» The most childish thing you've done as an adult

Easy as ABC
The other week I took my elderly mother to the garden centre, one of those upmarket ones with a (very good) restaurant and all sorts of non garden related products to buy.

My eye was caught by a shelf of individual letters, each about three inches high with little Winne-the-Pooh characters entwined round them. Just the thing to teach young Tarquin or Nigella how to spell their name. How cute- how twee- how easy to rearrange some of them in a line at the front of the shelf to read

SOAPY TITWANK

I am over fifty years old, on the outside at least!
(Mon 21st Sep 2009, 9:50, More)

» Ouch!

I had an abdominal operation
a couple of years back. The end result of getting pissed and doing wheelies on a folding shopping bike, which promptly folded up mid wheelie!

After having my entrails expertly rearranged by a very nice surgeon man, I was left with a 6 inch wound, closed with a few of those butterfly things, and also by some internal stitches, which terminated in about three inches of pretty blue nylon sticking out of my skin at each end of the scar.

Now I'm a bit of a bugger for DIY stitch removal, in fact I like to remove them myself rather than let anyone else do it. At the end of the allotted 9 day period, and in the privacy of my own bathroom, I gave an experimental tug on the nylon string. It didn't move. I tried again, harder this time.

"Ouch" It still didn't move.

Once more, with a bit more effort

'Bloody hell that smarts"

But still the nylon seemed to be a permanent part of me.

At this stage I wimped out and reported to the local health centre. The nurse, who seemed like a kindly middle aged lady bade me drop my keks and lay on the couch.

"Oh yes, we'll soon have these out" quoth she, producing something that looked like a pair of surgical mole grips and grabbing the end of the suture.

And pulling...HARD

I may just have screamed a bit (rather loudly apparently!!) as the most pain I have ever in my life experienced shot through me, in fact I'm sure my handprints are still embedded in the steel side rails of the couch.

"Ooh, that suture was a bit tight wasn't it" she smiled, holding up a long piece of blue nylon thread for my inspection.

I lay there, pale and sweaty, unable to speak for a moment or two, and literally on the verge of passing out.


Even the nurse looked anxious and I had to stay on the couch for another 5 minutes or so whilst I regained my composure, before staggering back out through the waiting room and scaring all the other patients who had no doubt heard my scream.

Length..about fourteen inches or so.
(Mon 2nd Aug 2010, 9:00, More)

» Redundant technology

Obsolete technology-
My home is a shrine to it! Most of the radio and audio devices are valve powered, and I even have a nice wind up gramaphone and a huge stack of 78's to play on it.

In the shed is a cottage lighting plant, driven by a petrol engine, that came from the factory in 1928 and would be great if you wanted to run your house on 50 volts DC.

Photography, well that would be a 35mm system using real film, none of this digital nonsense.

Timekeeping duties are carried out by a lovely old pendulum driven electric master clock.

If you want to use the landline, the telephone is a large black bakelite device with a shiny chromium plated dial and not a push button in sight.

Not that I think all modern technology is bad, I have a computer, mobile phone, and a flat screen television, etc, but I think it is sad that a lot of this high tech stuff is effectively disposable, either due to being unrepairable should it become faulty, or merely that it has become unfashionable.

Maybe I should just change my name to Ned Ludd and be done with it.
(Thu 4th Nov 2010, 14:22, More)

» School Days

Chemistry lesson
When I was but a young and impressionable Snabblim, our Chemistry teacher was a maniac Yorkshireman, who rejoiced in the moniker of Jack Tat.

On entering the lab one day, we saw a large sheet of perspex erected as a shield across the front of the teachers bench. Behind this was a bunsen burner tripod, and on this was a large tin can with a long piece of magnesium ribbon coming out of it. The whole was stood in a metal tray with about half an inch of sand in the bottom.

After the usual boring preamble, the class gathered that we were about to be shown a demonstration of the thermit reaction (google it for details). This was a VERY DANGEROUS procedure and under no circumstances should be attemped by other than skilled teachers etc etc.

A class of thirty or so boggle eyed 13 year olds watched as Jack applied a match to the magnesium ribbon to set the whole thing off. Except that it didn't. The magnesium wouldn't light. Jack scratched his head for a moment, then lighting a bunsen burner, he used it to heat the ribbon. Success!! It flared with a brilliant white flame and Jack put the bunsen burner down then came round to the 'safe' side of the screen,flipped down his own safety visor and told us to watch. The magnesium ribbon burned down into the tin and then-it spluttered-and went out.

Jack had put some time and effort into setting up his demonstration, and wasn't going to see it wasted. Very gingerly, he re-lit the bunsen burner, and crouching in front of the screen, held the burner round the side of it and directly heated the reaction mixture in the tin. After a few more minutes still nothing had happened. Muttering under his breath he put the bunsen down again. Inspiration struck. He fetched a second bunsen from out of the cupboard. Lighting this one as well, he attempted to reach round each side of the safety screen with them, but not having the armspan of a gibbon,he couldn't. Discarding his safety visor, he leaned over the TOP of the safety screen whilst heating the reaction mixture with the two bunsens.

Fucking Hell!!!! With a blinding flash of light the whole thing erupted in a cloud of smoke and flame. Right into Jacks' face. 'Arrgh my eyes' he yelled, or words to that effect,and stumbled backwards, dropping the bunsen burners in the process. Within a second or two there appeared be some sort of small thermonuclear reaction going on in the classroom (no fume cupboards in those days boys and girls) as the smoke, flame, and sparks increased in intensity. We were all transfixed. Chemistry was FUN!. The volcanic reaction reached a crescendo. Molten iron started to run out of the bottom of the tin can, through which it had melted its way-at some 2500 degrees centigrade. Sadly the sand tray was also totally inadequate to entirely contain the molten metal which, like the fabled China Syndrome, continued to sear its way into the thick wooden top of the bench. After a few minutes, which seemed like hours, the reaction exhausted it's fury, leaving only clouds of smoke and glowing globules of iron, cooling from white through to red and then black.

I don't remember much more about the lesson to be honest, though amazingly apart from a light singeing Jack appeared to be unscathed. He did later admit to increasing the amounts of reagents to about three times that recommended to make sure he got a good display. I don't think this demonstration was ever -erm-demonstrated again. The black, scorched, craters on the bench were still there when I left in 1975, and are no doubt still there to this day.
(Tue 3rd Feb 2009, 9:37, More)

» Self-Inflicted injuries

Bicycle related buffoonery
I was attending a steam rally where there was a large beer tent serving all sorts of lovely ales - which I had been sampling all afternoon.

Being disinclined to walk any further than necessary, I'd borrowed a folding shopping type bike from a friend to get around on. It's small ballon tyres and general wobbly instability meant it was less than ideal for doing wheelies on, but by that stage did I care? I did not, and proceeded, according to onlookers, to perform a series of ever more improbable stunts.

Eventually the inevitable happened and I came back to earth with a crash, my lower abdomen meeting the end of the handlebar with enough force to bend the bar double. The searing pain was enough to sober me up instantly and I dragged my broken body away to die. Well, dear reader, I didn't die but by next morning my balls looked a pair of swollen over ripe plums, and the old chap was a veritable rainbow of green, red, and purple bruising.

It took some weeks for things to return to normal, but a few months later I noticed a lump in the groinal area, which gradually became larger and more painful until I couldn't walk more than a hundred or so yards without having to sit down and recover.

I ended up by being referred to a very nice surgeon who informed me that the ruptured abdominal muscle would need to be repaired and reinforced and if I'd have come to see him a year or so back the operation would have been a lot easier and I wouldn't have had such a long scar afterwards.

Still, I did get eight weeks off work on full pay while I recovered…

TLDR.
Man gets pissed, crashes pushbike, needs surgical attention afterwards to fix rupture.
(Fri 29th Nov 2013, 13:36, More)