» More Pet Stories

Dibbs
About three years ago Mrs Deskbound and myself decided to get a rescue dog.

As both our families had owned pets, we thought we were more than qualified to look after a furry bundle of joy.

We headed off to Battersea Dogs Home one Saturday morning. It was one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life. Anyway, we ended up taking home Dibbs, a Jack Russell cross.

He was a nervous, little fella and had obviously had a bad start to life. We realised how bad a few days later. He'd never been trained (he was just over a year old). He also had extremely bad separation anxiety. So training him and helping him to cope became a full time job. It meant we put our lives on hold.

Despite this, he was such a gentle and loving little guy and he made us both realise things about ourselves and in the end actually brought us closer together.

We made massive strides in helping him to overcome his anxiety. He was fine on the lead and we could even leave him alone without him barking the house down.

But he's a dog and does what dogs do. About a year after we got him, we were taking him for a walk when he caught the scent of something and bolted. The trouble was he was off the lead, albeit in a fenced off area... But he found a hole in the fence and ran out into the road. We didn't see it, but heard the bang. Time slowed down and we ran to see what had happened. He was lying in the road so i stopped the traffic and picked him up. He was still alive but had suffered massive trauma. Some kind passer by stopped their car and took us to a local vets. He died twenty minutes later in my arms.

I think about him most days. He taught me about what unconditional loves is and how something can be totally dependent on you. It was a tough but amazing year and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
(Thu 31st Jan 2013, 20:22, More)

» Fairgrounds, theme parks, circuses and carnivals

“You’ll be fine, just have a can of coke or something”
We shall return to that infamous line towards the end of this endearing parable. But first, let us bend space-time and take ourselves back to the Baiter Park fair in Poole, the summer1994.

Four intrepid young men, armed with many hard-earned (begged off parents) coins. Ready to throw money at any fairground ride we could find.

This turned out to be quite a few, most of them nauseating and a lot of fun. Six or seven rides later, we make our way to the wall of death. Here, the ride spins you around, pining you to the wall, as the floor drops away. Excellent fun. However, one of our ‘posse’, John, for that was/is his name, was feeling a little green.

It turns out, that in his haste to make the fair, John had snoffled quite a lot of BBQ at his parents in rapid time. Now this is when the immortal line comes into play. There was one last ride to go on. The name escapes me, but the memory of the ride never will.

John had his reservations about how long his stomach could hold out, before my other mate pipes up and says: “You’ll be fine, just have a can of coke or something.”

The requisite famous last words have now been set in stone.

The four of us clamber onto the ride, and we are the only four. The ride is made of four legs. At the end of each appendage is an encased box, with open sides. There are four seats in each box, with two on either side, facing each other.

The ride then turns, the arms undulate up and down and the boxes then begin to rotate. So imagine a broken washing machine, spinning around on a roundabout and you start to get the picture.

At first, things went quite well. There was lots of laughter, screaming and shouting. This all changed when John started to retch…

As I said, this whole ride had the effect of being inside a washing machine. If you add copious amounts of vomit into the mix, I think you start to see the picture.

It turns out that I don’t really like the smell of puked-up half digested meat and peppers. In fact, the smell has never left me since. John coated every one of us in this noxious mixture, which prompted dry retching and vomiting from the rest of us. Screams of joy warped into screams for help.

However, this was something the little pikey operating the ride was not akin to. Instead of stopping the ride, he decided to speed it up. I swear I could see his face light up as he could see the terror in our eyes.

The ride eventually ended. All John could repeat, as if in some sort of chunder-induced trance, was: “I’m sorry, so sorry.” The look of utter shame was enough for us though.

I managed to phone my dad in the end, telling him to bring bin bags and towels. Upon arriving, he pissed himself with laughter for five minutes, then bundled us, pants only, into the back of the car (it’s not what you’re thinking!)
(Thu 9th Jun 2011, 14:43, More)

» Protest!

Head under water
My own purile version of waterboarding myself. In protest at mum not letting me play with my Lego in he hall I locked myself in the bathroom, loudly shouted that I was running water into the sink, before trying to 'drown' myself...

It didn't work. So I put my stuffed toys in a bag and went next door (we lived next to my grandparents), for two hours and had a roast dinner.

I got to play Lego in the end and eat a roast. What a sniveling little shit I must have been.
(Thu 11th Nov 2010, 14:05, More)

» Wanking Disasters Part II

I have two stories
Tale one

Going back all the way to 1994. A fresh-faced me has the house to himself for a couple of hours. This of course is a golden ticket to drop my C&A jeans and grab my pink wand.

I'd discovered my dad's porn collection a few years before, but video was a whole new concept. I'd found the promised land. So, settling down for a nice meet and great with the old chap, I was watching a scene involving Ron Jeremy (no joke) and two other early 80s teens. Great scene, I love it so much I started to rewind the tape so I could time the required strokes to perfection.

However, the VHS player starts to make an odd noise....

PANIC

I tried to stop the rewind. No joy.

FUCK IT

Finally the tape stops rewinding. But not before it had ripped to shreds and dumped half of the tape into the machine itself.

BLIND PANIC

I've got about an hour to get myself out of a deep, wank-free zone.

I ran to the garage, semi-erect cock deflating faster than the Hindenburg. Found a couple
of screwdrivers and opened up the video. It looked like a Tauntauns innards.

I managed to get the tape out and fix the video.

I was still left with the ruined tape though. I tried in vain (I even shed a tear in fright) to fix the tape. I only had about 5 minutes before the parents came back.

Sod it, nothing I could do, so I chucked it back in dad's cupboard and ran for my bedroom.

Cue two weeks of abject fear, before I finally managed to move on.

Many years later I mentioned it to my dad. He told me he never watched the tape as it was broken...

Tale 2 to follow
(Thu 17th Feb 2011, 17:06, More)

» Family Feuds

The old queen
My dad's moniker for his late mother.
 
Firstly a little bit of back story. My Nan was an only child and spoilt rotten (something which really came through as the years went by). She wasn't the cleverest of clogs and was what I like to refer to as a 'lazy fuck'.
 
She married my granddad during WWII and they had one child, my old man. The three of them lived together in an emotional vacuum, preferring to ignore each other for days on end, rather than discussing their grievances.
 
Anyhoo, jumping forward to the early parts of my formative life. It's amazing how many things you don't pick up on as a child, but it was clear that my Nan was only in it for herself. Her favourite saying was, "You've got to be artful."
 
Things really came to my attention when my granddad was taken to hospital, where he later died. At one point while my granddad was clearly on his way out, he says to her that she'll have to help out with the cooking (he did it all), but the old queen says: "What are we going to eat then? Weetabix?"
 
It was after this point that my dad really distanced himself from her. The day after my granddad died, my nan shed a couple of tears, before ransacking his possessions (they slept in separate rooms), taking all of his savings. He'd set aside some money to pay for my driving lessons - I knew this as he died a few days before my 17th birthday and had promised to give it to me. The cash and other valuables 'disappeared'.
 
One of the most memorable and heartbreaking things, was told to me by their next door neighbour a few months after he died. She said that one day granddad had been outside in tears because the old queen wasn't letting up on anything, he said that "I can take it anymore, I don't know what to do." He struggled for breath most of the time and she was working him to the bone. He was a stubborn old chap, so would never say no and had a heart of gold. It makes me sick to think that a man who had survived Dunkirk and D-Day was reduced to tears by some miserly old witch.
 
I could go on, but will end the tale here. The old queen ended up in a home going cuckoo. I went to see her a few times, but she just blanked me. She had grand plans to move in with my parents, which were soon stopped and I think she held this against us.
 
It's pretty sad really. And I wished I could have done something, as my dad never really intervened.
 
I still miss my granddad, he was awesome.
 
Ending on a funny. One day my Nan was trying to waddle past granddad to get to her sofa (not chair). Anyway, she stumbled and fell on top of him. My granddad was infuriated and said... 
 
"Get off me you fucking, fat whale." 
 
It was and still is the funniest thing I have ever been witness to.  
(Wed 18th Nov 2009, 11:58, More)