowledge of history at that point, local or otherwise.

My father was a lecturer in Arab-Israeli history, with a specialty in the period from 1948-1982 (The foundation of Israel [also known as al-naqba (spelling?) to the Palestinians] to the invasion of Lebanon, as I'm sure you're all aware), and that was about as close to real history as I had become. Paul was more interested in his metalwork courses, Ian meticulously followed national politics, although strangely didn't really know anything before the election of Keating in 1992, and Angus was always a quiet kid, sitting read his comics. [I never understood how such a quiet kid could end up like he did... but more on that later] So history wasn't really one of our strong points.

So yes, we were sitting there one Thursday, minding our own business, when we were approached by Helen (I won't say her last name in case she or one of her family ever read this), who was seventeen and doing work experience with an assistant to the Mayor's secretary. I didn't know all this instantly, of course. That's not the sort of information someone says when they first meet you. What she did say was "Hi Guys, I'm Helen." I still remember being captivated by her beauty and attire to this day. A french bob, waistcoat, tight-ish jeans, and cons. It was a textbook modern subversion on the outfit look we had adopted. I knew I had to get to know this girl.

End of Part One

Part Two coming soon.