I have just finished listening to a very funny Audiobook "Born to be Mild; Adventures for the Anxious" by Rob Temple. I loved it, it's very entertaining in a spookily accurate way; and also a now melancholy reminder of what ordinary life was like just before the pandemic. I could heap many more plaudits and praise on this book but it would take up more of your valuable time to read so please just take it as a given I'm a huge fan of its brilliance.
I follow the @verybritishproblemsofficial Instagram feed, I think it's something to do with Rob Temple because he also writes those books too. (I know he's on Twitter but I'm not a Twatterer because it's very bad for me, full of one-sided conversations I can't follow, I don't like myself on it so how can anyone else? Anyway, I've closed two accounts already and have forgotten the password to my third).
Any minute now, she'll get to the point of this blog posting .... I can hear your brain screaming at me. Right, so I will.
I don't get one of Rob Temple's references. It's in a section that resonates with me particularly strongly because it's about how seemingly little things can make an anxious person's head virtually explode. I want to fully understand it.
To set the scene, the author is standing in a "queue" behind a couple with a baby on an adventure to Blackpool Tower, the quasi-sorry-excuse-for-a-queue has already annoyed him. Now this couple are asking daft questions, even the baby is guilty in this; they are holding the line up with pointless enquiries. This is the passage which I took down in shorthand during my second listening of this marvellous book:
"I am one limp burger away from going Michael Douglas, except without the guns. I tell myself to stop being so angry, stop trying to bend the world to you. Nobody asked you to come here. Maybe I'm doing it on purpose because I think I'm the VBP man with the bowler hat from the book. No, no, I am really like this, unfortunately. I am about to break my own neck by tensing too much. Calm down. By the time I'm paying for my ticket, I have already ruined the experience for myself. Anxiety causes me to get so quietly wound up because I'm constantly trying to communicate my dissatisfaction with a situation by thinking about it really intensely and then getting pissed off because nobody can hear what I'm NOT saying."
Who is this "VBP man in the book"? I get the Michael Douglas reference (from the film Falling Down) "I'm the bad guy?" Classic line! But "the VBP man" has defeated me. I've also asked Micky Taking Monster and two major search engines but have drawn a blank.
There are a few possibilities that occur
- It's a misprint, it should say something else
- It was misread by Mr Baynton, in an otherwise flawless performance, he should in fact have said something else.
- I have misheard Mr Baynton, I should've heard something else.
- I'm perhaps not in the target age demographic, Rob Temple was 39 when he wrote Born to be Mild. Maybe if I ask someone in their 30s, it's a reference they would get immediately.
- This was a test for observant readers/audiobook listeners and prizes are sent to anyone who points it out. (Fingers crossed, eh?)
- The author can't remember writing this paragraph and now has no idea what it means. In which case, I promise I will let him know if I ever find out
- Does this really matter?
Yes, I know it doesn't matter, particularly at the moment when there are far bigger things to worry about. B-u-u-t ...one of the things I like most about reading (or listening to) books are the jumping off points they sometimes give you.
I have now become obsessed with really, really wanting to read the book that the VBP man is in and finally find out why he wears a bowler hat. If anyone can help me out with the title of the book the VBP man is in and the author's name, you'd be really helping me out.
If anyone can't leave a comment giving me the answer because of the "I am not a Robot" requirements, I'm also asking the same question on Instagram @soozjewels but in a more concise manner.
Thanks for reading!
EDITED: at 4:22 next day, a light bulb goes off. VBP stands for Very British Problems. Mr Temple must have a bowler hatted man in one of his VBP books (which I haven't read yet) thank f*ck for that, maybe I can get some sleep now! 🤣 😴
