My story...
I was driving down the road the other day when I saw some guy standing on the corner around some kids, looking really shifty.

I noticed he palmed some massive drugs into a kid’s hand, now I’ve got a long fuse but this was now personal, no one does this in my neck of the woods. I did a handbrake turn in my Accord and drove towards the child only to swerve at the very end and knock the bag of meow meow heroin out of his hand with my spoiler.

The drug dealer was in shock and started screaming at me, obviously not noticing the Honda badge. I now started doing doughnuts in the road with caustic rage. I charged towards him, and pressed the brakes so hard that I front flipped the car, pinning him against the shutters of the nearest newsagents.

I got out of my car but he got out a knife and tried to stab me which I deflected with my Honda keyring, then my 2 years of Taekwondo classes kicked in and did a triple roundhouse kick, catching him sweetly on the head, making all his limbs break.

He was trying to crawl away but I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him towards the Accord and said to him “KISS THE VTEC STICKERS… NOW!” he did whilst crying and pissed all in the gutters.

“Now, get out of my sight!” I said, getting into my car, I was about to burn out when I noticed in the corner of my eye 3 supermodels, all just looking whilst wobbling their fannies at me.

“We saw what you just did, we think you’re so cool and want to look at your penis” so I let them and they all laughed with fright at its masterful size. One tried to hold it and winced instantly. “Oh god, you’re the best man I’ve ever slept with even though I haven’t slept with you yet.” said the 2nd supermodel girl. The 3rd had passed out with lust and done a gush so fierce that she knocked over a bin 20 meters down the street.

They all jumped in the back seats of the HA and we drove off back to my penthouse and we had the sex and played my custom game of dungeons and dragons whilst drinking home brew until the early morning. The End.

Cheers
( Donkey Gums @mattcomedy, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 17:01, 31 replies)

I gave Carcraft a big SLAP!
I was a man on a mission. I bought a car from Carcraft back in 2003 with the Peace of Mind Promise of "if anything goes wrong, our warranty covers it!" How wrong I was!

6000 miles later as required on their guarantee, I took the car for a service. A wrath of hell was uncovered. I found out my new shiny pride and joy was actually an over priced wreck! But no problem! Can get her all fixed up and back on the wrong. The dealer told me not to drive the vehicle due to the turbo leaking oil all over the engine and problems with the breaks. So no problem. Told them to liase with Carcraft get it me fixed and I'd be sorted.

Except Carcraft said nooo! "We only cover sudden mechanical breakdowns" They don't cover stuff that is about to break. "But the turbo is leaking all over the engine" "Yes but its still working, so we dont cover it" "So what am I supposed to do? Carry on driving it, until it explodes and then you'll cover it?" "No, because you know about the problem and that would be driver neglect, so we don't cover that"

And so there we had it! MyCarcraftExperience.co.uk was born. And the blog of my events were put up there. Nothing slanderous, just an account of what was going on in my fight to get my car repaired. Carcraft had the audacity to write to my internet service provider to have the site taken down. They wimped out and pulled the site. So I relaunched the site on a norweigan host. So Carcraft wrote to them, who said "Sod off!" which was funny! The site was doing well and drawing in a lot of hits. Some SEO had it high in the list of a "carcraft" search in google. People were writing to me sharing their experiences which I put up on the site. I also did an Interview with my local BBC about my story who aired it on the day they opened their new Leeds branch.

I then get a phone call from the guy who's just under their top guy saying "Right, I've reviewed your claim and we will cover it. I want to get that car back on the road!" And then after 2 months of having no car, a courtesey car turned up. A month later, my car was repaired at no cost to me!

But of course the site still exists, and 7 years later, I am still getting emails from people asking for my help in sorting out various problems with this company. I've also had emails from people who used to work at Carcraft telling me some great secrets from within. I've also heard about people who were sacked for viewing my site at their work. The best thing though, I still get emails from people thanking me for the site being there. They read about my ordeal and others, and decided not to buy a car from there.

I would love to know for the sake of £2,000 repairs my car needed, how many cars they did not sell thanks to me.

Carcraft, You were sh*t, you tried to get out of covering the warranty on my car. You failed. And I gave you a big SLAP! You deserved it!
(Miggyman, Fri 23 Apr 2010, 13:07, 13 replies)

Postman vs Monkey
I Lived in Japan for a couple of years teaching and was lucky enough to teach in a school that was in the Japanese mountains for two days a week - the scenery was beautiful and the work very easy.

I could often be found sitting in the staff room messing about on the internet or reading - the school seemed to have a philosophy that if you were actually at work they were happy - the longer you were sat there the more happy they were, but they didn't particularly care what you did whilst you were there (one ancient maths teacher did nothing but sit upright at his desk sound asleep - he was the star employee.) Therefore, I was sat reading in the staff room when the postman came in to drop off the mail sporting a rather large bump on his forehead and a rather fetching bruise, carrying an umbrella even though it was August and around 38 outside. Clearly, as sleepy guy wasn't going to do it and everyone else was too polite to ask, I was going to have to enquire, in awful broken Japanese, exactly what was going on...

It transpired that a few days before he had been driving through the next village to drop off a parcel when he turned a corner to see a little monkey sitting in the middle of road. Obviously he wasn't heartless enough to squash the tiny primate, but he was in a bit of a rush, so he beeped his horn hoping the monkey would get the hint. He did not and continued to sit defiantly in the middle of the road like a mini hairy bastard. The postman got out and tried to shoo him away. He didn't move, so the postman picked up a small rock and threw it at the monkey, aiming it not to hit it but close enough to scare him off and it worked. Off went the postman to deliver the parcel...

...around three hours later after finishing the remote rounds he comes back along the same road and finds the evil little monkey is sat in the same spot, looking the opposite way this time down the road, almost like he was waiting for the post van to come round the corner. The postman is not amused but tries tooting again and driving up slowly very close to where the monkey is sat but the stubborn bugger still won't move. Still not wanting to squish the monkey, he gets out of the van to try throwing a rock at it again as it worked last time. He steps out of the van, closes the door and is a few paces away when suddenly a whole gang of monkeys appear from the trees on both sides of the road and start pelting him with stones, twigs and fresh monkey poo. The lump and bruise the result of a well aimed stone, the umbrella to protect against flying shit. He'd driven through the same area that morning and even though there were no monkeys in the road, he was convinced that there were monkeys spying on him through the trees just waiting for him to stop so they could pelt him with projectiles. Evil ninja monkeys...
( hanabanana, Fri 23 Apr 2010, 10:59, 4 replies)

Pigeon of DEATH
A few years ago, I was driving my friend Alex into town in my dad's battered old golf estate. It was high summer, we had the windows down, some Led Zeppelin on the stereo... all was right with the world. Rounding a corner at about 50mph, I spied half a dozen pigeons on the road, trying to eat the tarmac or something. I was in a hurry (we were going to the pub), I was eighteen and Led Zeppelin were playing. I wasn't slowing for a pigeon. I judged they'd all get clear in any case.

Most of them got clear, but one was a fraction too slow. It bounced off the bonnet and clobbered the aerial, breaking it off. The slipstream then ensured that the aerial was sucked in through the passenger window to belt Alex in the side of the head. A fraction of a second later it was followed, beak first, by the now enraged pigeon. Somehow it managed to get in a solid peck or two at Alex's head, before leaving the same way it came in.

I nearly ploughed the car into a ditch, I was laughing so hard. It was only made better at the pub later when one girl leant over and asked "Alex... Why have you got feathers in your hair?"
( MatJ LOOK, Sat 24 Apr 2010, 0:19, 3 replies)

A guy I used to know*
used ms-paint to illustrate driving through moose country:





*Axel, on the off chance you've discovered me posting your work, PM me!
(teff, Fri 23 Apr 2010, 9:21, 3 replies)

My dad..
..always bought cheap cars at auctions but cannily made sure he had full AA membership so he could get home when they inevitably conked out on him. This saved us a couple of times while driving through France or returning from Calais loaded up with too much beer and Blanc de Blanc. I think he actually lost count of the amount of times he was towed or carried back to base in the UK. Definitely got his money's worth.

In the early 2000s he was diagnosed with stomach cancer and was having a dreadful time fighting it. My brother (in Devon) and I (in London) visited him at home in Yorkshire one weekend when he really wasn't very well at all. He suggested it would be a good idea if we took his car (a silver Skoda Favorit if I remember correctly) thinking it would make it easier for us to see him as we both lived so far away. So, when we left I drove the car to London and my brother drove himself from there to Devon. We'd agreed to go back the following weekend.

Sadly, dad's situation worsened towards the end of that week (he was now in hospital) so my brother and I decided we should get back up there as soon as possible. He'd just finished work and said he'd set off soon and would call me on the way from Devon. He'd be in London around midnight.

By 1am I was getting worried that he hadn't shown up. I'd been in telephone contact with my family at the hospital and our dad's condition was grave. By 2am I still hadn't heard from my brother. I was getting pretty frantic - a mixture of desperately wanting to get to the hospital and hoping like hell he hadn't crashed the car in his efforts to get to me.

At 5am, still with no sign of my brother, I had a call from my sister. Dad had died. I really didn't know what to do at that point. At about 6am my brother finally turned up. He'd been so knackered he'd pulled over for a quick nap and woken up several hours later. Anyway, he was here now, I broke the news to him and we decided the best thing would be to set off straight away. Since he'd had some sleep he agreed to drive.

So there we were, driving up north in a crappy Skoda to join our grieving mother and sisters. Two brothers in a complete daze, barely able to speak and wondering what the hell could possibly be awaiting us. At least we had the car. Twenty miles from home there was a loud bang and smoke started pouring out from under the bonnet. We managed to pull into a service station a little way up the road. I think at this point we both thought the same thing at the same time: "What the fuck are we going to do now?"

We popped the bonnet, and even though neither of us were mechanically minded we could tell we were going nowhere. We sat in the car wondering what we could do to get home. Should we abandon it and get a taxi? Not enough money on us, and anyway, we were next to a motorway. Should we hitch? Not a good idea as it was now pouring with rain. Could we swap the knackered car for some bikes? My brother's idea, not mine. In the end, and as it was now late afternoon, we decided to do the one thing we really didn't want to do - call our mother. To her credit, not only did she take the news of us breaking down in such circumstances very calmly indeed, she came up with a brilliant suggestion: "What about the AA?" Why hadn't we thought of that!? Oh, hang on a minute, dad was covered personally, not the car. Damn. It was then our mother had her second brilliant idea of the day. My brother has the same initial as our father. Just call the AA and pretend to be him.

So, after a few minutes spent mustering whatever courage he could, my dear brother called the AA. He confirmed his name and address and membership number. His date of birth proved to be something of a problem though. Somehow, I remembered what it was. "31st May 1947," I whispered to him. "Who was that in the background?" asked the woman on the other end of the phone. "Oh, that's my son," replied my younger brother. After he'd said, "I don't have that information with me," a couple of times he gave the car registration and our location and I realised that this might just work. In fact, someone was to be with us within half an hour. So we waited.

As we waited, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation began to dawn on us. My brother had just impersonated his own recently deceased father in order to get roadside assistance for the broken down car our dad had given us so we could visit him on his death bed. An AA mechanic was to turn up expecting to find a fifty five year old man and his son, but would instead find two (half) brothers who really don't look an awful lot like one another, one supposedly the father despite the fact he's quite obviously a good bit younger than the supposed son who is in fact thirty one years old. If asked to prove he was who he said he was my brother reckoned he could hold his credit card between his finger tips in such a way that his middle initial (C) looked a bit like the L of our father's middle name. It didn't look very convincing. In fact it looked so stupid we both burst into fits of hysterical laughter. I don't think I've ever laughed so much before or since. It was weird. We finally decided we'd come clean with the AA guy when he arrived, though we had serious doubts we could tell him of our plight without laughing, something which would seriously undermine the credibility of our story. He finally showed up two hours later, by which time we'd regained our composure. He put our car on the back of his truck and we finally arrived at our parents' house fourteen hours after our dad had passed away. Despite being in a terrible state, my mother made sure (as always) the AA guy got a bottle of wine for his troubles (probably one they'd helped bring back from Calais) and my brother and I embarked on the worst week of our lives.

Sorry for the length of this but it's the only way I can tell it.
(Haywood Manley, Tue 27 Apr 2010, 23:44, 3 replies)

No funnies I'm afraid,
but I hope this will make life easier for someone sometime.

A few years ago I was driving home down the A5 near Coventry and Rugby. It's a busy road that alternates between dual and single carriageway (it's single carriageway at this point). It's commuter time and it's busy. A massive line of cars, but we're all moving, albeit plodding along at about 50. There's a lorry infront of me and just a line of cars behind. Everyone's just trying to get to work.

All of a sudden there's a sickening crunch/bang. The lorry infront of me swerves violently to the right into a gap in the oncoming traffic, it's rear tyres on the trailer locked, screaming and smoking and I'm now heading straight for a stationary lorry which was infront of the one that swerved. I'm sensible in queues like this so had time to stop.

There's been a crash. I'm already out of my car and running to see if I can help, I'm first aid trained and that's all that's in my mind. The lorry which swerved has now stopped awrkwardly across the road but I'm ignoring that.

I was behind three lorries. The first one had stopped, suddenly. The second hadn't noticed and just drove straight into the back of the first. The third swerved out the way and is blocking oncoming traffic. I'm stood in the middle of the road now, looking at the crash which happened somewhere around 20 seconds ago.

I see the cab, squashed. I see oil and glass. I can smell diesel, the road is covered in it. I see blood. Blood dripping from the cab, out from under the door. The driver in the crushed cab is slumped over the wheel. Blood is pouring from his head and covering him.

I look back to my car and I see the most horrific thing I think I've ever seen. I see just my car. It's still running and the driver's door is open, I literally just jumped out and ran to help. And I see a queue of traffic. That's it. I see a queue of traffic as far back as I can see the road. I see people. Lots of people, all just sitting in their cars and I freeze. There's very little sound. The cars are all stopped and the crash happened probably 40 seconds ago.

I'm the only person who thought to help. I'm now stood in the middle of the road watching a man die and I'm the only one who cares. I'm still frozen. I look back to the injured man and I'm trying to think, trying to do the right thing. All sorts of things are running through my head. I'm looking for hazards, am I going to make myself a victim? I'm trying to figure out what to do, I'm tryng to think. Should I go and get my first aid kit or should I be trying to get him out of the cab? My head is full but I can't think straight.

I'm the only one and all of a sudden the pressure is all on me. And I can't think straight and I don't know what to do.

This time when I look back up the road I see a man running toward me. He was maybe 25 cars back in the queue and he's running to help, running past all the other people who are just annoyed by the delay. The spell breaks and I get my phone out. Dead. I run to the car behind mine. There's a young lady in a suit who winds her window down. I tell her to phone for an ambulance, that there's a man trapped, alive but bleeding badly. She says her phone is out of credit and I reminder her that she can still call 999 and she does.

The man running to help is here now and together we get my first aid kit and go to the truck. As it happens there's very little we can do. The door is crushed shut and we can only reach through the window. We clean up some blood from his face and he starts to come round. He's semi conscious now and breathing heavily and trying to scream. I'll never forget that.

But we're functioning. We get the medics on the phone and we're told the air ambulance is on it's way. I'm on an adrenaline high and shaking but we're doing the right thing and helping. The air ambulance arrives and everything is OK now. They get the guy out the cab. He's fully conscious now and actually hobbles to the helicopter and is taken to hospital. He survives, unlike his truck which is almost unrecognizable.

The police turn up in a bit and we give statements. This takes a little while and then we're on our way. I worked with my family at the time and had called quickly to tell them I'd be late. When I get to work I'm all ready to give this big story of drama and heroics but as soon as I see my mother I break down. The adrenaline has gone and I've got nothing left.

It was a horrible crash but the worst thing was that I was the only one who tried to help. Until the other guy came running from his car right up the queue to help I was the only one who cared. All the pressure was on my shoulders and I froze.

So, how am I hoping this will make someone's life easier? Simple. If you see something where you could help, for fuck's sake help. Even if someone is already there and you don't know first aid or whatever you wouldn't believe the difference it makes knowing you're not the only one and the pressure isn't all on you. I don't know what I would have done if the other guy hadn't come to help.

Sorry for the lack of funnies. I cried a lot writing that because if what could have been. It still haunts me that so many people could just ignore another person like that. No words can describe the sheer emptiness I felt when I realised no-one else cared.

I hope you b3tards are better people than the commuters on the A5 that day. Please just do the right thing and help.

I'll be back in a bit to check for spelling and grammar etc, not feeling up to it at the moment so I apologise for any smelling pistakes.
(robbersdog, Tue 27 Apr 2010, 19:21, 12 replies)

Some kind of superbird???
Disembarking from a train, getting through the ticket barriers, shouldering a backpack and standing round waiting for your girlfriend (who you haven’t seen for three weeks) and her father (who you haven’t met before) is pretty straightfoward.

Unless you have a weeping hard on.

Then it becomes a challenge. For a start even taking the smallest of steps means your peice is rubbing on the inside of your zipper which could either lead to sever friction burns on your purple headed-love-lance or, very possibly, an ejaculation with such percussive force you’d end up falling over backwards as if someone had just shot you in the bollocks with a twelve bore shotgun.

I was twenty. I was horny. And I was visiting my first ever proper bona fide girlfriend on her home turf (someone I had convinced somehow to have full blown sexual intercourse with me on a regular basis without having to pay her afterwards) for the first time. Her name was Nikki and she lived in the depraved, puke-stained Vegas of the North, Blackpool. We’d hooked up towards the end of the last semster at Uni and spent our time alternating between shagging and eating tubes of pringles in bed. Then term ended. She fucked off to Blackpool, I fucked off back to the Midlands dragging my engorged blue balls behind me on a sled.

Three weeks later, comming up to dusk, I find myself waiting in Blackpool train station for my cum recepticle and her dad. And they turn up. And my cock goes even harder as I see Nikki jiggle and bounce toward me.

Moments later Nikki and I are holding hands on the backseat of her dad’s Rover. (It was red, that’s about as technical as I get about cars). It was a warm summer’s evening, the door on myside was wound down. But as the night was setting in it became a little chilly, so I absently pressed the little switch at my side and the window slid effortlessly closed with a satisfying little buzz. I was happy. And to show my happiness I manouvered Nikki’s hand over my crotch and got her to practice changing gears on my stick while her dad, oblivious, talked about footie in the drivers seat.

Nikki’s dad explained he had to pop into Sainsbury’s for some groceries, so he pulled up, unbuckled and said: “Won’t be long. You can come if you want.”

We didn’t ‘want’. We stayed in the car and necked a bit. Nikki smelt good. Her exposed thighs were smooth and tanned and I felt my hand sliding up her firm upper legs, my fingers playing over her plump moist gash through the thin cotton of her knickers. And then ziiiipppp. In one fluid motion I found myself staring at the back of Nikki’s dirty blonde (and she was) head as she bobbed up and down on my meat oboe, trying with all her might to get a fucking tune out of it.

“What about your dad?” I whimpered.

Nikki stopped breifly, smiled up and said: “He won’t be back for ages.” And then she continued her job in hand (and mouth), as I sat in the summer darkness of a Sainsbury’s carpark, in a Rover (a nice red one), and had my cock sucked by a girl who could tie a peice of string into a knot using only her tongue.

Fourty-five seconds later (hell, I hadn’t seen her for three weeks), I felt the sperm in my balls take the express elevator up my flesh fun tower and make a sudden appearence, en masse, at the single slanty exit on the observation level.

Nikki gagged but – always the trooper – clamped down with her lips until I’d stopped jerking and twitching like a body popper with Parkinsons. But Nikki had a strange trait. One that some girls have and others don’t. One that meant that usually, back in our halls, we’d have an empty glass waiting on the bedside cabinet. Nikki was a spitter. She looked up at me, smiling (as well as you can with a mouthful of premium testicle tadpoles) and for one brief moment I though she was going to gulp it down. But instead she leaned over me and spat it out my window and onto the tarmak outside. Then Nikki came up for a kiss (fucking hate it when that happens). And then, having a post blowjob hug, we waited for her old man to reappear.
He came back with a bit of shopping and we made our way leisurly toward home, Nikki and I all cuddled up. Great weather. Young love. I’d just had my tadger gobbled. Serene.

When we arrived at Nikki’s parent’s house the girlfriend and I went inside, Nikki’s dad explained he needed to park the motor in the garage. Nikki and I went in and met her mum. She had tea waiting for us. Perfect. Nikki’s old man made an appearence: “Seagulls! Loads of ‘um round here, unfortunately – always leaving their muck on the car.” He disappeared into the kitchen, came out with a cup of water and a cloth, then went back outside.

It was a great evening – going through old photo’s of Nikki as a nipper, having a slap up meal, then disappearing to the spare room (wasn’t allowed to sleep with Nikki, good God no) for a bit of a cheeky groap before bedtime.

And as I was getting to sleep I realised Nikki’s dad had become somewhat withdrawn through the evening. Initially he was pretty chatty, nice, quite ok with the fact that I was almost certainly fucking his little girl. But that’d changed. And I thought back to the moment that’d changed. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable now, lying in bed, wide awake. It was when he went out to clean the seagull shit off the car. He’d come back, given me an odd look, and pretty much done the mean and moody thing from then on.

And then – with my stomach sinking – it dawned on me and hit me in the balls like a jack hammer.

I recalled - with absolute dread – that I’d wound the window up on my side on the way to the supermarket without Nikki noticing.... ....and I don’t think for one minute Nikki’s dad would actually beleive some kind of super seagull had managed to shit, leaving a long trail of milky, sticky, clammy goodness, on the inside of the rear passenger side window...
( SpankyHanky, Fri 23 Apr 2010, 12:58, 14 replies)

"I'm a small man in some ways, Bart. A small, petty man"
Have you ever trundled around a car-park, spotted that magical final space off in the distance, only to get closer and find - Balls! - It's useless, because a quarter of it is taken up by the enormous 4x4 nob-extension in the adjoining space, which someone appears to have swung into the gap blindfolded? I know I have. What follows is a tale of small, petty revenge, and would probably benefit from hefty editing and a bloody good proofread.

So a few weeks ago, I was visiting a generic public building. As I drove in, I found myself behind an aforementioned behemoth-on-wheels. A massive car which appeared to have at least three storeys and its own postcode. At one point I was able to switch off my engine and let this car's gravitational force pull me along. Anyhow, crap reconditioned yo-mamma jokes aside, this huge car was in front of me. And we both needed a parking space.

He spotted the last two spaces. And, luckily for him, they were together. Did he carefully pull into one space, leaving the other for me? Did he buffalo. He swung into the vague general area of the gap and switched off the engine, taking up one and a half spaces, rendering one space useless to any car whose driver was planning on opening any doors.

I was narked. However, I also needed a space. With the sort of concentration only usually seen on the face of a teenager on Kick Start trying to ride his scrambler across a narrow beam, I immediately shoe-horned myself into this remaining 'space' that he'd left me. As soon as I was in, I realised I couldn't get out without undergoing a squeeze of torture-chamber proportions. But that was OK; Neither could he.

"Sod the rush" I thought. "Let's see what happens next". Veeeery carefully, Dumptruck O'Bastard opened his door. He knew I was still in the car, and so he couldn't fling it open with gay abandon, or even bi-curious abandon. Out squeezed a ginormous blob of a man. Gingerly, he manoeuvred his way between the cars, tiptoeing as much as a man his size could, the look of concentration on his face only usually seen on the face of a teenager on Kick Start trying to buy porn. It was like watching a barefoot man stepping through a minefield liberally sprinkled with turds. The entire agonising operation took over a minute. A minute during which, hopefully, one car-park sociopath realised what he puts the rest of us through every day. Hopefully.

Then another car left so I fucked off and took that space instead.
(costas, Wed 28 Apr 2010, 17:13, 7 replies)

Ahhh
I see that a number of company car related posts have made their way onto QOTW and thought I should add my own. For anyone who reads any of my regular posts will know that I work for the government. Nothing major just an office job with a number of perks through years of service including a company car. While I treat my car with due care and attention I know a couple of people we work with that end up costing our department a shedload on either repairs or vehicle replacements. The main culprit for disregard of property is J, a bloke who I will not be able to name for obvious reasons.

J is one of our field workers and while I have only met him in passing he has written off a large number of company vehicles costing us (And therefore the taxpayer) £££’s.

I have heard the tale of when he rolled one of his cars after a night on the lash. According to witness reports he was seen leaving a club at god knows what time at night and sped off down some country lane at high speed, the next thing we know is his car is found in a heap in the middle of the field and J using the excuse of he thought he saw someone in the road. The other funny thing was that he had the audacity to place the repairs, (Alcoholic) drinks and gambling receipts on the same claim form.

A few times his boss has had to step in , I don’t really know what had happened but all spending on his office credit card was frozen for a while but that was taken off a few days later.

What really REALLY gets on my nerves is that the higher ups ALWAYS let him have a decent motor. While I am stuck to drive in a low spec VW Passat with no extras and would probably get bitchslapped down to a Corsa if I did anything to it, J gets a number of top of the range models with all the gadgets and extras. I remember him having a phase where he used BMW’s but ditched them to go back to the Aston Martins at one point.

As I’m thinking of his wasteful spending I just thank god that half of the slag’s he hooks up with are killed after sleeping with him as we would get a number of claims from them when they realise they caught a number of STD’s from him.

As I said before, sorry I can’t mention his name as this blokes got a license to kill so he would do me away anytime he wanted.

Better get off now the place hates us looking at sites like this while we are at work.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Tue 27 Apr 2010, 9:05, 15 replies)

Salesman Karma
I work for a large company that has an equally large fleet of company and pool cars. For those that have to travel a lot as part of their job (not me), they obviously get their own company car and, especially as we've let people go in the recession and don't want to be seen to be flash with money around customers in a competitive industry, we have very strict lists as to what is allowed as a company car.

The arrogant office twat ignored this list and went and bought with the company money a giant shiny Audi - his pride and joy. Every day he drove it proudly into the staff car park, parking across two parking spaces and demanding the maintenance staff forgo their actual duties to polish and clean the car. The company cars are supposed to be cleaned every two weeks on rotation with a quick wipe over but office twat has the poor guys out there most days using some fancy car shampoo and wax he's bought on the internet using the company credit card. He refuses to give anyone a lift, nearly ran over another employee's foot as 'they didn't move fast enough' and actually told one of the PAs that she couldn't come in the car with him to an awards night (there were a few of us going but the other car was full) as she 'would squash the seat down too much and damage it.' (she was a few pounds overweight but hardly a heifer!)

Therefore, I could only assume it was karma in action when he came into the office a few months ago in a Corsa courtsey car as the Audi was in the garage and would be for quite some time for substantial body repairs. He had gone to visit a customer who was based in Yorkshire in quite a rural area and parked his car up, where it had been discovered by a rather agressive ram. Upon seeing it's reflection in the freshly waxed door panels, the ram had spent a large part of it's afternoon head butting the crap out of the Audi. Happy days!
( hanabanana, Fri 23 Apr 2010, 11:20, Reply)

Cleared for take off...
I'd always imagined I'd be shamed by a wild, sobbing panic, screeching that I'm too young to die and clawing manically at the windows 'til blood ran clear from my fingertips. As it happened, with the corner sliding away to my side and my friend dabbing uselessly at the brakes while turning the wheel left and right in an utterly futile attempt to regain even a modicum of control, I simply sat back and enjoyed the ride.

The roadside bank gave itself gently to our advances and allowed the wheels to run smoothly over its crest, giving us clearance for take off and safe passage towards the small stream that skirted the field. Our flight was brief and uneventful and upon landing I let out a small guff and giggled happily to myself, while the pilot looked pleased with what was a relatively soft return to earth and the front wheels span uselessly above the bank of the stream.

We disembarked and were in the process of pushing the car back towards the road when the next flight trundled along the runway just as we had only moments earlier. Tire noise ceased as the Landrover's wheels hit black ice and I saw the passenger watch the corner slide away from his window; they were cleared for take off and we hadn't yet vacated the runway, leaving us little choice but to run away... my passage took me along the bank, but my pilot had opted only to leap backwards without a thought as to what was behind him.

And so it was, when the passengers of the belatedly aborted flight clambered out of their Landrover, they were greeted by the most unusual scene ever to be found in that dark and quiet country lane: for I was bent double, tears streaming down my cheeks and laughter pouring from my face, while the world's rudest stream splashed profanities and demanded that I stop fucking laughing and just fucking help it.
( Moey, Fri 23 Apr 2010, 10:21, 3 replies)

(roast) the system
I didn’t bother learning to drive till I was 26. I had a Vauxhall Nova for the first year or so after I passed my test until it was pointed out to me that at my age I could probably get something with a bit more poke and not have to sell one of my kidneys to afford the insurance.

So I bought a bright red MK11 Toyota MR2, some say ‘girls car’ some say it’s 'a bit wanky' but as far as I was concerned it was great fun. Decent amount of power, rear wheel drive mid-engined two seater. Cool.

The insurance however was not as hassle free as I had hoped. I called a number of companies and was getting well pissed off after a while. One company took absolutely ages taking all manner of pedantic details only to drop my call after placing me on hold. A complete bloody waste of my time.

So I called them back.

“Hello RipOff BloodyRacket Insurance, Vapid Bint speaking how can I help you?”
“Yeah I’d like a quote please”
“Certainly can you tell me the make and model sir”
“Toyota MR2”
“Engine capacity sir”
“2 litre”
“Is that a two door sir?”
“Erm no, it’s got four”
“Sorry sir our system tells me that is a two door car sir”

(Why they bother asking you these questions when they already have the bloody details in ‘the system’ was one of the things that had been bugging me)

“No, it’s got four doors”
“And it’s definitely a Toyota MR2 sir? Are you sure it’s not a Celica”
“It’s an MR2 it’s got 4 doors. Anyway a Celica is a girl’s car”
“My husband drives a Celica sir”
“Is he a girl?”
“Sorry sir”
“Your husband – is he a girl?”
“Certainly not”
“Well he drives a girl’s car, anyway its definitely got four doors – my door, the other door, the boot door and the glove box door”

Silence…

“…erm we would regard that as a two door car sir”
“Fair enough, so do I get a discount for having less doors?”
“No, I doesn’t work that way. Have you made any modifications to the vehicle sir?”
“Yeah I put new mats in it”
“That’s not really a modification is it sir”
“Yes it is. The other ones were crap, they kept catching on my shoes”
“(sigh) have you made any modifications to the engine, exhaust, wheels or suspension sir?”
“Nope”
“Ok sir so...”
“Hang on, there’s that thing in the middle bit”
“The middle bit sir?”
“Yeah you know between the seats – next to the stick thing that’s not the gears”
“You mean the handbrake sir”
“Whatever”
“Can you describe the modification please sir”
“Well it’s got these lights on it”
“Yes sir…”
“And some dials”
“What’s it called sir?”
“It’s a flux capacitor”
“Can you spell that please?
“Sure – ef el u ex cee ay pee y cee i tee oh ar”
“Sorry sir I’m not getting that on my system is it an in car entertainment device”
“Not really”
“What does it actually do sir?”
“It creates a temporary disruption in the space time continuum by exerting quantum effects on semi classical gravity thus subverting the chronological protection conjecture to permit non linear motion through time”
“Sorry”
“It’s a time machine”
CLICK…..
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 9:39, 4 replies)

The curse of the smelliest car in Scottish journalism
Long before I started my own newspaper (seriously), I worked for a scuzzy Glescae tabloid. For the attendant pestering of the bereaved, wannabe famous and sexually liberated I required a car.

It was a Honda Civic-shaped curse. Nice enough car but it cost me a fortune (the clutch went, the car got nicked, the insurance was crippling). But the worst thing was the smell. For six months it stank like Saddam Hussein was hiding in the glove box - in his current condition. I had to keep the windows open come rain or rain (this was Glasgow...) I would drive past sewage works and things would smell better. Nobody else would get in my lonely chariot of pong.

I hunted high and low for the source of my torment. Then six months after a hot, hot summer, I had cause to lift the spare wheel (located in the boot) and there, lodged underneath it, almost invisible, was the source of my four-wheeled isolation: a packet of Sainsbury's button mushrooms. All solid matter had long ago corrupted away and contained within was a tiny black pool that was the distillation of all human hate, despair and rectal turpitude. It dripped on my hand and smelled like cancer had been impregnated by catarrh while going airtight with a ripe Vieux Boulogne suffering from dysentery.

I briefly considered making a gift of it to my editor but instead just chucked it. I would have got angry at it for ruining my life for half a year but as a tabloid hack I secretly suspected that it was my conscience...
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 14:56, 4 replies)

Accident
My brother was driving back from a training conference along the delightful M25 when - not much of a surprise - the cars in front started to slow and a traffic jam formed. Apparently this was not seen by a young American bint driving a large 4x4 who ploughed into the back of him at high speed causing a large pile up and the closure of the road.

Meanwhile, myself and my mum were waiting in a beer garden for him as it was nice and sunny and we'd all decided to meet up for a pub lunch. My brother's never been particularly talkative on the phone so when I got a call on my mobile from him saying "been held up, be there in about an hour" we were not too stressed.

He finally stumbled into the beer garden two hours later with his face covered in bruises from the airbag and dried blood down his shirt. He was fine luckily but still a little (understandably) shocked as all we could get out of him was:

"They made me go to hospital and the doctor put his finger up my bum"

It took a while to convince him that it was a proper medical test and it wasn't that the male doctor 'really, really liked him.'
( hanabanana, Fri 23 Apr 2010, 13:04, 2 replies)

The Mongol Rally
The object of the Mongol Rally is to get from London (or Barcelona or Milan) to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, in a car with an engine capacity less than your kettle. That’s not just a funny turn of phrase, it’s absolutely true. There are two fundamental rules – you must raise £1000 for charity, and your car engine must be less than 1200cc (although exceptions are made for vehicles of significant comedy value). Gumball Rally? Pah! In this rally, there is no backup, there are no pit crews and there are definitely no supercars. In this age of international air travel and package holidays, even adventure tours are tightly controlled affairs where things rarely go wrong, and your wits and resilience are never really tested. Top sportsmen, seasoned travellers and successful businessmen will tell you that your greatest achievements come when you truly challenge yourself. Therefore, it is obvious that driving thousands of miles in a car spectacularly unsuitable for the job will constitute the greatest achievement of all mankind ever.

So, a bid to actually inject some adventure into this spectacularly boring, conventional and insipid life I lead, I spent a month last summer driving from London to Ulaanbaatar in a Fiat Punto. I booked my place on this rally before even passing my driving test, I was that desperate to do it. On the way, we had many great moments, scary and fun, made friends for life and friends for five minutes, experienced different cultures, people and more fucking bureaucracy than I can possibly describe.

Highlights included:
1) Getting lost for several hours in just about every city we went through. In L'viv in Ukraine we got stopped by some police curious about our car. They gave us directions and were very surprised to see us driving past again ten minutes later.
2) Having a massive party in Klenova castle in the Czech Republic with about 1000 other ralliers.
3) Getting a speeding fine in the Czech mountains (96kph in a 50 zone... whoops) which we still haven't paid.
4) Doing a 22-hour journey from Krakow to Kiev including the wonderful sight of seeing someone face-down in the road, skull open, dead, with a motorbike broken in half, bits and pieces all over the road and his helmet about 50 feet away.
4) The Mamaev statue at Volgograd, and the accompanying Stalingrad Memorial.
5) Cracking our sump on a rock in Kazakhstan. After several hours of trying to fix it in a Kazakh farmyard we gave up. Two of the other guys went to the nearest town to find a towtruck - which they did. They got us on the back. We asked whether we could get in the cab with the drivers. They said no, there's only two seats, so get back in the Punto and put your foot on the brake... after a rather hair-raising journey we got to a garage at about 12:30. The tow guys took all ten of us out for a meal and when we got back to the garage at 3am the car was fixed! Total cost: £100. Try getting that sort of service in Britain.
6) Losing a card game the night before and having to wear chicken suits all day.
7) Finding wild-growing weed all over Kazakhstan (never uploaded these pics though - my grandparents might have seen them!).
8) The Russian border guard being very perturbed by our powdered milk. Hint: Don't take white powder across the border if you can help it. Or look horrified and quickly go "moo, moo!" if you can't.
9) Having our spare tyres and wheels nicked at the Mongolian border.
10) Driving through some of the most beautiful, unspoilt, remote scenery in the world.
11) Dust trails!
12) Our car eventually dying halfway through the Gobi Desert. Its final resting place.

Oh... and having forgotten arguably the two scariest moments...
13) getting caught in a lightning storm in the middle of a field in the Ukraine. We'd set up camp and were watching the pretty forks happening on the horizon miles away, having a beer, blah blah, hmm, the wind's getting up innit? Oh, the lightning's getting nearer... oh FUCK IT'S COMIN' RIGHT FOR US QUICK PACK UP SHIT SHIT CRAPFUCK. We didn't sleep much. I think the closest fork hit the ground about 200 yards away.
14) We stopped in a bar the night after the lightning. Had a few drinks and swapped stories. Planning to sleep in the cars in the car park, and the owner turns up at closing time. We have fun! His friend then turns up. His friend is not as fun. His friend starts being aggressive. His friend makes a phone call and is still being aggressive. The night is not as much fun any more. A large car then turns up and four large Russians get out. We take this as our cue to leave. We pack up even quicker than we did the night before. We drive off, drunk, down pitch-black roads in a country where the drink-drive limit is zero and the prisons are not exactly hospitable. A car overtakes us, swerves and brakes. We fucking panic, swerve round as quickly as possible and drive off again. It overtakes AGAIN, swerves AGAIN and brakes AGAIN. We are now convinced that someone is trying to kill/rob/rape us and we swerve and drive off in an even greater panic, turn all our lights off and try to lose them. We succeed, park the car, and wake up in a rubbish tip.

Length? 7000 miles or thereabouts. There's more details on our team website including a vague route map, and a geotagged map along with hundreds more photos on my Flickr page for anyone who's interested.

PS: If anyone insinuates that I did this because of Jack Osbourne I will murder your spouse, your pets and any pot plants you might have.
(cypherspace is not a toaster, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 18:37, 11 replies)

Oooh, about time
This is close enough for me to be able to tell a PROPER story. One I haven't fabricated in any way. One which goes on for fookin' ages. Wait! Come back! It might be fun anyway...

Last year Ms Foxtrot came up with the idea of hitchhiking to Morocco. Yes, Morocco. No, I don't live in Egypt, I live in Norwich, and she wants to HITCHHIKE from NORWICH to AFRICA. But it was OK, it was for charity, they sent us T-shirts to wear, we had to text them our whereabouts each evening - we would surely be protected from the slightest possibility of rape, death or both, not necessarily in that order!

Obviously we did both survive, there's not much dramatic tension to be milked from a tale when I'm narrating it a year after it began. Norwich to Marrakech took us 8 days including two ferry trips, an overnight train from Tangier, a coach for the final leg from Sevilla to Algericiras after having the shit scared out of us the previous day (details to follow) and 25 lifts from people of various nationalities. These are the highlights.

The morning we departed, I took it upon myself to text Radio 1 to tell them what we'd gotten ourselves into. Chappers and Dave translated my text, live on air, as "Good luck to Darth & Ms Foxtrot, hitchhiking to Morocco - they've made it as far as Norwich! Ha ha fucking ha" (not actually said). An hour later, during our first lift, I texted them again and they were good enough to read out my thank you to our driver, Anna. She looked fucking mortified. I assume her husband thought she was waiting for him in bed, rather than driving home from her toyboy's place.

One very nice French chap insisted on buying us a slice of pizza when he stopped for lunch. He was very enthusiastic about Ms Foxtrot eating faster, and I had to explain, in flawless (ha!) Gallic, that she was a slow eater, and her reluctance had nowt to do with having recently sunk her vegetarian teeth into a small piece of jambon.

After finding ourselves stranded along an autoroute as the night closed in, we pitched our tent in a truck stop near Tours in the hope of hitching as far south as Bordeaux, or maybe even Spain, the next morning. After a fruitless hour a lady approached us and said we could go to Bordeaux with her and her husband in their lorry. But, and this is a hell of a catch, there was no room in the cab so we'd have to ride in the back of the lorry. With their potatoes. Now I know what you're thinking, what kind of idiot would agree to such a proposal?

Well, I would. They offered us coffee and a sandwich and somehow, despite them being Portuguese and not speaking French or English, we managed to have a conversation. I only know the Portuguese for "Oily Cunt" (Cristiano Ronaldo) and thought it was best to steer clear of this, but the nice gentleman managed to infer that due to Ms Foxtrot's blonde hair, when we got to Morocco I'd be able to trade her for as many as four camels.

We passed the next three hours in the back of a locked lorry, swearing not to tell our parents, consoling ourselves with the knowledge that we wouldn't go hungry (honestly, you've never seen so many potatoes) and that as the sides of the lorry were tarpaulin we could always cut our way out. Then the engine stopped, we heard footsteps, the doors were unlocked, and they very pleasantly wished us the best of luck with the rest of our journey.

Spain passed mostly without incident until we got to Toledo. We went two hours with no luck getting a hitch, aiming for Cuidad Real, until Juan pulled over. Juan was going to Sevilla, which is about twice as far in the right direction. This was excellent news. I sat in the front with Juan, despite my complete lack of Spanish. He kept flicking his gaze in my direction. This made me nervous. He said he was travelling from Madrid, where he worked (although he was very vague about the nature of his job) to Sevilla, where he lived. This also made us nervous, it's a hell of a commute. He drove at approximately 3 million kph and treated the white lines in the road as decoration.

By the time we got to the outskirts (read: really rough part) of Sevilla, and he hopped out to "see a friend about something", we were bricking it.

Then he took us to the centre of Sevilla and wished us the best of luck. Turns out he'd been looking at the wing mirror next to me because he didn't have a rear view in his car. And this is the key lessons learned, really; people really can be incredibly kind to complete strangers. It's something we forget all too easily in the modern world, the human capacity for good. 25 different people stopped and picked up two randoms with rucksacks and linguistic difficulties. We saw the Pyrenees from the cab of a lorry, we got to take in Zaragoza, Sevilla and Toledo, all of which are stunningly beautiful, we got fed several times and we got to travel through three different countries for free on the kindness of strangers. Some people even picked us up just to take us a mile or two down the road because where we were waiting was a crap spot for hitching. So next time you think it's a harsh world full of bastards, try hitchhiking to Marrakech. It'll open your eyes, not your anus.

No apologies for length. I could talk about it for days.
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 14:58, 11 replies)

More Drink Driving

Back in the day when drink driving in the countryside was actually accepted (don't start - drink driving is always fucking stupid) a mate of mine, Sandy, had tanked up in the local and then headed off in his landrover home. As he got to the roundabout that leads out of the village, one of the local police cars dropped onto his tail and started to follow him.

"Fuck Fuck Fuck" thought Sandy.

But nothing happened. The police car just kept 10 meters back and kept following. Eventually Sandy turned off onto the track that lead to his farmhouse (he was, after all, a farmer) and the police car kept going, round a bend, and it was out of view. Sandy breathed huge sigh of relief.

After a few more minutes he pulled up into the farmyard and switched the engine off.

"WHOOOOOOO-WHOOOOOO-WHOOOOO-WHOOOOO"

And sitting behind him was the police car with red and blue flashing lights making enough noise to raise the dead. The noise brought out Sandy's father and the police loudspeaker crackled into life.

"Rab? I've made sure the drunken idiot got home safely but if I catch him again he's nicked".

The lights and siren turned off and the police car left. And Sandy was kicked around the farmyard by his extremely irate father..... Which in itself is funny 'cos Sandy weighed in at about 17 stone of solid muscle and his dad could only tip the scales at about 8 stone and only then if he was wringing wet....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 14:06, 1 reply)

The time I was almost carjacked
Many moons ago, a 17 year old Smurf was out for a drive in his parents battered old Toyota Corolla.

Driving along North Station Road in Colchester, I was coming up level to what was at the time, the Midland Bank. As I drew nearer 4 men in balaclavas and brandishing shotguns came pelting out the bank towards the road. I did what any professional coward would do, I slid down as low as I could in the seat and accelerated like buggery, whilst imagining being carjacked for an escape vehicle or being shot.

It wasn't until I got further up the road and dared to look in my rear view mirror that I saw the camera crew on the other side of the road filming.

It was the Crimewatch re-enactment of a bank robbery that had happened a week or so before.

And I made it on to tv. From the cameras point of view, as the blokes come running out of the bank they are briefly obscured as an apparently driverless Toyota Corolla accelerates from stage left to stage right.
(Big Smurf Brush me daddy-O, Tue 27 Apr 2010, 7:06, 2 replies)

Foiled again...
Back when I still possessed a modicum of self-esteem and lung capacity, I used to partake in that most pretentious of all sports, fencing. As you might expect, the fencing club was stuffed to the very gills with lawyers, architects, doctors, anyone who’d been to public school and me, who in this context probably qualified as the token bit of rough (*).

Consequently, I lived on the south side of the city, whereas the club was based in a private school way over to the more salubrious north. And it was a hell of a walk home. One evening, a terribly nice chap from the club who I’d been enjoying a mild flirtation with (which translated from Rakky-speak basically means I’d managed to hold a conversation without making a total arse of myself) offered me a lift back. I politely accepted and walked out to where his Lotus was parked. “Ooooh,” I thought, “very exciting, not only do I get a lift, but I get a lift in a right nice car.”

Now, as those of you who have had the pleasure of my company will attest, I’m not a small girl. I’m not a fatty, just tall and heartily constructed. If you were being polite, I guess you’d say statuesque. If you were being a cunt, you’d probably describe me as a big unit. The Lotus, whilst a thing of beauty, is also rather low slung and so I struggled somewhat to lower myself into the passenger seat whilst still retaining some dignity.

I turned to my knight in shining faux leather and shot him what I perceived to be a coquettish grin as I leant over to pull the door shut.

At which point my ears were assaulted by the sound of grinding metal on tarmac. The low nature of the car, combined with my bodyweight and the fact we were parked on a slight hill had come together to mean that the passenger door was now in contact with the floor and I’d managed to scrape a massive chunk off it as I pulled it closed.
With all thoughts of a date fast retreating, I apologised to my now furious chauffeur and spent the next two or so minutes trying to balance getting into the car without putting too much weight on the passenger side so that the door could close properly.

We drove home in silence. He couldn’t have left quicker if I asked him to drop me off in Soweto. Unsurprisingly he never asked me out, nor offered me a lift again. The last time I saw him he was dating a tiny little slip of a girl who presumably can get into cars without breaking them.

(*) I’m about as middle class as you get, I mean, I have two different types of hummus in my fridge.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 11:16, 10 replies)

Trying to kill my family
Both my parents quite like actual driving. So though we'd go somewhere nice for Easter holidays like Spain or Italy (avoiding heat), for summer holidays we'd generally stick to Britain or France, and go to somewhere like Cornwall. Naturally this involved a fair bit of driving, and once you got there lots of meandering slowly around country roads. This bored me to tears naturally. I'd read for hours and hours and we'd still not be there. One time the boredom got too much.

The car was driving slowly, the weather was absolutely beautiful, and soon the car was missing one child. I had climbed out the window and onto the roof of the car using the rack on the top, and was lying spreadeagled holding onto it. It was warm and fun, but eventually (a few minutes) I got bored and that's when the panic set in. I was holding on with both hands to the raised rack and I didn't dare let go to try and get back in. Like climbing a tree it was much easier to get up than it was to get down. Suddenly the car seemed faster, and I was entertaining horrifying thoughts that maybe I'd never get back inside. A cloud covered the sun, it was suddenly cold, there was wind and I was stuck on a roof. So the obvious solution occured to me. I inched my body forward, and gripping on extra tight, moved one hand and dangled it in front of the windscreen. My father says it almost gave him a heartattack, and it was lucky we were travelling so slowly or we'd have crashed.

So there's the story of how I almost killed my family.
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Wed 28 Apr 2010, 14:22, 2 replies)

TWAT
In the late 90s I worked for a web design company where a few of the guys had pretty swanky motors (I had a 1.0 Micra with gingham cheesecloth seats, pah).

Anyway, one of the guys was a nice lad but had a real show-off car, a bright yellow Lotus Elan (one of the new turbo models). In a genius move one Friday lunchtime, someone in the studio decided to get a piece of luminous pink card the size of a numberplate and print the word "TWAT" on it in huge block letters, and then taped it over the front numberplate.

Naturally when your car's in a car park you don't often check the front of it, so he had no reason to suspect a thing when he drove off that summers' evening with the top down and coolest shades on - apart from the whole office gleefully waving from the windows.

"YOU BASTARDS" was his simple utterance when he got into work on Monday. Apparently he had only noticed the sign that morning, and realized it explained all the laughing and pointing of people throughout the weekend, which he assumed was down to them appreciating his oh-so-cool automobile.
(zootius, Sun 25 Apr 2010, 1:30, 1 reply)

Ok, so not quite a car but...
With my trade within our Majesties Armed Forces initially as a tank driver I've cocked things up a few times. Mostly in Iraq.

I once ran a dead sheep over out of boredom. What I had forgotten was that I had to sleep next to that wagon for the next 2 weeks. My god. Rotting sheep is not a nice smell to wake up to. Especially when it's so humid.

My First Road Move:
So I'm not acclimatized as well as maybe I should have been. It was mid-summer in the desert and I was about to embark on the most awful day of my life.
We awoke before the sun rose after a night of stagging on (2 hours on, 4 off from about 5pm) and begin to de-cam. Nets packed up, weapons stowed, kit put away and provisions loaded. Ate breakfast from my rations and would be getting fresh pack around lunchtime once we'd met up with the rest of the battalion. Sausage and beans. Nice!

Time to set off.
Everyone rolled around in to a convoy formation, engines growling, dust trails everywhere. Off we went.
At first it was quite exciting. It was my first time out of camp and here I am in the middle of Iraq driving my tank about, loaded rifle, underslung grenade launcher. The works.
Now as I mentioned before, it was mid-summer. We're talking serious heat. What didn't help was the fact that the wall to the right of the drivers cab is about 1cm thick and behind that, at head height is in fact a turbo. I'm sure the more mechanically minded ones of you will know that they get extremely hot.
So I've been driving now for about 10 minutes and already I've drank a large bottle of water and my 2nd one was warm enough to make tea. The CVR(t) Scimitar cabs are like little ovens.
"OK, OK...I'll be fine. Only got to push a few hours out and I can rest a little"

A few hours past.
A few more hours past.
We turned around. We turned around some more.
We had a short break.
Well, it wasn't actually a short break. It was more of a 'sat here with the engine ticking over while someone figures out where the hell we're actually going and where we are in relation to this mystical place'.
I managed to lift myself out of the cab (which even on the best of days is not an easy task when wearing Osprey bodyarmour and have radios/pouches all over the place). As I clambered on to the decks, gasping for cooler air I went very lightheaded and jumped/fell off the side of the wagon. I felt so drained. I climbed back up ready to set off again doing a mixture of laughing and crying.
About 6 hours later; all crews water reserves empty after drinking warm/pouring over self and it's dark.
My commander Dave kept falling asleep up top so it was just me and my gunner having a chat on the intercom. Things went quiet. Things then suddenly got very bumpy.
"WAKE UP! WAKE UP!"
I look over to see the convoy about 130m away to my left and us then realise I'm foot to the floor going cross country somewhere else.
Yeah, we'd all fallen asleep and were in a runaway tank.
Quite a scary moment as I slammed on the anchors then slowly crawled back to my place in the convoy.
We got away with it though as it happened a lot that night. 5 Land Rovers drove in to the back of each other that night due to people falling asleep.

This was by far the hardest and most grueling tour I've done. 4 weeks living in the desert off the wagons, 3 days back at Basrah with everyone else (pizza hut, subway, showers, aircon...electricity) then back out again. Long range desert patrols for the first time since the original SAS did them. I think I'd rather it be left to them in future.

EDIT: Oh yeah, we eventually found them and arrived around 3am. Up again at 6.
( Terry_Tibbs Coarse and violent nudity. Occasional language, Fri 23 Apr 2010, 13:26, 1 reply)

DIY car maintainance
I was 17, just passed my test. The folks had just bought a new(ish) car, and as the garage had offered them peanuts for the old motor, they gave it to me.

Trouble was, the brakes squealed a bit. This was irritating, so using my extensive knowledge of engineering related matters and the infallibility of the youthful mind, I figured squeaking car parts required oil. So I oiled the brakes. Specifically the bit that was squeaking, the bit between the brake disc and the brake pads. The bit where the pads had worn away to bare metal. The bit that requires friction, not copious amounts of lubrication, to work effectively.

I shot through the first junction I came through like a stabbed Henri Paul.
(Chimpmonkey has nothing better to do, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 16:17, 2 replies)

Mentalist
One day, the girlfriends brother (Dave) - fresh from a divorce and a raging argument about child care - is driving home and truth be told is not paying as much attention as he should. He accidentally pulls out in-front of somebody and they have to put the brakes on, not slam their brakes on mind, they just had to slow down a bit.

The driver behind then blares the horn at him and, looking through the rear view mirror, Dave can see him gesticulating in an animated fashion. The brother-in-law, not in the best state of mind, flips him the bird and drives on. The guy in the other car is now REALLY pissed off and is telling him to pull over for, what can best be described as, fisticuffs; Dave is now shitting himself. He of course isn't going to pull over, he's not a big guy and isn't winning any fights and is conceded to the fact that his day just can't get any worse...

There's a small queue of traffic at the junction in-front of him. Both cars come to a halt and the guy in the car behind is getting out and he is MASSIVE. He's striding over to Dave's car and Dave has nowhere to go except, in a moment of genius, left-field; Dave starts slapping himself repeatedly on both sides of his completely bald head, screaming "I'LL DO IT AGAIN! AHHH! I'LL DO IT AGAIN!" and rocking backwards and forwards. The guy's face was an absolute picture, i've never seen a man go from insane with rage to "fuck this! i'm outta here!" in an instant like it before or since and I don't think I ever will. He ran (actually RAN) back to his car, rounded Dave's car (the junction in-front of which is now clear) and sped off.

B@
(diddums100, Tue 27 Apr 2010, 12:40, Reply)

Carpet woes
I was following a van up a hill near Derby once and a roll of carpet fell off the back, unrolling to almost perfectly carpet both lanes of the road. A coffee table would have set it off nicely.
(kidcamel is due to call your mum at, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 15:53, 2 replies)

If you witness a crash on the motorway but are not involved,
Stop at the next orange emergency phone and report it. Everyone calls it in from their mobiles, but hardly anybody knows EXACTLY where on the motorway they are. The orange phone will pinpoint you to within 1,000 metres, which allows the operator to send the police/wombles more quickly. Even if it's a damage-only crash, the quicker the authorities can clear it up the less time there is for numpties to wander around getting run over in the aftermath.
(WillI'mNot logs in twice a year, every year, Tue 27 Apr 2010, 22:35, Reply)

Finger Trap!
Early 90s, hot summer day in my ancient VW Beetle so I've got the window down, arm out the side, radio on, I'm 18 years old, on my own, all is good with the world.

Get to the M1 so speed up onto the slip road and onto the motorway. Eventually get up to a heady 60mph... oooh it's quite windy now, better crank up the window.

Oh, the airflow is pushing the window out so it won't fit back up into the door properly. So - pull the top of the window in with the fingers of my right hand - the 'trick' being to let go just as the window goes up into the groove.

Oh, the trick isn't working with one hand - I need to use both hands to pull both top corners of the window in. But how to crank the window up when both hands are fully employed? I know, jiggle the window winder with my knee.

Oh, I have now trapped the fingers of both hands in the window due to over-exuberant knee jiggling. Imagine the looks on the faces of overtaking cars as they notice that I have trapped BOTH HANDS in my window AND AM NOW UNABLE TO STEER AT 60MPH ON THE M1. Aaaaaargh!

Dear Reader, it was brown trousers time, and was only remedied by heart-stopping reverse knee jigglage, which probably took a few seconds but at the time seemed to last an eternity of heavy-duty sweating and swearing.

All my cars have had electric windows since then :)
(zootius, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 16:48, 4 replies)

The Black Nads of Purgatory.
This could be the start of a common theme. As I’ve said before my brother is a cunt. But he is also a really stupid cunt. He rarely thinks things through and this is one of those tales.

Not so long ago I became an uncle for the fourth time, Four of the little snot-goblins and all belonging to Bruv. Luckily his wife is a bit more sensible than him and figured out what was causing it, so off he goes for the old two bricks and an aspirin (NHS job). Fortunately for him the surgeon didn’t have my sense of humour and he got a couple of needles in his nutsack, apparently it REALLY HURT. Good I thought, makes up for the time you covered me in cowshit. So, minor surgery over he goes to the car park and gets ready to go home. Yup. Gets ready. Puts on leathers. Puts on helmet. Not only did he have a helmet he was one. He’d gone to the surgery on his motorbike. A homeward journey of 48 miles faced him.

Swallowing the couple of paracetamol the nurse had given him, he set off, complete with sinking guts and a rising nausea. Now other than being a wanker and a cunt, he is actually pretty good on a motorbike. He realised that the pain wasn’t too bad so dropped a cog and put some speed on. He was doing about 85 or 90 when he heard the siren and spotted the lights. Pulling over he prepared for the worst. The police biker who had pulled him took his gloves off and walked over, getting his notepad (or whatever it is they use) out on the way.
“Well, Foggy, in a hurry?” Oh no, he’d gotten a sarky bastard. By this time the local and the paracetamol were both wearing off and things were getting a bit achey. So, squirming like a selotaped hamster, he explained things while wincing and constantly adjusting his nads. At this point the God of the Nutless smiled on him. “It’s alright son,” said the copper “I remember what it’s like. Follow me and we’ll have you home in a jiffy.”

So he was escorted with blues and twos all the way to his front door. Unfortunately the ride home had taken it’s toll and he had bollocks like black grapefruit for a fortnight.

My brother, the stupid, lucky cunt.
(Donkey Hotay Tilting At Windmills Since, Sun 25 Apr 2010, 19:50, 2 replies)

Traffic Police
I was working at a small software company on a project for Bedfordshire Traffic Police. The aim was to install a system in their storeroom so that they could keep track of their equipment. The officers would have to log in and scan the items that they were taking out or returning. There were a couple of forms that would be automatically printed out to be filled in by the officer if he returned a breathalyser or mace spray in a "used" state.

I had recreated these forms from the samples I had been given but I didn't have a logo image to use so as a temporary measure and to get the spacing right I used two small images on the forms, the Rainbow characters, one form had a George logo and the other Zippy. I requested a copy of their logo several times from my contact at BTP but it was not forthcoming.

As the project neared completion, a date was agreed when I would install the system in their storeroom. I made a few more requests for a BTP logo to put on the forms but by the Friday afternoon before the Monday morning installation, I still hadn't received one so George and Zippy remained. "Fuck 'em" I thought and went home.

During the following week I got the system up and running and showed the officers how to use it. They loved the Rainbow logos, everyone who saw them had a good laugh about it. I explained that it was just a temporary thing until I replaced them with the BTP logo. By the end of the week, as the system was up and running without problems and the officers knew how to use it, they were told by their boss to start using it for real.

Several weeks passed before I was finally emailed a BTP logo and could patch the system with the updated form designs. That's several weeks of forms being filled in each time someone was breathalised or had to be restrained with mace spray that featured a small picture of a Rainbow character. I'd love to know if any of these documents ended up in a court room and what on earth the prosecution and the defence made of them.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Sun 25 Apr 2010, 11:01, 1 reply)