» The Police

pulling the cops over
It was about twenty years ago and I was about 25, I was driving down the main street in my home town when these two coppers pulled out of a side road in front of me without looking, I almost crashed trying to avoid them and saw red. I accelerated after them, overtook them in the street and braked hard in front of them. I got out of the car, ran up to them, pulled open the drivers door and called them " a pair of complete tossers" and proceeded to describe in detail how they should grow up get a life and learn to drive.
They never spoke during all of this but just stared at me in amazement (rather ashen of demeanour)
I get back in my car and drive off, by now the adrenaline has worn off and I am thinking oh fuck what have I done. I go home and wait to be arrested but nothing ever happened.

Step forward to two years ago when I was teaching IT to a bunch of evening classers and I told them to type a brief story, Title; " The funniest thing that ever happened to me"
I student writes the whole of the previous episode, it turns out he was one of the two rookie coppers!
He said that he went back to the station and told the other coppers who laughed like drains and then said they would pull me in. His only problem was that he and his partner had been so shocked that they couldn't remember what I even looked like and had not taken my number.
He told me it had put his promotion prospects back about 3 years and the story was still told to every new rookie copper at that station.
When I told him I was the guy who had shouted at them he was completely dumbfounded but give him his due he went to the pub after the lesson and insisted on buying me a pint.
(Sat 24th Sep 2005, 13:16, More)

» School Trips

living off the land
Went on a school trip to the lake district, one of those outward bound places. On one night we had to orienteer to a spot, camp there the night without a tent and in the morning return to a collection point.
We were given a bag of trail mix each and a bottle of water.

We actually dined rather well though with grilled trout and pheasant for supper and birch sap to drink.
I had been poaching since I was seven years old and the land we were walking across was just a big larder to me.
My kudos amongst my mates was increased exponentially as until then I was always thought of as a little swot.
I think the highlight was showing them some badgers that we got within ten feet of when they emerged from their set. I swear it was the first time that any of them had ever seen one in the wild.
(Sun 10th Dec 2006, 23:55, More)

» Weird Rituals

Nearly normal
I am beginning to think that I am seriously autistic as I don't do just one thing but in fact do most of the things already listed here. I do have an excuse however as I am a programmer, a coder if you will and we are supposed to be weird so that's all right then.

My worst trait (or my best) is that I continually multitask by playing a word game in my head that has incredibly complicated rules and depends on finding phrases I hear or see that have the exact balance required of vowels and consonants and can be rearranged to form groups of six letter words that have the 'tinny' consonants and the 'woody' consonants neatly in pairs amongst other more detailed requirements.

At the same time I play a maths based game that requires finding patterns in numbers heard or seen and then running analysis on these numbers in my head and producing mental graphs.
I do both of these games continually whilst carrying out my normal (ha ha! ) life.
I do have an incredibly high IQ but I don't think I am all that clever (I certainly lack any vestige of common sense). I just think my mental games make me very good at IQ tests.
You probably think that I am some sad loser but that is not the case I have a really active social life and loads of fun and friends.
None of whom know about my head games - I have never told anyone (even my closest friends and lovers) about them before.
(Sat 17th Dec 2011, 23:22, More)

» Books


My favourite book of all time is 'Hunger' by Knut Hamsun, closely followed by 'Earthly Powers' by Anthony Burgess and 'Love in the time of cholera' by Gabrial Garcia Marquez.

'Homage to Catalonia' and 'Down and out in Paris and London' by George Orwell, 'Love on the dole' by Walter Greenwood and 'The ragged trousered philanthropist' by Robert Tressell are all wonderful books that immediately spring to mind.
I don't really have a genre or type of book that I like but I do like a book to be well written and I don't mean that in a highbrow sense but in a way that makes them accessible.
A work of fiction should be able, for its duration, to immerse us and allow us to cast aside reality and suspend our disbelief, whilst we can explore concepts we find alien or distasteful without fear of reproach from its pages.

(Just reread that and it does sound like really pompous guff but I am going to leave it because I happen to think it is true.)

BTW I also love the Kindle and mainly because it allows my failing eyesight to read comfortably again - I still cannot part with my 7,000+ books though that clog up my small flat!
(Sun 8th Jan 2012, 1:35, More)