Friday 25 February 2011

My younger brother's sneaky little game

I went out with my younger brother Daniel last Saturday.

He developed a new game that, once he had discovered it, decided it would entertain him greatly for the remainder of the day.

The game was 'Tell Lisa a bunch of lies that could be true but actually aren't.

These were as follows.

Sherlock Holmes actually existed.
This one I believed and to this day now argue with him could have been true. I mean all I'm saying is, whilst Arthur Conan Doyle was writing his famous books, who was living in 221b Baker Street? I like to think that Mr Conan Doyle visited the address, saw on the letters addressed to it that a person called Sherlock Holmes lived there and thought... I'm going to make someone's day... or freak the hell out of him anyway.

You've got to admit that it would be pretty freaky if you were to open a book and find that the main character not only shared your name but lived in your house. Mr Conan Doyle would be my new best friend if he had done that. (Granted this friendship wouldn't really be up to much due to the 'being dead' thing he's doing nowadays)

Anyway, Daniel assures me that this was a lie and that I'm stupid for thinking otherwise.

Kevin Spacey will be in the new series of Doctor Who
This one Daniel fully accepted as being a pointless one because there's no real reason why it wouldn't be true. This was the last lie he told me before we went our seperate ways and apparently he was tired.

There were others that I don't remember but my favourite one had to be

Squirrels only exist in England
Whilst waiting for my brother to meet me in London I had some time so I went to see Buckingham Palace as I was in the area... as you do. Walking through the park that leads to this rather amazing looking building I was intrigued by a little group of tourists taking a picture of something that seemed to be on the floor. Unable to contain my curiosity anymore I joined the huddle to see what could be so amazing and saw that there was a squirrel sitting and nibbling on a peanut... This caused great amusement to me as I could not understand why this would get more attention than the home of the Queen of Great Britain. Without giving it much more thought I continued on my walk only to realise there was another huddle further down, camera's out and taking pictures of... wait for it... another squirrel. I was now perplexed. I couldn't understand why they were getting so much attention. I also began to question my own views on nature. Was I a bad person for not finding squirrels so fascinating that I have to spend five minutes taking about 300 pictures of it? (The huddle I had left previous to this new one was still in the same place and taking their photos with the same fervency as before.)

When I eventually met up with my brother, I shared this observation with him, explaining my confusion at the amount of attention these furry little creatures were getting. Daniel then proceeded to tell me that the reason the squirrels were so popular here were because England was the only country in the world where they existed.

Now don't get me wrong, my initial gut reaction was to think 'that can't be true' but this only lasted for a mere couple of seconds before my thoughts moved on and I began to question my previous view of the world. Had I actually ever seen footage of squirrels anywhere else but in this country? In my few occasions abroad, did I ever see a squirrel run across my line of vision? Suddenly my whole world felt like it had been turned upside down, I couldn't disprove this fact, without access to Google I would never know if this was definitely a lie...

Once I managed to shake myself out of my own head and back into reality, I caught sight of my brother's face and the look of sheer disbelief that was all over it. I realised then that I had been had. What's more it was a lie that he had never thought I would believe. Needless to say this was the point that he invented the game and unfortunately his enthusiasm for the game was only heightened by my now shakey view on what was actually fact causing me to fall for most of the lies he said.

I think he admitted to all of the lies he told me that day but looking back I now wonder whether he managed to throw a few in without me realising... I should probably Wikipedia all the new things he told me that day just in case...

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