The day after I was wed, about a month and a half ago
We were driving out of a small Australian town - Hawks Nest, NSW - at lunchtime on Sunday. We were approaching a T junction at about 40-50mph and a small car was sat waiting there. Then it pulled out a bit. I thought "That'll be a squeeze". Then he pulled out some more and covered the whole of my side of the road.

We swerved. We missed him. It was very, very close. He pulled out into the road, turning right, and then stopped his car. I went out to speak to him. He said "I'm very sorry - I am German".

We shook hands, he drove off. I don't consider being German an excuse for not looking where you're going, but they do drive on the wrong side of the road over there. Before he left, he also asked if my kids were ok. My best man and his wife, who were in the back of the car, thought that was pretty funny.
(sabre-tooth monkey, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 16:28, Reply)

say no more....
www.youtube.com/user/mrmat2007#p/u/6/A3XOU7UW5zU
(Kip, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 16:22, 3 replies)

Egyptain Gooner Near-Death Experience
Ah, this story is all-too fresh in my mind.

Not two weeks ago, I embarked on what I thought would be the greatest holiday of my life. Since seeing King Tut’s tomb when I was but a wee child, I’ve always wanted to visit The Valley of the Kings in Luxor. Now that I am a big bad adult with extra cash, I booked the holiday.

I arrived in Luxor with a bottle of duty-free rum which wanted nothing more than to be emancipated into my bloodstream. What with me being so extraordinarily excited, I downed a fair portion of the bottle while dancing in my pants and found myself in a bit of an alcoholic stupor. Wishing to wash a flight’s worth of recycled sneezes and farts off me, I clambered into the shower. Carrying on my pant-dancing, I did a bit of a twirl like Heidi on her mountaintop, slipped, and smashed my face against the edge of the bath.

As happens in such scenarios, bits of my face fell out and I bled. A lot. I stumbled downstairs – an ambulatory mixture of blood, rum and tears – and requested that somebody send a doctor. The doctor arrived in a taxi cab to whisk me off to an emergency dentist whose positives included sanitised equipment and anaesthesia – at an extra cost, mind.

The cab didn’t have seatbelts or safety equipment. It was, however, mostly gilded on the inside with the added flair of tassels, stuffed camels, and a tattered Aresenal flag. “Mfffth phlat, mffff,” I said to the cabbie, and we were off; me clinging to the seat in front of me, screaming through busy city streets at speeds approaching 160km per hour, which is somewhere approaching the speed of sound. Cars happily swerved past us going the wrong way on a dual carriageway. We avoided certain death by only the cushion of single molecules. We ran red lights, we lifted off at speed bumps, sparks jumped when the bumper met pavement. If you’ve ever been to a country where traffic laws don’t exist (“Why are the curbs so high?” “So the drivers can’t drive on the pavements.”), you’d understand the abject terror and why I was worried about adding a bit more mess to the one I was already in.

Then, at a stop point, somebody waved down the cab. A man in uniform approached to speak to me. “Something in Arabic,” he said. “Mfffffth phlat, mfffff,” I replied. With that, the door opened and a military man with a machine gun sat down next to me.

So now I’m in the back of a gleaming golden Gooner cab, bleeding from the face, holding a couple of my teeth in my hand, with a machine gun resting on my lap. Was I supposed to make small talk? “How many rounds a minute?” (Actually, translated to Toothless is, “Phhhhhltttt.”)

We reached the dentist intact. “Phhhlart,” I said to the cabbie. “Mfffflt,” I said to the man with the machine gun. “Ffftannn phffft,” I said to my colon who, with wonderment, managed to keep the terror inside of me where it so rightly belonged.

I did get to see Luxor in the end. I don’t remember much of it, as I was high on days’ worth of emergency dental surgery and really incredible pain killers. At least this story lives on.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 16:22, 2 replies)

Thieving Fuzz!
I had a little Mk 1 Nissan Micra, twas my pride and joy and all I could afford. It even had a CD player so I could play my bangin' choons that I kept in the glovebox.

One evening me and the gf came back to the car to find the passenger window smashed, CD player gone, CDs gone, my jacket gone etc. Not only this but the bloody thing wouldn't start so my gfs dad had to come and pick us up. I got a garage to pick the car up the next morning to figure out what was up with it. I also called the police to report the theft.

I didn't want to claim on my insurance, which had a massive excess on it anyway, so I had to spend about 300 quid replacing all the stuff that was nicked. I also had to pay the garage 20 quid for diagnosing that the distributor cap had come off - weird.....

Anyway... 2 months later I got a call out of the blue from the fuzz, saying "Do you want to come and pick up all your stuff?". They had the CD player, CDs, jacket, everything. I'm like "Wow you recovered all my stolen kit!" and the lady said "Um no, the sheet says the officer came across a car with a smashed window and took the precaution of removing all items from the car, and disabling the engine to prevent theft".

"BUT NOBODY TOLD ME THAT WHEN I REPORTED IT!!!!!"

"Oooh sorry about that".

Yes that's right, the police still owe me 320 quid.
(zootius, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 16:00, 2 replies)

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)

My dad decided early on in life that he wanted a Riley.
He saved from about the age of 11 to get one, and in his mid-20s finally got it. He looks well cool in the photo as he leans on the bonnet, smoking his pipe.

After a week of playing, he thought he'd better visit his mum and take her out for a spin in it, being the dutiful son.

He rolled it onto the roof.

As he hung there from the seatbelt, all he could think was "My Riley. I've rolled my Riley. My Riley, that I saved for 15 years to buy, is a write off. My Riley, my Riley ... "

He heard a noise next to him, and thought, "My mother. She's moving. She must be OK. My Riley. My bloody Riley that I'd saved 15 years to buy - my Riley ... "
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 15:52, Reply)

Christmas Eve, some time in the mid-90s.
We'd done the Santa run, it was late, we were full of cups of tea and festive chocolate biscuits, and my parents couldn't be arsed to cook, so we stopped at the chippy for tea. My dad parked round the corner from it and went in for five bags of chips and some mushy peas.
None of us left in the car realised he'd left the lights on, the queue was pretty long in there, and by the time he got back to the car, the battery was flat and it wouldn't start.
Oh.
Fortunately we only lived a few streets away, so we walked home, ate the chips and rang an uncle to come round with some jump leads. He did, Dad got the car home and the incident went down as a minor Christmas blip.

Christmas Eve is pretty routine in our family.
We're on our way back from my nana's, Mam suggests we have chips again, we all make jokes about last year, park in the same street and Dad goes round to the chippy.
Usual long wait, Dad gets back, we fight over who gets to hold the chips...
"You're JOKING..."
You guessed it, once again the car wouldn't start.
We rang a different uncle to get it started this time.

It well and truly cemented chips on Christmas Eve as a tradition.

About three years ago, on 23rd December, my sister was going to see a friend's band in in some small village near us, and as usual, Dad played taxi, but didn't have a clue where the venue was. Sis pulled up a vague map, and they set off.
About an hour later, we got a phone call from her.
They'd been crawling along the road, trying to see where the venue was. It was dark, and Dad was looking up at the buildings along the road without remembering to check the road itself. Which had a crossing where the road was narrowed to one lane (I don't know how to describe it better).
The car was now hugging a lamp post on this crossing.

Good thing he doesn't read this, really, he doesn't take kindly to anyone mentioning it. The car made a full recovery.

Most spectacularly, last year, the day before I was due to come home from university before Christmas, my dad was driving home from Durham when the trusty big red car decided to blow up on the A690, in rush hour. Sadly, it never recovered from this.

My dad's not allowed to drive at Christmas now.
(and now for someone completely different, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 15:38, Reply)

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)

HOOOT
During the Big Freeze my sister (23) set off in her Ford Fiesta to see her friend who lived on the next hill. She'd only got a few metres from where she'd parked before she got stuck in the snow, so she phoned home for rescue. Mothership and Boy set off, and I stayed in to man the kettle (v. important job). The landline phone rang and I answered, the call appeared to be coming from my sister's pocket.
I heard the following:
"HOOT HOOTHOOT HOOOT WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? I had no idea who you were, Mum! I thought you weren't going to stop!!"
"I'm coming to tow you out!"
"All I could see were some headlights coming straight towards me!"
"I couldn't hear you in the Land Rover, you know how noisy the engine is"
*indignant squabbling*
A third voice turns up, it's my brother, Boy, who's gritting the road with a barrowful of grit
"Matthew, COME OUT OF THE WAY"
"I'm just having a look..."
"GET OUT OF THE WAY! Muuuum! He won't listen!"
"Oh hello Jessie! Good dog. Do you want a biscuit? Good doggie"
Dad and Jess the dog have turned up to investigate. I cannot breathe because I am laughing so hard.
"First"
"Reverse?"
"No, FIRST"
*more bickering, squabbling, shouting*

Car is abandoned in road.

They eventually come through the door. I cannot talk, all I can do is point to the phone and say "pocket....Charlotte's phone..." and concentrate on trying to breathe.
Fun times.
( Peapod Has returned to the fold on, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 14:43, Reply)

1989 VW Golf
First car. Well maintained. A bargain. It served us well at most times but it had one problem: in moist or cold weather the motor would turn off at random times. Usually we could turn it on again on the fly by turning the ignition key and cursing the demons that had possessed it. The mechanics never did solve the problem but over time they changed enough parts to make it far less of the bargain that we thought it was.

Anyway.

I recall one night that we were driving in the countryside to visit some distant family. It was about 150 km on dark country roads, late autumn, rainy weather. After a good while of driving, the motor started dying on us and we promptly turned it on. This became more and more frequent but there was really not much to do except go on and hope that we would make it. When the motor choked, so did the front headlights, i.e. for a few seconds we turned from an easily visible object to a pitch black thing cruising through dark space with no ability to neither see nor reveal where we were going. Eventually this happened several times a minute. In retrospect I'm sure that we freaked the living daylights out the cars going in the opposite direction.

Eventually, with some delay and a fair deal of foul language, we made it to the destination.
(spinoza, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 14:32, 2 replies)

A car lot, some helium baloons and 2 stoned friends.
Late one evening many moons ago 2 of my friends, A and G where driving home after an evening of smoking an illicit substance. On their way back they passed a Car lot that had been freshly decorated with ribbons, signs and helium baloons. "aha" they thought, "We can have fun with those." But they realised that they would need something to cut the ribbons that the baloons where tied too. So they continued back to A's house to get 2 pairs of scissors and then returned to the car lot to start the harvest.

The harvest was succsessful. A and G, their hands full of helium baloons, were ready to escape. They turned to the car and saw a police car pull up next to it. Out the officers get and start questioning them about why they seem to have so many helium baloons on their person while outside a car lot with a number of missing helium baloons.

The eventually got taken to a police station and where told to sit in th epolic station for a while, out of the way of the real crinimals, while the police sorted everything out.

Eventually they were released without being charged (or searched, to their relief) and where taken back to the car lot where they had to tie all the baloons back.

As the police where leaving, one turned round and said "If you'd have let go of the baloons when we caught you we wouldn;t of been able to hold you."

Well it's a car related story anyways...
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 14:26, 1 reply)

Kind of strange
When we were younger my parents took me and siblings up to Nottingham to visit our cousins. About halfway home and on the motorway we realised that the boot of the car had sprung open and Mum had to pull over and sort the boot out. We live in a little cul de sac. When we were coming up to our road we saw a coat lying in the entrance to the cul de sac. It was my sisters coat. The coat had a badge on it from Sherwood Forest, proving that it cant have fallen out on the way...
(babyaeroplanes, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 14:18, Reply)

Brilliant French Design
Ah! This takes me back. Now I am a self confessed mini freak, yet I have only ever owned 2 in my life. My pet love is resoring them to a lovely condition and showing them off at shows and all that crap. The problem is, when they are in the garage I have no means of transportation. hmm Dilema!

So why not go to the local Irish (gypsy) auction and pick up a piece of crap and use that to get me from my house to the garage where my pride and joys reside, what could possibly go wrong?

The car of choice? A citeron AX 1.4 diesel. 0-60? depends on how steep and long the hill is. This thing was quite possibly the slowest car in existance. It's fuel consumption though, was fantastic for a a greesy student struggling to make ends meet.

A warm summers day I decide to get the mini out the garage and do some work in the sunshine, so I hop in said citeron to get to the garage. The garage however is out in the sticks and is about a 20 minuate run to get there. No problem.

Now this diesel used to use a large ammount of water in the radiator, but I didn't care, the piece of crap was going on a scrap heap once the mini was running. That's when it decided to rebel. Foot to the floor and driving off (slowly) in a puff of black smoke, I headed to my pride and joy. Just outside town I noticed a rather worrying smell coming from the engine. Best pull over and stop I thought to myself. I got out the car and lifted the bonnet.

*Fwoosh* Fucking flames went everywhere and I was taken back aghast. Having no tools to tackle this inferno I decided to do the sensible thing. Hide in the bush and call the fire brigade. "no worries we will be there in a flash" Well nothing to do but wait for the guys in red to come rescue me. "Well the car won't be able to run so best call a tow truck I guess" Another quick tinker to the "very nice men" and explain my woes. "patrols are on their way Mr Hoodles" Lovely. 20 minuates pass and no fireman sam or a very nice man in yellow. FUCK! By this time the front of the cab is starting to take. When suddenly, flashing lights.

"Saved" I thought. But as they came round the corner I noticed it was the AA guy. "Oh I see what you mean you needed a tow truck. Don't worry I can deal with this." He goes to the back of his tardis like van an with a quick squirt puts out the flames and my citeron is now a smoldering wreck. We waited another 30 minuates, 40 minuates, 50 minuates when finally the fire engine turns up. During which time me and the AA guy had built up a nice rapour, he even gave me some of his sandwich. A rather disgruntled fireman Sam got out his oversized toy and proceeded to shout at me.

"If you could have extinguised the fire safely by yourself you should have not dialed 999" I was shocked, as was the AA guy. How can I tackle a fire if you idiots turn up and hour late! If it hadnt had been for the guy in yellow I wouldn't have been able to retrieve my fluffy dice out the boot.

End of story. But it is worth noting that I later got a letter in the mail explaining tha if I wasted emergency services time again I would be prosecuted. Neededless to say a quick email to "Nigel" the AA guy, vouched for my situation and I got a nice letter back saying sorry and an invitation to visit the fire station to see how you put our engine fires. They even used my crappy citeron as a prop. So I guess in the end, everyone was very nice men.

EDIT Mini then


Mini Now

( hoodles is in your Afrikas Being Shotz at in CongOs, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 14:14, 2 replies)

Fair play to you... BUT YOU BROKE MY CAR!!!
For my 21st I had decided to treat myself to a sporty, larger car than the knackered old fiesta I had been driving for many a year. The larger, sporty car turned out to be a very nice 2.0i Zetec Ford Cougar, the best car I have ever owned.

In 2006, I was driving my pride and joy away from some traffic lights, when BANG! I was T-Boned by a very surprised looking elderly chap, slewing my car across the street and into a bollard.

The one thing that still stands out, apart from seeing my pride and joy become a crumpled mess, is what the poor old duffer said to me after the accident;

"I am so very sorry, it is the first accident I have had since the war!"
(Roddimus_Prime Should be revising, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 14:01, 4 replies)

My sister
had a weird experience, whilst driving on a motorway a few years back. Her and her friend had seen a fairly bad accident ahead and had just managed to pass it when they were flagged down by a women looking very distant and confused. As it was a woman they decided to slow down and see what she wanted. She just asked to be taken to the nearest town, which seemed fairly odd because there was no particular place in the town she wanted to be dropped off, like her house or a place she could call someone. The weirdest thing of all, she said, was that it was a very hot day in June and before she got in the car, it was very hot, as you can imagine, so they had the windows open but one thing they noticed very quickly was that the car had dropped in temperature so much that they had to turn the heating on to maximum just to stop shivering.

The woman seemed oblivious to this and also to their concern over her safety when they dropped her off, she kept giving the same answer to all their questions, which was just "drop me off anywhere I’ll be fine" which in some cases didn't even have any context to the questions they were asking.


They finally come to a roundabout entering said town and immediately she asks them to stop at some traffic lights, she gets out and simply stands in the middle of the roundabout with the same pale shocked look on her face and not attempting to either enter the town or get off the roundabout....They asked her again if she was sure this was where she wanted to be dropped off, this time no answer, she just stared off into the distance, almost as though this was exactly where she wanted to be. All of this on the surface could be explained I guess but a few minutes later they turn on the radio and hear that there had been a fatality on the same stretch of motorway they had just exited from. They never found out if it involved a woman but they noticed as soon as they pulled off that the car had become sweltering hot again due to the heater being on full blast in 26oc heat......weird. Sorry for lack of funny.

PS I still think there is a rational explanation for this and still don't believe in super natural powers.
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 13:59, 19 replies)

They dropped me off, and I wandered up to the roundabout, and chose the appropriate turning.
The traffic seemed to be light for a while, but I had all day, and took the opportunity to roll a fag and have a wander around, checking the back of the signs to see if any of my mates had left any messages, or if there was any good stuff going on.

It was here that the B-movie music should have started. The only messages on the back of the signs were "THIS ROUNDABOUT IS SHIT - ROB N' BEFF 5 HOURS STILL WAITING" "I FUCKING HATE THIS PLACE JON 3 HOURS" "I'VE BEEN HERE 4 HOURS NOT EVEN A VAN PAUL" "GOING TO FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE THIS PLACE IS SHIT".

Ah.

As far as I knew, I was somewhere between Oxford and Edinburgh. I had no idea where to aim for, and as I stared across the flatlands surrounding me, the nearest I could garner civilisation to be was about a two-hour trek across muddy, spring-soaked fields.

Trying not to be disheartened, I went back to the sliproad and waited.

As the sun sank lower, so did my tobacco and water supply, and I was starting to consider the logistics of a night under the stars with the threat of rain.

Finally an old guy in about his 60s or later pulled up oh dear gods he's stopped he's stopped I picked up my bags and ran full pelt to him dear gods thank you thank you thank you.

The car was warm and dry, and as he talked I listened politely, just grateful to be heading at least to somewhere where there might be a building or two I could crash the night in.

He'd had a hip replacement and had to exercise regularly with good weights to strengthen it, which he did by carrying his friend on his shoulders for 300 yards each day.

I was staring out the window, watching the countryside pass by, and drifting off into my own little world.

He bet that I couldn't do that and I was a young man I couldn't do that eh could I he bet I couldn't even carry an old man on my shoulders for a hundred yards could I eh? I should show him I could he bet I couldn't.

"Hmm?" I asked.

He pulled over, stopped the car, took the keys out, and said "You. Carry me 100 yards on your shoulders."

"What?"

"You. Carry me 100 yards on your shoulders."

It seemed that there wasn't really a choice in the matter. We were in the middle of nowhere, I didn't know where I was, and dusk was falling.

"Erm ... OK, then."

So out we get. I crouch down, he gets onto my shoulders, I stand up, start walking.

Which is when I feel movement on the back of my neck.

Which is when I crouch down, tell him he's won, get my pack, and walk off, him calling to me to come back and finish.

I spent the night under the stars, and as I settled down with the last of my tobacco, it started to rain.

Length? About 3 inches by the feel of it.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 13:45, Reply)

merc
I was helping my mate empty his garage out and when we'd loaded up the trailer on the merc he chucked me the keys saying you drive that and i'll take the other car load. So there I am tootling along in a very unfamiliar car, got to some traffic lights which were red, stopped, put on the handbrake which was a pull out handle on the dashboard, lights go to amber I try and push the handle back in to find it won't budge..... Shit, how the fuck do you get the brake off in this thing? I'm being beeped at by now. I'm pressing random buttons hoping it's one of them. Nobody can get past me i'm listening to the sound of car horns... Only one thing for it, I got out and had to ask the bloke in a merc 4 cars back how to do it, oh the shame.
(Kip, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 13:32, 10 replies)

Disturbingly...
... my work van, a newish Mercedes Vito, has a pair of arrows and the words "CUT HERE" printed on the windscreen about 4" from the top, beside the windscreen pillars.
(gordonjcp, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 13:22, Reply)

dangerous driving
When I was a teenager one of my best friends should probably never have been allowed to drive. Am not condoning dangerous driving and like to think that as token girl (aka 'cautious') I saved a few lives. Here are a few examples of his particular brand of driving...

1. Driving to Eynsford because he wanted to try and drive through a fjord. When we got there it was really deep due to recent rainfalls but he decides to drive through it anyway. Cue window high water levels. Car floor rattles all the way home.

2. Decides to swap Corsa for a BMW with a guy from Norwich. Get there. Whilst sale is progressing get chatted up by a teenager whose main line was; ‘I’ve just spent 4 years in juvy’. Finding out the BMW is the biggest pile of wank possible but is able to drive at 140 miles an hour until it breaks about a week later.

3. Him and another of our friends get into the back of a car with a priest in the front seat and beat him up from behind. To be fair on them – the priest was his Mums boyfriend who he’d just found out had beaten her up. If you're going to avoid a beating by running over to hide in car, remember to lock all doors.

4. With a different friend chasing me up the hill in the car whilst I’m riding my bike. He and Andy are both leaning out of the windows with their feet and arms inside car but heads outside. They also attempt driving with his head outside the roof window.

5. Being at a traffic light when he revs the engine of his carone car. 5 other cars misunderstand intentions and rev too. Fuck it, we end up having a need for speed-esque 6 car race.

6. Whilst I was at uni he came to pick me and my friend Adam up from the coach stop up London. At one point of the journey he was rolling a hash joint whilst driving the car when a massive hot rock fell down and started burning a hole in his top that noone realised until he stopped at the traffic lights.

7. For a while he had a van and the boys would sit in the back whilst he tried to knock them out by driving really fast over pot holes and etc.

8. Him knocking out my friend Tony when neither of them would back down from a game of chicken in which L was driving towards him downhill and Tony would not move.

9. And of course the massive relief when he got banned from driving…
(babyaeroplanes, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 12:39, 5 replies)

My mate, who's a good hobbyist mechanic, said the best way to stop your car being nicked
Is to take off the distributor cap whenever you leave the car. He showed me how to do it, and it's really easy and quick.

I will do this if/when I own a car.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 12:20, 24 replies)

Cars and blow jobs.....
....don't have their own section in the highway code. If they did it may say "If you are overtaken by a 4WD glorified landrover while having said lewd sex act* performed on you, you may get a hoot of appreciation and a round of applause, 'cos from their elevated angle they can see right in."


*(C) NOTW
(joe is troubled Got all married and teh stuffs, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 12:07, Reply)

Theft
My first car was stolen from outside my workplace when I was in the middle of a three hour cover shift. My favourite guitar was in the boot (since I'd just come back from band practice) and also a painting done by my best friend.

After a furious few hours, the car was found in the local awfully-rough council estate, mostly un-fucked with the steering lock on, just so, you know, the thieves made sure no other fucker would steal it.
(Hernandez Fiendish probably won't be here until at least, say, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 11:27, 5 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)

First kid to pass his test loses all cool points on first journey out
At school/sixth form I was good mates with the oldest kid in the year. Sadly this status didn't make him cool whatsoever (heart of gold, but all the streetsmart of hedgehog).
What did make him, briefly cool, was being the first person in our year to pass his driving test, and get a car.
So, the first saturday after passing his test, his car was loaded with horny 16 year olds, all set for a session cruising along the seafront, picking up chicks.

Unfortunately he insisted on playing his favourite tune of the time on repeat... we argued it was not really appropriate given what we trying to do, but he stuck fast insisting it was his car, his tunes.

The tune?
Go West by the Pet Shop Boys.
( Joe Scaramanga with a G-double-O-D vibration, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 10:50, 1 reply)

When I was 18, I was going out with a young lady who had, rather wonderfully, a very high sex drive.
One day, during the encroaching dusk of a midwinter evening, while driving along she instigated a chat about sex, which quickly got our blood up.

We pulled into the car park of a country pub - the pub was closed and the lights were off.

And we got down to business.

Just at the absolute pinnacle, there was a banging on the roof and a voice shouted "GET OUT OF HERE! WE WANT TO OPEN THE PUB!"

The feeling of reaching climax and being suddenly very startled is very, very weird indeed.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 10:50, Reply)

Just realised....
I've not had sex in ANY of my own cars. Just an old style mini Cooper (which was interesting given how the front seats fold forwards) and a Peugeot 306 Turbo Diesel belonging to an ex.
This is not out of any desire to keep my car pristine and the seats juice-free, as my first car, an old Nissan Micra actually had mushrooms growing in the passenger footwell.
And now of course I have a five year old the detritus on the back seat of the Focus could feed a small army of cockroaches for at least a month.
I must only get horny as a passenger.
*reminds self never to thumb lifts from fat sweaty truckers*
( Sallyrsm, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 10:42, 2 replies)

Surprising really...
I have been learning to drive, spasmodically (or maybe spastically), for about 7 years. I did the theory test and passed first time, I need to do it again as it has expired. It is just the driving bit I can’t quite get the hang of.

Main areas of concern to passengers appear to be (personally I don’t think I am that bad)

Driving in the middle of the road. Or as they put it - please move further to the right, my face is getting scraped by the hedge. I do try and explain that it is quite tricky and I have spent most of my life sitting on the other side of the car and I don’t want the on coming traffic to drive in to me.

Getting distracted. Or as they put it – stop looking at the speed-o-meter and look at the road. I do try and explain I don’t want to go to fast and looking at speed-o-meter is a good way to know how fast I am driving.

Low revs – Or as they put it you need to press the accelerator and release the clutch at the same time, and keep pressing the accelerator, then the car will to move away. Stalling the car is giving me whiplash. I do try to explain that I don’t want to over rev the engine or burn out the clutch. I need to practice on pulling away and I can only do that legally with another licensed driver in the car.

If at first you don’t succeed try, try and try again. No matter how hard they try to stop you.

What is surpising is I cycle, I cycle alot and I love it and even if I do say so myself I am very good at it.
(Free pens 100, 101, 102 is still counting on, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 10:32, 2 replies)

A warning for chunkies
About a month after passing my test and gratefully accepting a 1989 blue Ford Fiesta as a gift from my parents as my first ever car, I drove over to my girlfriend's place about twenty minutes away. Dutifully offering to drive over to the local Tesco to pick up some food for the night, I parked up and bought a plethora of tasty oriental foodstuffs and also a large packet of Cheese N Chive crisps for the ride back to hers, which was a three minute journey, tops. Driving out of the car park, I opened the packet of crisps and put them in the speedometer well just beyond the steering wheel for easy access to the salty treats whilst driving.

However, my Fiesta was old enough to not have power steering and after having taken a rather sharp turn to exit the car park, I rammed my hand into the crisps whilst the steering wheel was turned. Having to straighten up the steering wheel to leave the car park, I stupidly left my hand in the crisps, thereby jamming my arm between the steering wheel and the crisps causing the car to careen onwards towards an enormous kerb.

It proper fucked up my tyres.
(Hernandez Fiendish probably won't be here until at least, say, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 10:13, 2 replies)

I've never had a driver's licence...
...but I pick up my new push-bike tomorrow - woo and yay :)
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 10:07, 7 replies)