CHCB's Axe.....
...reminded me of a guy I used to work with called Roger. He was a grizzly adams type feller, who lived in a rented cottage in north Yorkshire.

His central heating, such as it was, required the choppage of large bits of wood, for which he used an axe. One day he had to move the chopping block as there was something in the way, and merrily set about chopping wood.

Only this time, he had moved too close to the washing line. The axe handle, swung with brutish force, caught on the line and the back of the axe head hit him in the right eye socket.

He came in to work a couple of days later. I swear it looked like he'd been shot in the face. cracked his eye socket, scratched his pupil and looked like John Merrick for about 6 weeks.

Still makes me cringe thinking about it.
( B00gle-H00ps Looks like a horse, in a man costume..., Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:50, 2 replies)

a few but to keep things short
going back 15 years through the mists of time, local off sales had a christmas raffle, I won a bottle of whisky, drank it with a half bottle of rum as a chaser and some speed and proceeded to fall thirty feet over the bannisters while trying to get into my house. Two blood clots on brain, numerous fractures of skull, broken jaw, ruptured eardrum and right calf completely torn off with left calf torn open

it seemed like a good idea at the time
(albinomeatpod, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:42, 4 replies)

I like my meat well done
My gas cooker has 2 ovens, the bottom main oven and the smaller top oven at crotch height that doubles as a grill. The main oven has auto ignition but the top oven does not and needs to be lit with the ignition switch, a fact I had completely forgotten about last weekend while I was waiting for my 2 rashers of bacon to be grilled to tasty crispy perfection.

After a couple of minutes of standing there like a mong while the kitchen filled up with propane I realised my mistake and hit the ignition switch…I experienced what I believe is called the “onosecond”, that moment of clarity where you realise that you have done a very silly thing and there is no going back (usually it involves sexually charged emails that you accidentally send to your boss, not the object of your affection)…

….WHOMPTH!!! My crotch was engulfed in a jet of hot yellow flame; I hopped around the kitchen patting down my toasted knackers and then ran the bottom of my smouldering jumper under the tap. Luckily I was fully clothed and wearing jeans, had I been strutting around in nothing but my favourite brown nylon Y-fronts my chances of parenthood would have ended in a hot molten puddle on the kitchen floor.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:35, 8 replies)

Christ,
where do i start.

6 years old and I am playing in a disused quarry near my home. A large, very steep sided quarry, with all manner of life threatening playthings within. We clambered up the 'north face' and on getting to the top i peek over the edge and spot a skip filled with bricks down in the quarry, maybe 30 ft from the side. I look at this and decide it would be easy for me to leap from the edge and 'make it' to the skip full of bricks which would obviously break my 100ft fall softly and with good grace.

I decided i couldn't be bothered climbing back up, so i didn't bother. This event has haunted me since and about 10 years ago I went back to the quarry just to see how high it was, only to find it infilled, which was a little sad.


7 years old and i was playing on the railway. YAY! Placing smallish stones on the track, running, and watching as the diesel trains smashed them to smithereens. It was right about then that i realised there was a big gap between the train and the track, a gap big enough for a wee guy like me to lie under and let the train rumble over me....

Man, wouldn't that be fun. Too much fun i thought and decided to head home instead. But not before placing a HUGE brick on the rail, and running to a nearby bush. A fast train approached and instead of crushing the brick, it pinged it right out from under the wheel. It flew faster than a missile, despite it's formidable size, right past us, missing by about 2 foot and dug itself into the earthen bank. Like a rude meteorite.


8 years old and up early on a Sunday morning with only the testacrd for company....and a lighter and a can of butane gas. I thought i would be helpful and refill the lighter. Man, would they be happy. So i sit cross legged and start filling the lighter, when wonder what it would like to light, the lighter as i am filling it.

Well, i didn't have to wonder for very long as the mini mushroom cloud of gas combusted all around me, taking my eyebrows and a portion of my epidermis along with it.


18 years old, Xmas Day, in the pub, argument with girlfriend, she goes home, i continue drinking. At 1am I think, no goddammit, i KNOW it will be a good idea to go to her house and throw a stone up to her attic bedroom window...She lived in a top conversion of a Victorian villa. Even when sober, getting a stone that's small enough not to smash the window, but big enough to have the momentum, would have been a task. I try, and, i fail.

At this point me and my pal should have turned away and went for a taxi home. WRONG, it's at this point I should look for a ladder to try and climb up and into a window.

I should mention that the folk in the lower conversion have a HUGE rottweiller, a dog that is very stealthy and terrifying.

The bottom porch light goes on, the dog barks. I take this as a good sign and monkey my way onto a wall and on to the top of their garage, which is beside the right hand side of the house. The garage isn't attached to the house because there is path running between it and the garage. So i am up on the garage roof, looking down 14 feet into the inky darkness of the gap between the house and the garage. I look up and the only window on this side is my girlfriends, double glazed and CLOSED bathroom window. It is then that i see the oldest and mossiest pair of wooden ladders in the world.

Oh yes, BINGO. The Lord himself must have placed them there, their quiet decay going unnoticed over the years. Unnoticed until NOW.

I pick them up and place them against the wall of the house, the foot of the ladders on the garage roof. They now span the inky black gap, that cloaks the cold, unforgiving flagstones that are an extra 14ft below where i currently stand.

The first rung snaps immediately as i stand on it, as does the second, but the third one seems OK, as does the 4th, 5th, 6th...fucking yes, i'm gonna make it. Make it to where though. The ladder just terminates against a blank sandstone wall, it isn't long enough to reach the closed bathroom window anyway.

7th rung, fine, 8th and i'm now in the death zone. 9th.....10.........

Then i come to...On top of the garage, which was covered in velvet like moss about 3" thick. What the fuck happened, i can hear the devil dog barking....

"please don't let it out, please don't let it out....fuck i can't even get up, it will eat me alive"

The noise of me hitting the garage also alerted my pal, who tried to see what the fuck was going on. I managed, with his help to walkabout 1km into town and get a cab back to my place.

Woke up and couldn't really remember what had happened...but it started to burst through the intense pain and the memories began filtering in like a Brita water filter trying to process bum gravy.

I go to hospital and get my head x-rayed...No fractured skull...but several broken ribs and a fractured wrist.

I go from there, back to the scene of the idiocy. This time a simple knock on the door sufficed. The girfriend appears and through the glass door i can see and sense her anger at the previous nights argument. She opens the door and has one last intake of breathe before embarking on a well justified rant...but as she does she sees my distressed condition, bandages and various badges of fuckwittery.

I explained what had happened and although absolutely fucking livid at my stupidity, particularly when we went at looked at the 'evidence'. It was then that i realised had i fallen straight down, i would have been dead. Luckily i must have fallen backwards and made the garage roof. i dont think the ladder would have even burned they were so badly rotted.

In some misguided way she thought my gesture was ridiculous, misguided, yet a bit sweet, but wholly pointless as she wasn't even at home, she had went to her grans to stay the night.

Length, about 14ft and green with moss
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:27, Reply)

I could have made it
Many, many moons ago, the entire familly flew out to Greece to spend some time with Dodgy Uncle Dimitri. This was 1980, so I was only 3.

We spent some time in Athens, seeing the sights and doing touristy crap for a week. We then went out to Dodgy Uncle Dimitri's villa on some island somewhere. The villa in question fronted onto a small-ish beach. Lovely, white sand, clear blue sea and the bloke who sold the ice-cream and rented out the pedaloes was also (thankfully) the lifeguard.

Every day, my dad would rent a pedalo and him, me, my brother and my two cousins would go on a little trip around the bay the beach was on. Every day, once we got back to about 10ft from shore, my dad would get us kids to jump off and swim back. Great days.

Now I can't remember any of this, I was 29 years ago, afterall.

What I can remeber is the next bit. One of these days, as we were heading out on the pedalo, I looked at the shoreline and thought "I can swim that" so I jumped off the back and started doggy-paddling towards the beach, which was agood half mile away. My dad didn't notice.

My mum was sunbathing and didn't notice either. My brother and cousins thought it was really funny, so didn't mention it.

So I'm happily bobbing along in my armbands, without a care in the world when one of my uncles on the shore notices shouts something really meaningful like "aaaaargh! Argh, argh!", jumps into the sea and starts thrashing towards me. He reckons he was halfway towards me when the lifeguard stopped chatting up the girlies that flocked around him every day (when telling this story, my mum always says how tallented he was, I used to think she was talking about his swimming ability) and noticed what was going on. He sprinted down the beach, Baywatches it into the water, blasts past my uncle and reaches me in mere seconds and drags me back to shore.

My mum was hysterical, my brother and cousins all got a slap for "chucking me off the pedalo" and my dad was in thedoghouse for not noticing I had gone into the water.

I got free icecream for the rest of the holiday for making the lifeguard look like such a hero.
(ScousersPet, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:24, 2 replies)

Dogs and cats living together.
I have had many, many close calls but I suppose the most memorable was the time I was helping out one of my customers. I was with my associates and I was instructed to clear my mind and think about nothing as my potential destroyer would take the form that we were thinking about.

Well, old muggins here couldn’t help thinking of the most innocent thing that I could think of from my childhood. The stay puft marshmallow man. It was stupid. Incredibly so. But I couldn’t help it. Anyway, a stay puft marshmallow man appeared but it was massive! One of my associates recommended that we ‘cross the streams’ of our weapons to fight our then current adversary. Although having previously being warned that if we did that there was a very good chance of a total protonic reversal which would render all life as I know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in my body exploding at the speed of light.

Anyway we crossed the streams and had marshmallow for dinner for a blooming week.

Signed,

Ray
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:14, 1 reply)

As a wee nipper, I had a nasty incident of a hydrocele - the accumulation of serous fluid in a bodily cavity
Whereby, according to my parents, my scrotum filled up with fluid. It can cause problems, infertility and other nasty stuff in some cases. I was lucky, no complications. But that was my first attempt to climb out of the gene pool.

It was the size and texture of an orange, apparently...

Thanks, mum. I was too young to remember that one...
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:09, Reply)

gash
My parents sent me an axe for my birthday and Fed-Ex just delivered it about ten minutes ago. I turned the box upside down to get it out and it bounced out of the box, blade first, landing in my floorboards and narrowly missing my delicate little toes. I really must stop this cavalier attitude to sharp, pointy tools.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:09, 18 replies)

When I decided to try my first cigarette
Which I snuck out of a responsible adult's packet, I didn't have a lighter or matches.

I figured I could light it by pressing it against the strip on a bar heater. It didn't light it. I wondered if it was hot enough. I should really check it with the tip of my finger.

Ouch.
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:05, Reply)

Alsmot had my eye (and brain) out
Back whyen I was younger and alot more foolish I tried to learn to skateboard.

I made an important discovery quite quickly. It hurts. But I senlessly decided to carry on.

Even though my ingury list is pretty minor compared to an actualy skateboarder I decided to quit trying to learn after 1 almost deadly accident.

I was skating down a hill in the park. I was moving quite fast and I started to lose control. My skateboard started wobbling and I knew I was about to crash. I had a split second to decide what to do.
1) Keep going and pray for the best.
2) jump off onto the tarmac path.
3) Jump off into the spiky bushes on my right.
4) Jump off onto the muddy ground on the left.

Amazingly I chose the last option and managed to pull it off. I landed body 1st in a large puddle of mud and knocked all the wind out of my lungs. When I raised my ehad I noticed a stick in the mud, 6 inches sticking straight out of the mud. Barely a centermeter from my head. It suddenly dawned on me that if I had been a millisecond later in jumping off my board then that stick might of ended up in my eye and with it;s length being what it was it may not of just stopped with destroying my eye.

That was the day I decided to quite skateboarding.

(on a side note, the 1st friend I told about this told me how he'd fallen over skating last month and woke up an hour later with a blood encrusted head. Skull damage. Nice)
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:03, Reply)

I ride motorbikes.
Lets face it, you're all likely to be enjoying my organs at some point in the future...

Apologies to Mr Liver's new owner. Whoever gets my willy, I hope you get more use out of it than I do...
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:02, 6 replies)

Bloody Bodmin
I wouldn’t say I try to injure myself lots or am injury prone but, I do manage to have more than my fair share of knocks whenever I try anything more sporting than running for a bus.

First big example of this (if you ignore drinking white spirit as a 2year old and getting a mention in the Cornish Guardian) was in my rugby playing days of a teen. I was always a skinny bugger when younger, not so much bigger now, but that didn’t stop my fool hardy skills of taking down any opposing player on a rugby pitch. The biggest guy in the school, I could take him down no problem. In reality it was probably more like a piece of string getting caught in their legs and tripping them up than any actual power from my part. Still, I wasn’t scared to take anyone out.

So I got played as a full back quite a lot. And all was fine until we played Bodmin, a town most renowned for its mental hospital.

The match was evenly pegged and it was halfway through the first half, when a nippy little winger made a break for it, and I was there waiting to stop him. We both ran at full pelt into each other, and I managed to take him down. But ah, that kinda hurt. Right, I don’t feel too good, kinda seeing stars now. Have to have a little sit down. My teacher comes over to check up on me, sees I’ve had a bit of knock and substitutes me. So I sit the game out, on the touchline, still not feeling too good.

The rest of the match is a bit of a blur, so is the hour coach ride home, and as I’m still not feeling too chipper, the teacher even gives me a lift to my house. Drops me off to my mum, “he’s had a bit of knock, you may want to send him to bed” was his advice. So my mum rightly does so.

After a few hours of me making some groaning noises (some may say, crying in agony) my mum decided to take me all the twenty yards distance to the local hospital. Explains my “bit of knock” situation, doctor examines me. “He needs to go to the big hospital, just for observation”. So an ambulance blue lights me the 20 miles, get rushed straight into casualty, Xrays, surgery…

Apparently the “bit of a knock” was a ruptured spleen. If I’d “slept it off” I would have died from internal bleeding. Spent the next 48 hours in intensive care before going home and having a month off school. Got a scar across my stomach to boot too.

Didn’t play rugby for a while and the next time I did, I got a broken nose for my troubles. I learned my lesson after that.
(CornishStanley can't post hyperlinks, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:56, Reply)

I'd come out of a bad relationship with a madwoman...
Who ended up stalking me for a number of months.

After about a month of not hearing a thing, no drive-bys, not so much as a muffled fart in the bushes, I figure, she's finally got over it, and I'm free to roam once more.

Fast forward another month, it's a quiet summer Sunday in Brisbane, Australia, I'm sitting on my back deck with a beer, enjoying the sun, the breeze, and most of all, the peace and quiet with the new girlfriend, when I hear a knock on the door.

"Probably just the Jehova's again, I'll piss them off and be back in a sec" I say to her, and I get up to go answer it.

Front up to the door, pull it open, and BLAM, something hits me in the chest like a barefisted Mike Tyson pick up line, and the second worst pain I've ever felt(EDIT: The absolute worst was being stung by a box jellyfish while surfing), like someone had just hammered a red-hot nail into me.

Yes, b3tans, You're guessing correctly - THE CRAZY BINT SHOT ME IN THE FUCKING CHEST.

I've collapsed backwards, with barely enough presence of mind to kick failingly at the door to try and kick the thing shut - the young miss whose company I was previously enjoying rounds the corner just as another .25 round thumps into the solid oak door - Luckily I've managed to kick it closed at this point.

Of course, she freaked out, called the Ambulance and police on her mobile - the latter managing to catch the mad bitch in question about 3 kilometers away, trying to throw the rifle into a creek that runs through the nearby park.

Happily, she had fired a little too eagerly - she missed the main part of my chest, missed the sub-clavian artery by about half a cunt hair, and managed to lodge the thing just around my armpit after it clipped bone.

Docs managed to pull it out, and I happily handed it over to the police as evidence - though, the also retrived a raving mad ex-girlfriend/stalker, and a slightly muddy .25 rifle from the creek.

She's now doing roughly her 4th of 15 years in prison, and I'm living in Leeds, about as far away from mad bitches with rifles as I can get.

Apologies for the length, but not the caliber.
(Churba, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:55, 12 replies)

highway to hull
The fella who was until recently my boyfriend drives a clapped-out van that's prone to the engine cutting out for no reason. How does he drive said van? Usually when he's on the phone. While skinning up on the steering wheel. Oh, and he refuses to wear a seatbelt. And likes to coast down all the hills to save diesel. And did I mention that he's blind in one eye?

Bizarrely, his driving is one of the few things I trust about him.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:52, 2 replies)

On the subject of electricity
As a small buffet_slayer I had a keen interest in all things electrical and was called upon to repair all manner of things. I was a member of Radio Shack's Battery club and everything.

Closest thing I got to seeing the white light at the end of the tunnel was when mending a bedside lamp for my mum in my bedroom. Of course money was scarse so I didn't have all the right tools. It's amazing what you can do with a pair of scissors, cotton reels, second hand solder and electrical componants robbed off old televisions found on the local woods etc.

Why spend pocket money on wire strippers when the gap between your front teeth was equally effective? Well they've got plastic handles for a start.

When stripping the insulation off the end of a wire (with your teeth) it's best to double check you haven't still got the plug end of the same wire connected to the wall otherwise you may find yourself lauched Tom and Jerry Style across the room and through the wall opposite.

Apparantly when I eventually came round the doctor (they visited back then) asked me what my name was and I was still responding with my just my ham radio callsign as they bundled me into the ambulance.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:47, 3 replies)

high speed ground/face combo
Last year, on the week before my birthday, a mate and I decided we'd go along on a mountain bike ride with a few guys from the local bike shop. Thinking I was a bit special with my £600 hardtail I tried to keep up with the mentalists on their £5,000 full sus monsters and failed miserably.

After feeling like a right plank who should still have his stabilisers on for the first couple of hours the trail got far easier, and we eventually got to the crest of a hill I had travelled down at speed the weekend before. Trying to show off my supposed skills I bombed down, stood up and leaning forward trying to get as much pace a possible. The hill was pretty rutted though, and it was dark, so when the inevitable unexpected jump was hit I slammed down hard on the brakes.

Being that I was in mid-air at the time, and my disc brakes had recently been serviced the bike stopped dead when I landed. I, unfortunately, did not and with my arms by my side I had no way of breaking my fall and so collided chest-first with the deck. Ouch.

Not wanting to seem like any more of the plonker I already was I jumped straight back on the bike and cycled back to the ferry, still in the dark, minus a front light. It was only when I couldn't breathe the suggestion was made that I should head to Casualty, where I discovered I'd broken a few ribs.

So the next week was spent on Codine, not drinking or generally doing anything fun on my birthday due to my own stupidity. My ribs still hurt to this day, almost whispering 'you twat' in my brain.
(tattymuff, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:46, 1 reply)

Hoover inferno
I am reminded of when my brother persuaded me to hold a lighter to the exhaust vent of a hoover while he sprayed lighter fluid into the end of the hose. The resultant fireball took out half my hair and one eyebrow.

Don't listen your older siblings kids. They are all bastards!
(Tom Jones's Mojo Hasn't had any since, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:43, 1 reply)

Yesterday Morning
Not a repost....

I was driving on the M18 with my car's cruise control on, set to 74mph as I'm off to work and in NO hurry.

I'm a little tired as, well, I just am.

I'm cruising past a car that is clearly doing about 73mph as I'm just ambling past.

I spot a car closing behind me at a decent pace so I thought I' make use of my car's power (well, the turbo was spooled up so why not) so I stamped the accelerator pedal.

Or, as it turned out, the brake pedal.

I think the guy's eyes behind me actually came out on stalks as he saw a large blue saloon coming at him.

Fortunately he was far enough away and I didn't slow down that much (only lost 20mph), but I did wave a sincere apology.

So if you were driving a silver Golf and a Blue Passat made you poo yourself yesterday - I am so, very sorry.

JTW
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:40, 2 replies)

Twat on a Kawasaki
My mate Mitch managed to wrap his motorbike round a tree in Lincolnshire whilst trying to make a roll up. (He later said he'd slowed down so couldn't really see the problem).

Really fucked himself up.

When he looked down at his legs, he noticed his foot was facing the wrong way round, then he saw the blood trickle up and over his boot.

When they put him in the back of the ambulance he was delirious.

He pointed to the mangled wreck of his Kawasaki and said: "Ha! Ha! Ha! Some idiot's only gone and written their bike off!"

To which the paramedic replied: "Erm, yes... And that would be you..."

At which point Mitch promptly passed out.
( SpankyHanky, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:39, Reply)

Mmmm, tasty volts.
When I was young, we had a set of Christmas tree lights which had a star at the end. This lasted us several years until too many of the bulbs had gone and we couldn't get replacements.

My parents purchased a new set of lights but this new set didn't have a star. In a flash of genius, I realised I could transplant the star into the new set of lights! Win!

I joined the wires together by cutting, stripping and twisting them together and it all worked, hurrah! I then noticed that one of the connections wasn't very good and I needed to strip some more insulation off the wire so that I could twist the copper wires together (soldering is for wimps)

Knowing that the lights were still plugged in, I decided that the best option was to strip the wire using my teeth.

My reasoning behind this was thus:

1 - There was 20 bulbs in the set. 240V / 20 = 12V! I was safe! 12V is nothing! (yes, I know..)
2 - I was sat on a sofa. I wasn't earthed. The electricity had nowhere to go.

Holding a wire in each hand (by the insulation) I proceeded to place one of the wires between my teeth and bit down.

Ah.. so this is what being electrocuted is like...

I couldn't see anything. At all. The mains cable in my mouth replaced my vision with a strobe. My whole body buzzed and shook with a powerful and extremely unpleasant 50Hz pulse.

Ooookay, so I'm still being electrocuted.. I'm going to die, aren't I?.. Hmm.. shit.

I knew I needed help and that the living room door was to the right of me. I'd have to try and get to the door. This isn't very easy when none of your senses are working properly. I had a vague far-away sense of touch and that would have to do.

Luckily, trying to get to the door was enough to dislodge the wire. Or maybe the fuse had blown. Either way, I was "back" in the room which stunk of burnt flesh. I looked at my hand to find that the wire had burnt through the insulation and into my hand - my thumb and index finger were completely white but burnt and blackened where it had singed my flesh. On the upside, it had cauterised the wound so there was no blood.

My hand is still scarred to this day and, in cold weather, I can suck air through a small hole in the roof of my mouth which I assume leads to my nasal cavity. Nice.
( mugwump In summary then, oh no. Chris., Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:38, 2 replies)

Blatant Repost
I needed to remove some cable tacks that were holding a phone wire back - No big deal - They had to come off, the wall painted and new ones put it. It's not rocket science dammit.

Anyway, I proceeded to remove them.

Now, directly below one of them (about halfway up the wall) is a socket.

You might see where this is going....

I touched the one above the socket - the metal bit.

"Bastard, that hurt"

That's right, some moron (not me) had put it through the live wire - how it hadn't shorted out the house, I don't know.

"Well, that's just daft." Thought I - "There's a lesson here"

"I'd better turn off the electricity and carefully remove the cable tack" - Is what I SHOULD have thought/done.

What I did think was "Did that really happen? I'd better touch it again"

"OUCH!" (Followed by much swearing).

That really bastard hurt. I know, I'll touch it again.

"F***, etc"

Yes, that's right I touched it twice, then held on a bit the third time just to check for actual pain. Of which there was a lot.

I was going to get off the ladder, but I realised that I was actually now lying on the ground - "Now, how did I get down here?".....

I turned the mains off at this point and was a LOT more careful the 4th time.

Honest.

The lesson is - I'm shouldn't be allowed out of that padded room....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:36, 2 replies)

Spooky Farmhouse on the hill
On the walk home from school each day on the right about a mile away over the fields was a huge derelict farmhouse. I was about 8/9 years old at the time. Now my parents said "Don't let us find you up there, EVER"

Me and 3 mates went there after school one night to nose around, see what we can find (when you are 8 I wanted ghosts,adventures, rope swings and hidden money from an armed robbery). What we found was a huge farmhouse on 3 floors, stairs sort of intact but the palce had hardly any walls and no windows.

Up to the top floor we go, 3 floors down is an old rusty machine with 50 ish 1 foot spikes out of it on a roller that they drag behind a tractor, I fell through the floorboards and caught myself on my elbows. At the time all I could think of was my folks, they told me and I did not listen.

Mates help me up and we go home. If I had fell through no question dead, but in a 8.00pm Casualty that would never happen type of way.

Closest ever......

apart from when I overdosed after seeing the prodidy live at Stoke university in 93/94 ish. You know it's bad when you can hear "Shall we call 999, he's gone a funny colour now " but you can't move, speak or see. Not good in a room full of 12 people I had only met 4 hours earlier.
(amsterdam_neild, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:25, Reply)

Fun with fireworks
It hadn't been a good New Year's Eve in the slightest. In fact, it had gone as wrong as wrong could be.

Everything had started off well that day; I'd bought copious amounts of booze and food and also a firework that Arnie himself would have been proud to let off.

When you spend £40 on one firework, it's big. Especially when it's just one rocket, none of this "multi-phase" nonsense that goes on for hour - just one big bang.

I turned up at the door armed with the goodies. They'd only just moved into the house; as he was an expert DIY-er they had bought cheap to do up. Bastard had already put in a new home-made kitchen in 2 weeks. Anyway.

The faces at the door looked wrong. We went in.

"What's wrong ?"
"We've just had a call to say two relatives have died in a car crash in Ireland".

Well, we were 170 miles from home. Happy to drive back there, but they wouldn't have it.

"Stay. We'll carry on. It's what they would have wanted."

Hadn't even met these poor dead fuckers. Commiserate. Sit quietly, watch TV while they phone round other relatives and organise getting over to Ireland.

Not what was planned.

Finally, it gets close to midnight. I decide that it's time to let off the rocket on the strokes of midnight.

Fuck, the garden's small. 10 metres tops. This thing says people should be 25 metres away. Bugger.

Ground's a bit hard as well. The rocket wasn't one of those ones on a stick, it was a cylinder roughly 2' in diameter. Trying to plant it in the ground wasn't easy. The garden's a tip, like the house. Oh well, done my best.

Got everyone outside. Try lifting their spirits. Tell everyone to stand well back, and hope. Do the countdown.

Light fuse paper and run and...

THUNK is the sound I make coming into contact at high speed with a concealed milk crate in the long grass.

Going through my brain is the urgent message to get as far away from the rocket as possible. I run on all fours, through god knows what shit, wondering when I'm going to get a gunpowder-propelled enema.

This is not the night to call out the ambulance.....this is 23:59 on the 31st December, 1999.

So I start my New Year, nay my Millennium, covered in crap and scratches scuttling away for dear life in imminent fear of certain death.

I miss the explosion.

"It was good" they say but I can tell it didn't make them any happier.

We go back in whilst the city explodes around us in pyrotechnics.

And listen to "Tragedy" on repeat for another hour or so.
( I_Was_Mordred, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:22, 1 reply)

Motorbikes. Bloody dangerous things.
I recently removed the rear wheel from my bike to change a tyre. Put it back on, pumped it up, all sorted.

Except that, when I went for a ride, it felt a bit odd.

Turns out I forgot to put the nut back on the end of the spindle. Yes, I did 30 miles on a bike that had the rear wheel held in by the sum of precisely fuck all.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:13, 1 reply)

Horse Killer
Down at a poncy club in Farringdon, my mate fucked off for a while and returns with a bag stuffed full of pills.

Starts offering them round.

Not my thing, I'll stick to the Malibu, thank you.

After a few minutes the bag's empty.

Above the din of the craptacular techno music I hear another mate shout:

"How'd you get those past security?"

And the reply was: "I didn't, I just found them on the floor in the bogs."


That was an interesting night...

Ever tried getting six blokes on enough ketamine to kill the 9th Cavalry back home in a London taxi???
( SpankyHanky, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:11, 2 replies)

my ex
is a Darwin Award waiting to happen.

i) lights cigarettes from the stove top.

ii) forgets to turn the gas off.

iii) has a weak sense of smell.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:04, Reply)

Earlier this week...
... I didn't nearly remove myself from the gene pool, but I did have an "amusing incident".

Some of you may know that I have a couple of rather nice big weird old French cars. Now mostly they're pretty reliable, but one has decided to not really start very enthusiastically. Fine once it's hot but if the engine is cold, it's very very hard to get started.

Hmm, I thought, I wonder why? So with the car parked in the unlit lane at the back of my house, I fiddled about in the dark under the bonnet. A quick poke with a special tool allowed me to turn the engine over on the starter without using the key. Now, being as it was dark, I could see lots of little sparks jumping from the ignition leads to the engine block, and to each other. Aha! Poor spark == poor starting! So I leaned over to pull them away from the block, and discovered that they were just as happy to spark across to my fingers. "Oh bother", said Gordonjcp, or words to that effect.

Of course by now with all the fiddling and poking and opening and shutting the throttle the engine was flooded. So, I took the top off the air intake, opened the throttle wide, opened the choke (you need it when the engine is cold and needs more fuel, but since the intake was now swimming in petrol I felt it had all the fuel it wanted). Now remember I mentioned that the sparks jumped from lead to lead? Yup. This means that a spark might fire in a cylinder when it's not meant to, like when the valves are open for that one. Cranking over the engine again resulted in a couple of pops from the exhaust and then a huge bang and 6' high mushroom flame from the carb, a couple of coughs and then the nice steady rattle of its idle...

Length? Only about 3 or 4mm but they hurt like hell.
(gordonjcp, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 12:55, 1 reply)

The Little Green Dragon
So, there I was, building a kit car. Not a crappy little airfix thing, I hasten to add, but a proper, hell-for-leather Sylva Striker Mk2. A small, but nevertheless quick-off-the-mark Lotus-7 style vehicle, capable of taking roundabouts at impressively high speeds, and going up Harlech Hill at a rate which most motorcyclists would find impressive, never mind sports car owners.

This is all in the future, however, as I and my dad are currently trying to get the 1300 Kent X-flow engine to fire after being rebuilt, which it is failing to do, despite copious amounts of "quickstart".

Unfortunately we haven't realised that the distributor has been put on 180 degrees out - a common problem with that type of engine.

So, what does my dad do?

He takes out a spark plug, and earths it next to the spark plug hole, to see if we're getting a spark.

This is not a clever thing to do.

As the ignition turns, the engine sucks in a mixture of petrol and air, which, instead of being compressed, is expelled through the open plug-hole..which happens to be just right next to a sparking plug.

The results were impressive, to say the least - about three metres of flame. What was really impressive, though, was the speed my father moved - unfortunately not fast enough.

He stood there, face blackened, shivering, looking like something out of a bad comedy show.

Then his eyebrows fell off, as did his quiff.

The fire had neatly carbonized them both. One millimetre more and it would have been off to the serious burns clinic, but that didn't stop the rest of us from rolling around laughing.

From that day on, the car was known as "The Little Green Dragon".

EDIT: It should be pointed out that my family were no strangers to the smell of burning hair. For years we had a gas stove where you had to light the oven with a match, and if you weren't quick enough, lost all the hair on your arm.

These safety-conscious days, gas stoves are no fun at all.
( Stevedix http://www.stevedix.de/blog, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 12:43, 1 reply)

deodorant bombs
When I was in my early teens we used to start fires. Soon, the average pyre composed of a few chewing gum wrappers and whatever litter could be scrounged from the locale, seemed somewhat lame. So we quickly qraduated to propellants, after being inspired by the bond film when sean canary roasts that deadly (non deadly) snake with a cigar and after shave.

Soon running around with a home-made flamethrower also became a bit tiresome. I can reliably inform b3tans that it takes around 4 minutes for a lynx deodorant can to explode in a moderately small fire.

How is this dicing with death? Well we were amusing ourselves in the local woodland and the lynx can had been in for a minute or three when a woman with a dog walked past our fire, a couple of metres away, probably well within blast radius of said lynx can. It seemed like an eternity as she slowly ambled past and we. said. nothing. Absolutely nothing, just frozen in mute shame and utter fear that the can might explode.

Fortunately she was out of sight before long and then one of the less adventurous of us decided he had had enough. "I'm going to get rid of it" he said and promptly went up to the fire to kick the can out.

Bizarrely we couldn't move to protect a (probably) fine and upstanding citizen but we managed to move to protect one of our own. Afterwards and to this day I don't remember if it was me or someone else, but one of us flew through the air and high-tackled him to the ground a split second before the can exploded.

That was a moment of epiphany for some of us, myself included, and the fire was promptly stamped out and we walked home in silence. I think I owe a lot to the woman with the dog as looking back I was on the cusp of becoming a real scally.

Never made a fire without purpose since and I haven't used lynx deodorant either.
(mersault, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 12:39, 4 replies)

Technically
you get a Darwin Award for 'removing yourself from the gene pool', so...


(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 12:22, 17 replies)