» War

Beer and guns, no moral, what was I thinking?
In the navy, and playing with guns was part of the job, however, I came into possession of a semi automatic hand gun and some (fortunately) blank ammo.
being heavily into my alcohol at that time, it seemed natural to take the gun to the pub, where as the night went on it went from only me knowing I had the gun to half the damn pub knowing. Things are vey blurry, but I can clearly remember the pub landlord, John, a perma-soused paddy spotting the hulking figure of 'black Dave' through the frosted pub glass, running out, jamming the gun into his stomach and firing it, he came back in waving the smoking gun and proclaiming " I got me first black one!"
I've never seen a black guy turn white before, but black Dave was a whiter shade of pale to be sure, his jacket was marked and smoking and he said he though he was dead for sure
The evening culminated with me standing facing a phone box in which stood a fellow member of the navy against whom I had a grudge for reasons that no longer come to mind, I stood there on the darkened street with my legs spread and the gun held in both hands, pointing the gun at him until he eventually turned around, saw me, and then (comedy style) tried to get out of the phone box by pushing the wrong wall.
I loosed off half a dozen shots and saw his pants darken, and then ran down the street hooting with laughter, the rest of the evening is lost to alcohol sadly, other than a vague recollection of more shooting imna church yard.

Some things related to that evening came to light later and I spent a little time in RNDQs in Portsmouth, the naval prison (Royal Naval Detention Quarters) to think about what I had done.

In retrospect, I got off lightly, as about this time, the IRA were still active on the mainland, and gunfire in a naval town should have drawn a rapid response team. I'm lucky I didn't get shot dead by some twitchy fingered copper.

Length............ twenty eight days, with a day off for good behaviour.....
(Fri 1st Jun 2012, 22:05, More)

» DIY Surgery

DIY Vetinary surgery
So, the young pistonbroke got his first air rifle - great for shooting all my brothers toys, the sparrows off the washing line, basically pretty much anything - I even used to dry fire it at our wimpy "gun dog" - a black labrador so pathetic that it used to run away from the sound of gunfire rather than look for something to fetch.

So, one day, at home alone, I deceided to go out shooting and pulled the rifle out from under my bed - grabbed a tin of ammo, and popped an empty round at the dog who as usual whelped and ran away.
When I got back (final score 1 pigeon and 2 sparrows) the dog came over to make sure I still loved him, I gave him a bit of a stroke and then noticed my hand was covered in sticky blood.

on the dogs snout, a little under his eye was the unmistakable round tail end of a pellet, embedded deep into the poor creature - it seems either I'd left a round in the gun, or my brother had been messing with it (I suspect the latter).

Well, with my parents due home, drastic action was called for - the removal should have been simple, but the pellet had mushroomed in contact with the snouty bones of the dog, so I had to open the wound up with a small paring knife to remove the pellet - this left a nasty crater of raw red flesh on the poor creatures muzzle - pretty "bloody" obvious -now I'd already tasted the parents wrath when I'd "borrowed" my dads best shotgun, so I knew that a probable early death awaited me if I was rumbled - so my racing brain settled on painting the wound black with modelling paint to disguise it.

The wound was of course noticed in due course, but by then had become a scabby mess, and was put down the the dog tangling with a cat it should have left alone - basically, I got away with it
The dog healed up ok too, no infection or anything, but it did forever have a bald patch on its face a which gave me guilt for as long as it lived.
(Sun 23rd Jan 2011, 16:33, More)

» Guilty Laughs

schaudenfreud on the underground
This happened to the young pistonbroke when he was about 16 years old - me and a good buddy used to travel from our homes in north wales, over to Liverpool to catch rock bands and visit goth clubs where (rumor had it), "goth chicks would do anything for a couple of pints of cider". - but I digress - the point is that being spotty-transport-challenged teenagers, we had to use public transport, which for liverpool included an underground system that passes under the reasonably deep river Mersey.

As we got off one of the trains and headed toward the escalators which would take us to the surface, somewhere near the top of the escalator, a short, fat old lady (probably in her 60's or 70's) had a moment of unsteadiness and began to topple backwards - in true comedy style, her arm shot out like a steel claw and clamped on to the collar of her equally ancient but tall and scrawny husband, dragging him with her like the alien queen grabbing Ripley whilst being ejected into space from the air-lock

For a pair of pre-internet, pre-youtube sixteen year olds (for this was the late 80's), this was the equivalant of the holy grail of black humor, and we had no choice but to laugh deeply and heartily (under the withering stares of other people around) as we watched the decrepit pair somersault, cartwheel and slither down the entire length of the still rising escalator, bouncing off all those steel steps (and this was no short escalator, my memory may play tricks on me buit this was a jacob's ladder-esque vanishing point escalator).
But it wasn't even over when they arrived at our feet at the bottom, where the curve of the escalator levelled out - of course, the escalator kept dragging their groaning, wailing and keening carcasses up so they were lazily performing bonus forward or backward rolls every few seconds, until some good Samaritan (aka spoil-sport) thought of hitting the emergency stop to allow the old dears to be dragged clear.

Guilty? I sure am now, I'd imagine that the poor brittle boned pair were in quite a bad way, but the callous youth I was at the time felt barely a flicker of compassion and only saw what we see now when we watch a nice compilation of faceplants and skateboarding prat falls.

Length?.... bloody long, and made of polished stainless steel
(Sat 24th Jul 2010, 16:44, More)

» The Best / Worst thing I've ever eaten

Logically it *should* have worked
I love curries.

I love them from the shops
I love them from the curry house
I love home made curries
I love making curries

Basically, if you've got the right ingredients, and you don't lob too much of any one thing in, they are pretty foolproof.

One day I was scouting around in the kitchen for the makings of my next curry (I like to bash up a big wok-full, then freeze a few pots for another day) - and I found that the one basic ingredient I usually need - the protein element, usually provided by lamb, beef, chicken, turkey, prawns, fish.... was missing... I had nothing in...

or did I?

I found a large salami/peperami thing in the back of a cupboard - the stuff you slice up and pop on top of a pizza.

My thought process went something like this...

*it's meat isnt it?
*curry is strongly flavoured.....
*so it will soak up the curry flavour
*this will work.

One diced salami/peperami thing later and an hour or so onwards I can categorically report that the salty flavor of peperami/salami thingy beats madras hands down - I wanted to brush my tongue with bleach after that disaster.

I'm still slightly gagging now thinking about it, and that was years ago - just don't.
(Sat 28th May 2011, 16:04, More)

» Rubbish Towns

Rubbish Towns
Liphook in Hampshire (village with towny pretentions)
Pikeys, chavs, ritual binge drinking and all things kebab related.
More and more and more housing for knocked up waynettas, and for pikeys doing their best to out-breed tax-payers.

Gated communities springing up to defend the London bound communters from the barbarian hordes
What was once a beautiful, peaceful english village is now beset by scum who you wouldn't want working in the local recycling center

It's quite easy to get punched in the face for daring to have a quiet pint in Liphook these days, simply because of all the bitter have-bots who are resentful of anyone who isn't scowling, posturing and wearing the urban uniform.

Now thats fucked up - hence my vote.
(Sun 1st Nov 2009, 23:02, More)