» What was I thinking?

Bad day
Many moons ago I was happily working in the stockroom of a shop when I reached a bit too far whilst stacking some boxes on high shelves. During my frantic descent I somehow managed to catch my wedding ring on something hooky, which left me hanging mid-air for a second before I was free-falling again and the bloke who should have been holding the ladder broke my fall. My ring had cut right into the soft tissue at the bottom of my finger, much blood ensued. Being a stoic type at the time I wrapped it up with a cleaning cloth and shortly afterwards headed home. In retrospect a trip to A&E might have been a bit more prudent.

On the way back my ancient Audi's exhaust chucked the latest 'temporary' (8 months) patch on its exhast and I spluttered the last few miles back to Riffjedibaby Villas. One of the very few redeeming features of this former residence was a garage in the back garden with an inspection pit.

After cleaning the finger up a bit and thinking "I should have taken that ring off whilst I had the chance" because the bottom of my finger was starting to swell, I bandaged it up again and put the car in the garage to start working on my latest gun gum/chicken wire/coke can repair.

Half an hour later my latest creation seemed to be holding up but the finger was now swollen and angry and starting to indicate through the medium of acute pain that I should do something fairly quickly to relieve the swelling.

Again, the prudent move would have been A&E but (due to another totally unrelated finger getting trapped in something daft experience) I knew that the fire brigade would inevitably be called to cut the ring off with a grotesque can-opener type device and I couldn't be doing with all the fuss.

So I fetched a hacksaw and secured as much of the ring in a bench vice as I could and started to carefully saw it off.

The ring I mean, not the finger.

Incredibly this did just the trick, not too much self inflicted additional damage and an immense feeling of relief when circulation was restored.

In a giddy whisky and analgesic fuelled mood I stepped back from the bench to admire my home surgery success, straight into the open inspection pit.

As I lay in the oily gunk of the pit marvelling at how much skin I'd scraped off on my second descent of the day, I realised what the inexplicable decision was that brought me here.




Marriage.



Length? Almost 20 years. Depth, about 5 foot.
(Wed 29th Sep 2010, 22:53, More)

» Bodge Jobs

Sorry
To the person who bought my very old Audi 80, the bolts (which I trust are still) holding your automatic gearbox together aren't exactly the manufacturer's original parts. They are scattered somewhere on the M6, the bolts I used to bodge it were from the concrete panels attached to the pillars in my old garage.

Sorry

To the person who bought my old house off me, I believe some bastard stole the bolts holding your garage together and it fell down just after contracts were exchanged, what a total bummer. You don't drive an old Audi 80 auto by any chance?

Length? Almost exactly the right size.
(Sun 13th Mar 2011, 21:13, More)

» Complaining

Photography
After a branch of Sturdy Foot Attire the Chemist mucked up processing my pre digital age disposable camera holiday snaps I asked to see the Manager.

The last 3 photos were just after my hol when I took a few pics of a violent road rage incident in a big traffic jam (bloke got punched in the face through his closed window for starters,then it got really violent). There were loads of witnesses to this, and when I told the constable plod that I had some photographic evidence he was delighted but suggested I get it processed and drop the pics into the local nick as he doubted I'd ever see the holiday snaps again if he took them.

Nowadays you teenagers would just point your phone at them and make a jaypeg to upload on a moving picture station or something.

The manager went a kind of pastel green colour when I told her that as I'd told their processor assistant that the film wasn't finished so they neededed to take a bit of extra care when sticking it in their machine (and had gone on to make the photo lady write this all down on the huge envelope) that I would humbly suggest she gets onto her firm's lawyers to assess their position on destroying police evidence and might also like to consider awarding me some compensation for the loss of my memories (I'd been VERY drunk the las few days of my hols and was relying on them pics to piece it all together).

I was really seething but said all this very slowly and quietly.

20 mins later the Manager came back, read a carefully and beautifully scripted apology on behalf of the firm then proceeded to offer to get their legal bods to write to the police explaining why they weren't getting the pics and then said "erm, take anything you like from our store as a sign of goodwill".

So I went and picked up a £250 "Spa Experience" with a free bathrobe, made sure I got a receipt then went straight to another branch and got a cash refund.



Length? 18 months and I hope he got bum-raped on a regular basis.
(Wed 8th Sep 2010, 21:47, More)

» Tactless

Almost nobody died in this one
Mrs Riffjedibaby.

Coming up to a pedestrian crossing near where we used to live, she pressed the button, traffic lights went red straight away, the looks we got from the firemen speeding through with their flashy lights & blary sirens were just ones of sheer utter contempt.

Our second-youngest is very clever except whe it comes to ring-pull tins. His efforts have earned him the strictly family-only nickname of 'spastic-boy' (after a particularly gruelling tin-opening episode whilst Ian Dury's Spasticus Autisticus was playing in the kitchen).

Whilst he was trying to get a tin of sweets open in a supermarket carpark, on a hot day this summer, with all the windows open in the car, as we were passing the bit of the supermarket carpark where blue-badge holders have reserved places, at the very moment that the boy in the wheelchair was getting his rig onto the ramp at the back of his adapted vehicle...

Then there was the local garage, we used to go for petrol regularly, a couple of really friendly Asian lads worked there, one day Mrs Riffjedibaby and me were in there & she wanted to buy some tobacco. She asked for a small pouch of the stuff, they tried to tell her it was cheaper to buy a special offer with two smaller packets, which she wasn't having and as we left there for the last time ever, she clearly stated in quite a loud voice "I fucking hate those little pakis". She still claims she meant to say 'packets'.

Same pedestrian crossing, as she's reminiscing with someone about the fire-engine incident, she presess the button, the lights go red, this time it's a funeral cortege creeping towards the same crossing then it actually pulled to a stop on the otherwise empty road. The shitty looks we got from the bereaved relatives and undertakers made the firemen look like they were madly laughing with gay abandon.

If I ever had any doubt about marrying her then the above four examples reassure me that she's the one for me.
(Thu 10th Nov 2011, 0:09, More)

» Rubbish Towns

St Austell, Cornwall
Specifically the Travelodge, home of the national dried spunk collection. Room 112.

Seaforth, when the Germans bombed the docks in WW2 their cruellest strategy was avoiding wasting valuable munitions on this shithole.

Clacton-on-Sea, the standard by which all other shitholes are judged against.
(Mon 2nd Nov 2009, 22:40, More)