» Dumb things you've done

Dead Arm
My girlfriend goes to work early in the morning, and often leaves me, a filthy student, to lie in bed for a few more hours.

One day, just after we'd said our goodbyes, I rolled over and went back to sleep. In doing this I had, unbeknown to me, placed around 10st of myself on my poor left arm.

Cut to around 10:30AM, and I am roused from my slumber. However, there is a problem - I don't appear to be able to move my left arm. It hasn't just gone a bit numb, it has been full on paralysed. This shits me up a little bit, as even though I'm right handed, my left arm is a valued part of my anatomy. After the initial shock had worn away, I began to think about what I should do. Like most men I'm sure, my gut instinct was to go for one of those fabled wanks where because your arm is numb it's like someone else is doing it. Unfortunately my fingers were so paralysed it was impossible to grasp anything, so that plan was out of the window. I eventually decided to investigate whether I'd lost my postural reflexes as well. I dragged my left arm up above the head of my prone body with my right hand, and then let go in order to see if I could maintain my arm's position.

I couldn't. I couldn't right into my face. Furthermore, because my arm was completely dead I was unable to subconsciously slow my arm down on it's descent to my evidently already severely damaged head, so I got punched in the face by gravity first thing in the morning. Fuck you Newton, fuck you...
(Fri 4th Jan 2008, 1:37, More)

» Injured Siblings

Wakey wakey!
I'm the only male child in my family, and I have two sisters (8 and 5 years older than me), so I never really did anything violent to them after I reached about 9-10, as I was actually getting to the point where I could hurt them properly.

When my older sister was 10, she was notorious for sleeping like a sloth on Ketamin. My dad told me to go and wake her up one Saturday morning, as we were all going out somewhere. I spoke to her, I yelled at her, I prodded her...nothing. So using my five year old's ingenuity I smashed her in the face with the Usbourne Book of Knowledge. That worked a treat...

Also, one Christmas, during a huge row with the same sister over wrapping paper, me 9, her 14, I threw a spreading knife down on the frontroom table in a fit of rage. It bounced off the table, and landed on her hand (not in, on). Cue her screaming blue murder (literally) - "MUM! MATTHEW JUST TRIED TO STAB ME IN THE HAND!" I got a serious bollocking for that. I was a little bit offended as well, if my parents thought I was going to stab my sister, they could at least have given me enough credit to use a knife that was remotely sharp...
(Sat 20th Aug 2005, 23:54, More)

» PE Lessons

Rugby Shenanigans
In year 8 during PE we were forced to do rugby union for a term - in an inner London school relatively near to Highbury (yay!) and White Hart Lane (boo!) this wasn't the most popular of sporting choices, especially seeing as they had plenty of proper shaped footballs lying around, but they seemed adamant that we had to get a bit closer to each other than newly-pubescent boys would like to be, and scrum/tackle/try our ways to physical fitness (I would say to a passing grade, but fucking hell, it was PE for Christ's sake!).

It so happened that my good friend Rob was (and still is) built like a tank, and had been ever since I'd met him the year previously, so I obviously joined forces with him for any team activities, as having someone twice the size of anyone else in the class was a good thing in my inexperienced rugby-playing eyes.

Mr Simon, our teacher, was explaining the rules of a 3-vs-3 drill we were playing. One member of the attackers would run forward with the ball, turning back on himself as the defending team tackled him. This would hold the ball up long enough for his attacking colleagues to run up behind him, allowing him to pass the ball to them on the overlap so they could advance past the line. Simple enough.

It came to our turn. Our team (well, mainly Rob) turned over the other lads as they attacked, but this wasn't unusual, nobody (a) knew what they were doing and (b) gave a shit. Then it was our turn. Rob took the ball in his gargantuan hands.

And he ran.

You know those shock-based road safety adverts where some slightly tipsy mortgage broker sends a jaywalking kid flying? It was just like watching that. The first two landed somewhere in Enfield, and, to his eternal credit, the other member of their team (who should've been marking against us on the overlap, but was clearly redundant in that role) bravely charged at the juggernaut. He got a good connection with Rob, but, not having been taught how to tackle yet, ended up holding on to Rob's waist trying to yank him down as he ran through. Mr Simon was not impressed, as he was trying to teach us tactics (although in my opinion hiding behind the biggest bloke is a pretty solid tactic), and shouted "ROB, HOLD THE BALL UP, HOLD THE BALL UP!"

So Rob carried on running holding the ball above his head...
(Mon 23rd Nov 2009, 1:26, More)

» Celebrities part II

FAO Martin Clunes
We were on holiday in Cornwall, and had visited the little village where they film Doc Martin (not because of Doc Martin, but it was an interesting coincidence). We watched them filming a scene from across the bay, and saw whoever it was who was being filmed walk down some steps, say something, then walk back up the steps and film another take. After getting bored with this, we continued our walk around the village, and confined our tiniest of brushes with fame to our memories, filed under "Possible Postcard Material (non weather related)". However, when we were driving back to the caravan park, who should the gf's dad see in the rear view mirror than one Mr Clunes, returning I assume to either a homogenous travelling lodge or a picturesque little BnB.

Mr Clunes, I'd like to apologise on behalf of myself, my girlfriend and her brother for grinning like starstruck tits at you from a blue-grey Mondeo as you drove home from work. I'd also like to inform you that your windows aren't as tinted as you'd like, and we could all see you picking your nose.
(Sat 10th Oct 2009, 13:46, More)

» Conspiracy theory nutters

Moon
My sister has been working hard over the past few years, getting over her aversion to science-fiction. She used to say that it was all mindless SFX-laden rubbish, but after years of protestations we got her to actually watch some science fiction, and she enjoyed it, so much so that she actually went to see the new Star Trek film and enjoyed it!

With her new love of sci-fi she suggested recently that we go and see a relatively poorly advertised film called Moon. I'd just moved house and didn't have internet access, so couldn't read anything about the film's plot. I assumed, seeing as it was released in July of this year, that it was a documentary/biopic of the Apollo 11 mission to coincide with the festivities surrounding that. So I was perturbed to hear my dear sis comment to our cousin over dinner in a restaurant that we were going to see a sci-fi film.

"Whoa whoa whoa, it's not science-fiction, it really bloody happened! Don't tell me you believe that conspiracy shit!"
"It's science-fiction Matt, it's about a man who lives on the Moon with a robot..."
"Oh..."

Length? 97 minutes, and it was good, although I can never take Matt Berry seriously after Darkplace...
(Fri 28th Aug 2009, 12:09, More)