» Customers from Hell

more bike shop tales of woe
we had this steretypical asian rudeboy come in (lines shaved in hair & eyebrow- check. comically large avirex leather jacket with more logos than a designer's portfolio- check. large diamante stud earring- check. 'innit' in place of punctuation- check)
so this guy's got an issue with his bike (not bought from us- some catalogue thing) he bring it in for a quote. we tell him, £30 if we can salvage the part £50 if we have to replace it. he leaves a contact number, goes, we do the work.

when he comes back in, he starts arguing the price. we tell him it's not negotiable, he agreed it, and if he doesn't want to pay we can simply remove the new bits, replace the broken ones, and he can have it back. so he starts calling us all every name under the sun, then , in an almost unbelievably disingenuous manner, he flips to 'polite' mode and syas ok, let me take it for a test ride.
so OBVIOUSLY we ask for a deposit before he leaves the shop (no WAY was he going to come back and pay)
he starts screaming, 'are you calling me a fuckin THIEF blud? i'l fuckin BANG YOU blud, you don't know me, etc etc.. eventually settles on leaving the massive diamond stud earring (i was out back, i'd NEVER have taken that £10 argos piece of shit as security, despite his claims it's £500 gucci bling)
so obviously, he fucks off and doesn't come back.
so we ring the contact number one more time before we give up, it's a landline, and hey presto, who do we get?
a local imam (his dad!!)
we explain the situation, and the guy's attitude.. within one hour, the dad is in asking to see bills and so on, another half hour passes, and the dad, complete with VERY embarassed looking rudeboy, come back in, dad makes him apologise, pay up, and then starts tearing this guy a new asshole in the shop, saying how he's ashamed, and the kid's a disappointment, and how he's not allowed to drive the car and so on.. man that was nice. karma's a bitch.
(Sat 6th Sep 2008, 12:18, More)

» Public Sex

not quite public but close
i was up early one morning banging the sass out of my then gf on the couch in the lounge. the doorbell went, and thinking it was the postman with my long awaited bike parts, i leapt up, coverd myself with the one thing to hand- HER dressing gown (i'm a big lad, she was a small girl) and answered the door.
there, on the doorstep, eager smiles fading to horror, were two very young looking jehovah's witnesses.
i was obviously red-faced and sweating, panting like a dog on a hot day, wearing a VERY revealing small pink dressing gown with some kind of floral motif. one of them started to mumble somethign about redemption and so on, and then fell silent, his horrified gaze heading downwards... i followed his eyes to find out the due to a wardrobe malfunction, little peteloaf was also staring belligerently at them, red-faced and twitching.
i uttered the immortal line 'you're not the postman!' and slammed the door on them.

poor bastards
no-one needs to see a 6'3" sweaty behemoth in a tiny dressing gown with a raging hardon, demanding to know why you're not the postman at that time of day, not even jovies.
(Wed 29th Apr 2009, 21:37, More)

» Cringe!

kill the reverb!
sitting on a bus shelter 'bench' you know the 5" wide plastic bit designed to resist the sleepy embrace of your hobo types.
earphones in, waiting for the bus. pretty girl sat at opposite end of the bench. we exchanged glances, a smile.. saw her most days on the route. AND she was my type. she's got her earphones in, so i decided to relieve the building pressure in my beleaguered colon before we got into a more intimate (enclosed) bus environment.
lifting a cheek surreptitiously, i snuck out a quick toot. glancing her way, not a flicker. emboldened by my success, i decided to tryr and shift the mother lode.

alas, due to the shiny nature of the seat, and the thin material of my kecks, the two elements conspired against me. unbeknownst to me, i appeared to have the kind of rectal pressure required to summon cthulhu.. a quick crack, a pop, then the beats was free.. growling like an infuriated rottweiler with a megaphone, my arse drummed a staccato warning of impending disaster on the bench... reverberations rattled the glass of the flimsy shelter, her head snapped round, a look of shock and disbelief on her face, clearly doubting the rumbling to be of human origin and maybe hoping for my look of confirmation that the world was indeed about to end.
alas, my bright red face did little to reassure her.
then the Smell made itself known. this Smell deserves capitalisation. shit this Smell should probably be allowed to vote and drive a motor vehicle. it was indescribable, picture underpants from the bottom of satan's laundry basket, boiled with week-old sprouts and rotting egg, sieved through the putrid corpse of a fox and regurgitated by john prescott after six pints of bitter and a kebab and you're close. this smell was nearly visible. i initially hoped it would sink to ground level and slink away to join a telemarketing company somewhere, but a capricious breeze bore the beast aloft and to the nose of said fair maiden. she blanched visibly, and stood up, moved upwind, and shot horrified glances at the source of this vile outburst, the now nearly purple peteloaf, vehemently wishing the ground would swallow him, and smelling like old nick himself was hiding in his grundies.

when we got on the bus, she made a beeline for the front window seat and opened it fully.

dammit
cockblocked my my own colon.
(Wed 3rd Dec 2008, 18:06, More)

» The nicest thing someone's ever done for me

life back on track
quite some years back, i was a bit of a trainwreck.
i was on ludicrous amounts of drugs (no heroin/crack thank god) and drunk all the time. i lost my job as a bike mechanic, i was on the rocks. my friedns had crumbled to almost nothing, my folks barely knew me and i did my best to avoid them.. i was on the verge of homelessness and utter self-destruction, self harming, depressed etc.
i finally started to clean myself up, stopped the drugs and was working where i could find work.

my old boss from the bike shop called me, we'd spoken recently (we were friends despite his firing me) he'd heard i was sorting myself out, and he'd also fired the guy who was rinsing the shop for money daily, who i then learned had blamed me, hence the firing (i'm many things but a thief i am NOT )
he apologised and offered me a chance to work there again. i took it.
he over the following 2 years, helped me with wage advances, even helped me move my stuff into a new place after my housemates csrewed me over.
then one day we were talking about uni and how i was so angry that i'd fucked up and dropped out.
the next week he presented me with a ucas form, a written reference, and a cheque for the application fee, which he refused to take back. despite knowing he'd lose me as a mechanic, he told me he wanted me to succeed and that this was no business to make money in.
he didn't have to do that, and i fuckin love the old guy for it. i'm now a qualified graphic designer working in networking (i know i know.. ) with a decent wage, and if it wasn't for him, i'd never have believed in myself enough to give it a try.
so, richard howes, step up and take a bow, because you did somethign i will never be able to repay as long as i live. you beluieved in me when no-one else even me did.
(Thu 2nd Oct 2008, 22:26, More)

» Darwin Awards

the wasp nest
a while back, i lived in a house with a lovely big garden. rockery, the works.
one day, whilst enjoying the taste of a fine jamaican rollup, i noticed a wasp. well, i say a wasp, this was a Wasp. capitalised. one of those angry germanic bastard wasps, with the red bits like a dwarf hornet. it was following a very specific path, every few minutes (may have been more than one in retrospect) under a big slap of the old garden path in the rockery.

a day or two later, there could be seen a pinky-sized hole, under the rock, and three or four wasps. in and out.

a day or two later it was like fuckin heathrow.
me and the landlord decided it was time for ACTION!

we decided to try and flood them out.

sneaky hosepipe action later and suddenly there is a 2ft across ball of furious wasps chasin us as we leg it into the house and slam all the windows.


so we leave it a couple of days. a plan is formulated.

we return that night armed with a funnel, a length of hose, and a half-pint of petrol. end of hose gingerly fed into now 2.5" hole. petrol poured in.
how to light it? flick matches until one catches.

unfortunately, we did NOT count on the propulsion effect launching a cloud of angry, flaming, wasps out like some kind of hideous death cannon. interesting facts, wapss are pretty nippy on their toes if de-winged... also the huge cloud of wasps that followed told us in no uncertain terms we had a BIG nest. at this point, really, we should have called in pest control. did we? did we fuck as like. one of them stung my buddy, this was WAR.

a couple days passed, a tense standoff. we'd stare out the window at our now wasp-run garden, they would ping off the windows periodically, and now and then make incursions into the kitchen.

eventually, we decided the best course of action was to get the big bit of concrete path off the top, so we could see what was under it. after some coin-tossing, prevaricating, my mate got kitted up in a home-made wasp-proof suit wheelie bin liners, duct tape, bandanas, tin of raid) ran in, hooked a big crowbar over the back edge and flipped it over. a few wasps came out and we scarpered, but it wasn't as dramatic as we hoped.

then muggins here decided to lob a head-sized piece of granite at the hole to 'block it'

the rock hit the soil, and disappeared out of sight. i was afforded a brief glimpse of a seemingly endless papery fortress like the fuckin death star before an anbsolute raging TORRENT of these bastards came out, we ran like fuck for the house, slammed the door behind us, heaved a sigh of relief.
about that time the neighbour started screaming blue murder... poor cow was out in her garden, sunbathing with her earphones in.

the swarm was i kid you not, filling the entire back garden and the neighbours. when we finally got the pest people in the nest was one of the biggest they'd seen, a 4FOOT across underground chasm with a couple of ante-chambers, ours was the latest in a series of entrances to open up.

i kid you not, even for normal non-wasp allergic types, there was EASILY enough wasps to kill us stone dead.
so take note folks
if wasps were a couple inches longer, we would ALL be their bitches.
(Fri 13th Feb 2009, 18:19, More)