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This is an article about a boy with an enormous head.

     I went to a robot-fighting event over the weekend. It was fantastic. Little remote-controlled vehicles with spinning discs, axes and flippers going at each other is great live entertainment. It's an event that recurs each year, just a few minutes' drive from my home, and I've attended as an audience member for the past 3 years.


Robot Wars

     Since Robot Wars, off of the 90s, I've been a big fan of robot combat. It's like cock fighting for the 21st century, only with more destructive cocks*. The added bonus being that robots can't actually suffer, despite how some of them might look after a metal bar travelling at 300mph hits them full in the face.
[*There is, of course, a joke to be made here about the state of the venue's back doors, but being more mature than that I shall refrain from making it]


It's a burden at times

     I'm a tall person, 6 feet 3 inches in height (190cm in scientific language), so I'm aware of what an impediment I am in an audience. As such I adopt a natural slouch whenever I find people behind me in a venue - often, and in this case, to the detriment of leg room - but this is the cost of being able to reach things on high shelves, so it's something I readily accept.

     In my time I've found myself in many varied and diverse audiences. Rarely at the front, I should add, as being struck by performer spittle is something I'd rather avoid... I guess unless I was watching Lisa Scott-Lee out of Steps perform, but let's not be crass, eh? I've sat behind tall people who don't feel as I do in terms of being so considerate. I've found myself behind people in hats, like the Chaquita Banana Lady had taken up the seat in front. I've settled behind people with big hair - in girth rather than length. I've even been seated behind a pillar, where the very architecture of the building was working against me. This was different.


"Is this seat taken?"

     But this is an article about a boy with an enormous head, so you can probably see where this is going - which is more than I could see as the evening session of robot fighting began. The audience had thinned out a bit and of the three rows of seats, I could sit in the middle row without impeding the views of other robot enjoyers. I thought I'd done well in terms of view as the seats before me only contained some young children and, immediately in front of me, a grey-haired old woman in a knitted cardigan. She was thin, frail, practically see-through. I wasn't going to have any problems here...

     Or so i thought. But like the fool that counts their frail old women before they hatch, I was to have counted in haste. In my peripheral vision my brain registered the arrival of a small planet and the old woman in front of me scooted over - the grandmother? As if drawn by the ungodly gravitational field, my eyes beheld what I can only describe as a boy with an enormous head. It's wasn't a disability, I'm not that cruel, it was just naturally huge. I'm sure he'll grow into it. He was no more than 8 or 9 years old but with the head of a full-grown man - maybe even more than one.

     I felt a twinge of sympathy for the mother.


A mock-up of my experience

     But I was here to watch robot fighting, and that had become significantly more difficult. And it wasn't just the head that was giving me the 'Jenny Nicholson' experience. No, to add insult to injury, up came the arms, stretched wide with hands clamped on either side of his gargantuan bonce. It was as if the planet had developed rings, like some kind of sick mockery of Saturn.

     Who, as part of the front row of an audience, does that? The question is rhetorical as I know the answer; I tried to watch robots hoofing each other around a perspex box through their elbow gap. Why did the frail old women - the grandmother I have assumes for this narrative - not just explain to him that he was degrading the experience of others and that he has a responsibility as an audience member to not unnecessarily degrade the experience of others? I realise he can't do much about his ginormous loaf, but the wilful head clutching was an arm too far.

As such, the evening session of robot fighting that promised to be a beautiful experience was irreparably ruined and I cannot be consoled.

Could I have stood up?

Yeah, I suppose I could have...

[Author's note: It should be accepted that a certain level of exaggeration and hyperbole can creep into an author's work if the subject matter is particularly emotional. I would like it to be noted, that has definitely not occurred in this article.]

- Vic Jameson
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