» My most treasured possession

miraculous escaping corn snake
This is probably a good place to tell you about my amazing snake.

About 5 years ago a friend was getting rid of his corn snake. As I've always wanted a snake I asked for him, and Huzzah! I became the happy keeper of a beautiful corn snake. He had a small scar from when My friend had lost him and found him with the hoover, but was lovely looking and having been brought up in a house with very small children was very tolerant.

A year or so later, we had to move house, and couldn't find a new one before we had to move out of the old one, so we went to stay with some people we knew,and put most of our stuff in storage. Three days after we got there, we returned to their house to discover smoke pouring out from under the floorboards in the living room. After wandering about for a bit trying to work out what was going on, we open the hall door to go upstairs and met with a wall of smoke. yup, their bloody house was on fire. We later found out the floor had collapsed over where we were wandering around shortly after we got out. Hurrah for not dying!

Among our clothes and other replaceable essentials, my snake was upstairs in his tank in our bedroom. the fire was upstairs. Arse. Not much I could do about it though.

After a few hours of worrying that the fire was our fault (it wasn't - woo!) and watching the firemen go in and out, the fire was vanquished. One of the firemen (in full kit) was nearly killed by the backdraft when he opened the door into our friends bedroom where the fire had been caused by a dodgy electrical socket sparking. The heat had been so intense it melted all her jewellery and stuff. My snake was in the next room. Again, arse.

Then a nice firelady asked whose the snake was. Sadly, I said he was mine, expecting to be shown a blackened crispy dead thing. She said she didn't really understand why, but he was OK. He was a bit brown and sticky (like a stick!) from the smoke, but he was otherwise fine. Still, 4 years on, when he sheds his skin (more often than he used to) there's always a brown smudge along the top of it. For a couple of days afterwards he was quite sluggish, so my guess is that he slowed down his breathing or some other reptilian trickery. I dunno.

2 years later he escaped. He had been prowling around his tank looking for a mate, refusing to eat anything for a few months, when he managed to prise the lid open and get out. The front door happened to be open, and he was gone by the time we realised. Arse!

A whole year later, I was coming in from the garden, when there he was! My wife came running because I bellowed 'SHIT!" so loudly she thought I was hurt. When she saw me with Rusty around my neck she was speechless. I should probably mention here that we live in the North Cornish countryside, in England. He'd survived a whole year, including a fairly harsh British winter. There were feathers in his poo, so he'd definately been hunting, etc. There had been an unconfirmed sighting of a corn snake over a mile away from us while he was gone. I like to think that was him. Now after another escape scare (kids left tank lid off, he got out but was under my daughters bed) he's curled up in his tank in my office.

So huzzah for my amazing cornsnake - he's survived fire, the English countryside, vacuum cleaners and small children.

Length? about 5ft now!
(Tue 13th May 2008, 10:52, More)

» Pointless Experiments

My father in law was legendary at dangerous experiments
As a child/teenager he created TNT and various other explosives, resulting in various craters, burned science blocks and more.

My favourite one, however, comes from when he was an adult in charge of a nuclear reactor. They had a major problem with seagulls, so he got hold of some sodium and put it in a jar of fish oil (in case you don't know, sodium is kept in oil to prevent it oxidising and exploding). He then cut it into small pieces and put them on the roof. Seagulls come swooping down, swallow the pieces whole, fly off and BOOM! No bicarbonate of soda needed thanks!

Picture the environmentalists reaction seeing seagulls flying over a nuclear reactor and exploding.
(Fri 25th Jul 2008, 2:47, More)

» The nicest thing someone's ever done for me

guitar
Several years ago, not long, in fact, after my last story, we were involved in getting a new church set up.

(You can keep all your 'all Christians are thick religious twonks' thoughts out of this, by the way. You might be surprised if you actually met some of us.)

My wife is very gifted musically and led worship most Sundays with her beaten up old guitar. Sometimes she would borrow other people's guitars because hers really was nasty, but she couldn't afford a half decent one.

The pastor arranged for her to play at another church one Sunday, and while she was there they had a secret offering to get her a guitar. They then told me they'd collected £500 to spend on one for her. Now they wanted to surprise her with a new guitar, but didn't know which one.

So I said to her "look, you've been asking God for a guitar for ages - why don't we go to the guitar shops and have a look around. Then you can pray for a specific guitar and maybe even save up towards it." I somehow managed it with a straight face, and she somehow took it at face value, and we looked around the shops and found one that she loved.

She was utterly shocked when she was presented with the exact guitar she wanted a week later, with lots of love from the whole church.
(Fri 3rd Oct 2008, 16:52, More)

» Council Cunts

What really happens
is that council workers are bred in special tanks by the government. The rejects go to call centres.

100% true
(Thu 26th Jul 2007, 13:31, More)

» Hidden Treasure

abandoned village
My old man lives on an island (cheung chau) near Hong Kong. I was visiting him when I were 16, and we went for a stroll on a neighbouring island (lantau - where the new airport is now) and as well as him nearly stepping on a cobra, we found this abandoned village. yep - a whole village. We raided a few of the houses. dad got a load of ming bowls, and I got a bundle of chopsticks, and a dodgy book (in english) about the history of chinese sex.

Another time on the same visit, I came back from a wander rather pleased with myself for finding some rather nice vases. turned out they were burial urns, and contained people's ashes...
(Fri 1st Jul 2005, 16:08, More)