NOOOOOoooooooooo...........

(Fri 3rd Oct 2003, 7:38, More)

He really wanted to try out for the challenge, but...

edit: 1st fp! Yay! Chuffed^n
(Sat 20th Sep 2003, 22:37, More)

» Pet Stories

The Great Dane with the Dodgy Gut
Title says it all really.

When I was a little sproglet, we had a lovely lump of a Great Dane that was about twice my height. Beautiful, lovely, friendly, soft, gentle creature. Unfortunately he had an inherited stomach problem - basically it meant that things would fly through him, and he had an absolutely enormous appetite, which lead to a propensity to eat whatever he could find. To this day, I sleep in late - purely because as a child you never wanted to be the first one up because of the sheer mountains of dog dump that would confront you downstairs.

Memorable passages include:

1. The entire 4kg tub of margarine he snaffled. This greased him through, and for days was fixed in a squat, ejecting a never-ending stream of arsegravy.

2. When I couldn't find my favourite pair of yellow socks. My mum swore she'd washed them and they were in the clean laundry basket. Three days later I found them, still neatly folded - and in the middle of a gently steaming pile of dog's egg.

But, by far the most memorable:
3. When he managed to nick the remains of a sunday roast. Unfortunately, the bits of elasticated string from the roast were still on the plate. A day or so later, he was wandering around the house with about 6 inches of the elastic hanging out of his bumhole. My dad decides to help out, and grabs the end to tug it out. It's well wedged up the gut, so my dad pulls hard. The end of the greasy elastic slips out of his fingers, and the whole thing snaps back at the hound's ringpiece. I have never, ever, seen an animal move so fast or yelp so loud. He didn't come back for hours, and wouldn't go near my dad for weeks.

Despite the faecal exploits, I loved that big stupid woof.
(Fri 8th Jun 2007, 10:50, More)

» Too much information

Good ol' Musty
In Australia, I was out for a curry with some friends and friends of friends. One of these was a guy called Musty, a big rugby-playing chap from Kent.

One of us who had only just been introduced to Musty asked, "why do they call you Musty then?"

He nonchalantly replied, "oh, once me and some guys had a contest to see how much mustard we could fit under our foreskins. I won."

He carried on munching his Madras like nothing had happened. No-one else at the table did.
(Thu 6th Sep 2007, 11:44, More)

» Mistaken Identity

Crucifixion shenanigans
I was travelling through a remote part of the Philippines during holy week. They take their Catholicism pretty seriously out there, going so far as to do a pretty detailed re-enactment of the crucifixion. In fact, young men volunteer for the 'privilege' of being nailed to a cross.

An example: www.ifilm.com/video/2667496

Being a crusty backpacker type at the time, not only was I tall, slightly emaciated from the latest bout of food poisoning, olive-skinned, but also with a beard and shoulder-length hair. Oh, and I have a prominent hooter. Basically, to your average Filipino, I was pretty much a perfect match for their biscuit-tin imagery of Our Saviour. This was remarked upon pretty frequently, at least once an hour some passer-by would shout 'Hey Jesus!', which was mildly entertaining.

However, on Good Friday, being chased across a market square by several hundred filipinos shouting 'Jesus! Jesus!' and making hammering gestures, accompanied by Tagalog which I can only guess translated as 'stop the lanky git, he'll really top off our re-enactment', it didn't seem quite so light-hearted.
(Sat 2nd Jun 2007, 22:22, More)

» Accidental animal cruelty

Came home once
to find one of our cats with an empty catfood tin stuck over its head, mewing pathetically with a reverb effect.

We'd been away 4 days.
(Fri 7th Dec 2007, 13:31, More)

» Where is the strangest place you have slept?

Unintentional outback trip
I was living in a northern suburb of Sydney, and after an all-night bender in the centre of the city, I got on a train for the 45 minute journey home at about 6am.

Obviously, I fell asleep.

I was woken by the ticket inspector who asked for my ticket, which I dutifully handed over. He then asked me for ID. In my bleary-eyed unthinking state, I handed over my passport.

The twunt then proceeded to write me out a fine for 100 dollars, and forecfully kicked me off at the next station without explanation.

Still pissed and confused, I stumbled off onto the station platform. As the train pulled off, I wondered a) why it was so brain-fryingly hot, b) why no-one was around and c) where the hell the whole of Sydney had gone. I was on a small unmanned platform, without a soul around, in blazing late morning heat, in the middle of a desolate Australian plain.

Turns out, after I'd missed my stop and the train had reached it's terminus in the city, it had changed to the morning inter-city service to Brisbane, and I had snoozed peacefully most of the way to Newcastle, and was in the outback about 250 miles north of Sydney.

I spent the next 4 hours, waiting for a train to come in the other direction, napping fitfully in a maintenance alcove off a shadeless platform.

There are hangovers and then, there are hangovers.
(Fri 29th Dec 2006, 19:14, More)