Scotland?! I've just remembered this
Many moons ago I had to go to the Isle of Bute in the wintertime for a very boring acoustic survey of a cheese factory (still awake?)
Well, having arrived in Largs at 9ish one cold wet night I thought I'd find a quaint little guest house to get some kip before catching the ferry the next morning.


WROOOOONG!!!!!!

I found precisely 1 place to stay, not a lot of choice but needs must etc so I went in to the bar where yet another hammer horror style silence happened, it seemed that every mutant on the west coast was assembled in the bar.
I asked the least revolting of them for the landlady, he/she/it pointed out a huge mound of crimplene-clad sweaty blubber that was chortling hysterically in the corner, probably at the physical attentions of the human weasel who was ramming a hand under her/it's dress all the while exclaiming undying love and demanding a blowjob! "Classy bird" I thought to myself.
I finally got her one good eye (from the three) to focus on me and asked for a room. She almost died from the shock of being spoken to by a human but peeled her sweaty (oh god I hope it was sweat) arse from the vinyl and, wheezing like an asthmatic walrus's uglier fatter hairier sister led me upstairs to a dark room. Putting the light on showed a very small but servicable room. Having negotiated the price down to £25.00 for bed and breakfast she waddled off with a promise to make me a sandwich to be collected at the bar. I had a shower in the very small yet strangely echoey bathroom and repaired to the bar.
It was a sight to behold when I walked in.

Walrus woman had just finished giving weasel boy a handjob.

In the bar.

With all of the locals watching.

Licking the fluids from her gargantuan hand she wandered behind the bar to hand me my sandwich.

Unwrapped.

No plate.

Same unwashed hand that had been pleasuring weasel boy not 5 minutes earlier.

I politely declined and half-ran to my room with the dreaded cry of "I can see to you later if you like" ringing in my ears.
After barricading my room door with the tv stand (no actual tv, just the stand) I fell into a fitful sleep. As is my wont, I awoke and needed a piss like a four-dicked mule so I went to the bathroom, As all men will know, having a piss first thing in the morning means working around the morning glory that is both a man's blessing and his curse, especially when desperate to pee.
I adopted the statutory "one hand on the wall behind the cistern, feet apart, 45 degrees to the floor" stance and was just letting fly whan the wall collapsed.
The wall between the guest room bathrooms was ONE layer of plasterboard held in round the edges with what looked like bath sealant. I fell through ONTO walrus woman whose bathroom was back-to-back with mine, spraying us both with water and other things from MY side and knocking her, mid shit, from her throne. Undeterred and still horrifically drunk from the night before she lay giggling on the floor like a shit-covered blubber slick.
Luckily I had a wet towel from last night's shower to clean myself up with before I packed in record time, ran downstairs, dropped £25.00 on the bar and ran like a scared little girl to the safety of my car. I have been shot at more than once, found a suspicious package with wires under a car I was about to drive, I've benn stabbed, attacked more times than I can remember but I have never been so scared in my life.

I recommended it as THE place to stay in Largs to my hated boss (the mentalist with cancer from previous posts).

I don't think he liked it.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:07, 20 replies)

Turkish delight
I travel - a lot - on business. Many years ago I learned that when the company is paying, DO NOT CHEAP OUT. Ever. I have a number of miserable hotel stories...

When I checked into a hotel in Istanbul, I was given a room on the second floor. When I got out of the lift, I was somewhat surprised to see bullet holes all around the foyer. I knew they were bullet holes, because the porter then took great pride in showing me the huge bloodstain in the carpet.

I stayed in a Horrible Inn in Johannesburg in 1995 (during the Rugby World Cup). I shared this hotel with the All Blacks. Who got food poisoning. The All Blacks claimed that the Sarf Effricans had poisoned them. All I can tell you is that they tried it on me first. A crap or a chunder; I had no idea what was coming next. All I could do was lie in a puddle of my own fluids mewling quietly.

I checked into a hotel in Los Angeles, walked to my room, opened the door to be greeted by a very fat man shagging a very ugly arse. That's all I saw. Went back to the reception desk to request a new room and was disbelieved by the receptionist. I had to take her to the room to prove it, where Mr. Fat was still energetically pounding Ugly Arse. I still, to this day, do not know if Mr. Fat was shagging a bird or a bloke.

I had checked into a hotel in Boston and gone to bed. I was woken up by the arrival of a man who had also been given the room and was very upset to find a naked man sleeping in his (?) bed.

In a flea-pit motel in Cincinnati I got propositioned by a lady who (from the bulge) had a bigger willy than I did.

In a very swanky hotel in Seattle I was intrigued by a red LED inside the air conditioning duct. I opened it to find a video camera trained on the bed. The police got involved with that one. It turned out that the assistant manager and two maintenance guys had five of the best (including the two honeymoon suites) rooms rigged up with cameras and were flogging amateur porn.

I once made the mistake of taking a UV light with me to a hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina and then the bigger mistake of shining it on the room's contents when the lights were out. Bedspread, carpet, chairs, curtains (!) covered with "DNA".

I arrived at a hotel in Hawaii and went for a pee in my room's bog - to find a turd (sans paper) of truly epic proportions. I mean, this thing was a bum torpedo. Bigger than my willy. Bigger than John Holmes' willy. I took a picture of it because I didn't think anyone would believe me.

I arrived - after a late Virgin Shaglantic flight - at my hotel in New York to be told that there were no more rooms left at the hotel. The air steward also checking in smiled at me and offered me to share his bed. Then the hotel offered me a room at another hotel, but I'd have to drive there. This was pre-satnav, and it was - I'm not kidding - like the effing Overlook. A scarier hotel I have never been to. I slept in my clothes.

I don't know why, but more times than I can count I seem to have been in the room next to the couple who are going for the "world's noisiest shag" record. One couple shagged - loudly and energetically - for almost four hours. When they finally came (and believe me, the whole floor knew it) they got a round of applause.

I have more but it's already too long as it is (steady on, ladies).

I hate hotels.
(lustfish, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 20:56, 4 replies)

And if you look to your left, ladies and gentlemen, you'll see the eigth circle of hell...
Ahhh, Corfu. I clicked “buy now” on the deal advertising 2 weeks self catering, flights and transfers included on the sunny north coast of the island for the seemingly incredible price of £200…

On reflection, I should have known.

We flew Cheapo airlines (it may have been Monarch, I forget. Actually, I blanked out the horror), so consequently no one had thought to reserve a take off slot and we eventually crawled in 4 hours late, The bus took us at breakneck speed along island cliff tops, pausing just long enough for us to get a good look at the memorials to less fortunate drivers who’d met their end over a yawning precipice. I shut my eyes and prayed to a god that I don’t believe in to get me to a hotel, any hotel in one piece. Be careful what you wish for…

We were the last off the coach. I swear as each group of tired holidaymakers disembarked before us, I saw something akin to pity in their eyes, knowing deep down that no matter how bad their 3 star palace with hot and cold running maid service and full English breakfast karaoke was, it was the Ritz compared to what we were heading towards.

Finally we drew up at the edge of a field. In the far distance I could see a collection of sheds leaning at a jaunty angle, surrounded by barbed wire. “This is you,” the bus driver said and unceremoniously threw our cases onto the roadside and vanished into the night. A coyote howled. Actually, that’s bullshit, a cat walked past and hissed at us, but a coyote would have been so much more dramatic.

Dragging the cases behind us, we set off to the place we would call home for the next fourteen days. We approached the door and unlocked it. To be honest, if a kitten had delivered a light slap to it, it probably would have opened. I threw on the light switch and there, illuminated by a single dangling bare bulb was… it. A room, no, a fetid pit, with a double bed and single camp bed, an alcove with a shower and toilet and a toaster oven with some dangerous looking wires hanging out of the socket.

Now to digress for a second, some of you may be reading this and thinking, “look Rakky, you shelled out £200 for this including flights, what the hell did you think you would get?” Friends, I know. I’m not stupid. I wasn’t expecting the Corfu Hilton. Hell, at that price I wouldn’t have even expected Paris Hilton, but I didn’t think it would be quite so, well, desolate.

With the blitz spirit that marks one out as being English, I selected the single bed, slipped into my jammies and settled down for some sleep. Things would be brighter in the morning, There’d be sun, sea and all the cheap oversized G and T’s I could pour down my waiting gullet.

It seemed like no sooner had I fallen into a restless doze than I was awoken by the unmistakable sound of… Well, actually, I had no idea what it was. A tinny explosion followed by the noise of what seemed like 50 horses violently pissing outside the window. “What the fucking, fucking hell was that?” I exclaimed (I’m paraphrasing, you understand.) My friend leapt out of bed, threw open the shutters and there, illuminated in the eerie half light of 4am, was the remains of the solar powered boiler that stood directly outside our balcony. It had spewed its fibreglass innards all over the floor and was now gushing water, creating a swampy lagoon right under the patio. We realised quickly that no one could hear our discontent, so we covered our ears, hoping for sleep to take us through till morning.

An hour later, I woke from a dream where I had seemingly caught my fingers in a door hinge. On closer inspection through my foggy, myopic gaze, I realised that the pain in my hand was actually being caused by the biggest beetle I have ever witnessed jamming its steely pincers into my thumb. Silently, I detached it and threw it to a watery death over the balcony. I didn’t go back to sleep; I couldn’t. I sat, shivering under a grey, scratchy blanket, awaiting the dawn.

Morning came and a man came to fix the boiler. I never knew you could do so much DIY with just a hammer, some six inch nails and a roll of gaffer tape.

4am rolled around again, as it does, and the boiler exploded a second time.

The boiler exploded on 5 separate occasions. The beetle, I’m glad to say, never returned. We never braved the toaster oven and, to be fair, the toilet only backed up twice, leaving us to pick up flaccid turds from the cracked bathroom floor before hurling them back down the U bend, praying that this time, they’d leave us in peace.

Other than that, the rest of the holiday passed without incident. Well, apart from being mistaken for a lesbian paedophile, catching an ear infection from the infested swimming pool that left me with all the coordination of a drunk Stephen Hawking and consuming the worst pizza ever created by a human being. It had hairs on it.

Still, I can laugh about it now, but it’s been three years. And sometimes, when my radiator pipes clank and hiss in the night, I’m transported back there. So I simply reach for the tranquilizers, swig them down with some vodka and finally, the screaming stops.

Good times, they were, good times…

*sobs*
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 4:42, 8 replies)

Conference in an Indian City Hotel
Around 10 years ago I was stationed in Hyderabad, India whilst I did interesting (yawn) things with agriculture. I was based at ICRISAT, a research station. At the time my colleagues and I would poke fun at the mis-haps that would frequently happen. Little was I to know that ICRISAT was the pinnacle of efficiency compared to the rest of India.
About ten of us were due to attend a conference in Bangalore. I arrived first and checked in. Next to me was an American lady was was also attending the conference, patiently waiting. Not sure how it happened but the the receptionist just presumed that the lady next to me was my wife. Thus about 20 minutes later as I step out of the shower she walks into my room and screams (somewhat theatrically I've always thought).
But my favourite bit of this tale comes from my boss, his name was Andy Whitman. He arrived later than the rest of us. When he tried to book in (he had made a reservation) he was told there was no vacancies due to the conference. Fifteen minutes of sighing and eye-rolling later.
"We are full to bursting sir" said the desk jockey "the only room left is reserved for a Mr Andy". It's quite common to juxtapose surnames and first names in India.
So my boss shouts "AHA! Thats mine, I'm A. Whitman, I'm A. Whitman"
The receptionist says (and I always smile when I relate this bit) "You may be a whiteman sir but you still cannot have Mr Andy's Room"

POP!
(smells-like-victory-v's, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:32, 5 replies)

a shithole in rhyme
when i was a young teenage lass,
i met a man with money and class
but i still lived at home,
so his hands couldn't roam,
or my mum would have drop-kicked his ass.

we thought that, as we wanted fun,
we'd head off for a weekend in the sun
a hotel for 2 nights
with some naughty delights
had us both setting off at a run.

we arrived in paris at seven
thinking that we'd find heaven
the hotel was double-booked,
we were basically fucked
we'd have been better off in devon.

a new hotel had to be found
one that would cost us many a pound
the bedsprings were broke,
he got a violent poke
and had to give me one on the ground.

breakfast was a sorry affair
there was jam on the back of my chair
the croissants were stale
and they tasted of snail*
and the jam then got stuck in my hair

the city itself was just fine
the coffee and pastries divine
but to think of that room
and its bedstead of doom
ruined both his trip and mine

we got back to the hotel at 8
hoping for dinner we weren't too late
but i almost went green
at the sight of the sheen
of the grease all over my plate

but despite our spirits flagging
and our bed that was constantly sagging,
we didn't break down and cry,
we just turned a blind eye
and spent the rest of the weekend shagging.

*foul taste was not snail, but shit didn't rhyme.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 2:52, 3 replies)

Marib Hotel, Marib, Yemen, 1992
As I lay on my bed, thinking about you, I feel this strong urge to grab you and squeeze you, because I can't forget last night.

You came to me unexpectedly during the balmy and calm night, and what happened in my bed still leaves a tingling sensation in me.

From nowhere you appeared and shamelessly, without reservations, you laid on my naked body...you sensed my indifference, so you applied your hungry mouth to me without any guilt or humiliation, and you drove me nearly crazy while you drained me.

Finally I went to sleep. Today when I woke up, you were gone - I searched for you but to no avail; only the wildly disordered sheets bore witness to last night's events. My body still bears faint marks of your ravishings, making it harder to forget you.

Tonight I will remain awake waiting for you. . . . .







With a can of Fly Spray - Fucking Mosquito!!!
( fagilliD Fuck I'm good!, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 0:21, 8 replies)

Hotel Meridian, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo
I arrived in the Congo at the arse end of the country's civil war on a bit of ill-advised business. Le Meridian turned out to be a heavily-armed compound in the centre of the city, next door to the ruins of the cathedral. Amongst its delights:

* The hotel doubled up as the officers' mess of the Congolaise army, so it was crawling with over-dressed young ladies (eyeing up the Europeans for a quick way out), and their angry-looking AK47-toting husbands.

* If you wanted to venture outside, you had to hire a posse of hired goons and the hotel's bullet-riddled Mercedes.

* What I took for charming concrete mouldings around the hotel reception, were in fact, rocket-propelled grenade scars from a recent gun battle over the state of the kitchens.

* The hotel, at one stage, had its own zoo. When I arrived, it had already become the army's practice range and free supply of tasty meat products

* A five minute phone call urging my boss to get me the fuck out of there cost £90.

* Not a trace of Um Bongo

On the plus side, I managed not to mention the war to the German guests.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 8:16, 7 replies)

Somewhere in London (apologies for length)
I suppose I should have guessed that this would be slightly less than perfect when I boarded the taxi at Euston, told the driver where I was headed, and received the reply “Where?” For once, The Knowledge had seemingly deserted my driver… either that, or this hotel was eminently forgettable. It was, however, nothing of the sort.

It was snowing when I arrived, and Christmas Eve was four days away. I stepped from the taxi and walked towards the attractive terrace filled with high hopes. As I stepped through the narrow front door, struggling with my collection of holdalls and boxes, I saw a slightly shoddy reception area, and a pair of eyes and a forehead peering at me over the reception desk.

“Hi. I’ve got a reservation in the name of (my name),” I announced.

“I know,” replied the forehead. “Fill this in.” And with that, he handed me a tiny square of paper bearing three blank spaces labelled Name, Address, and Nationality. I filled it in and, after glancing over my details, the receptionist handed me the customary six-inch long key fob, telling me that I was in room 501 (or something like that). Not wanting to struggle up the stairs I asked where the lift was, only to be told that they didn’t have one. I asked if somebody could help me with my bags, but nobody was free. So I struggled up the stairs alone, noticing that each landing had its own Coca-Cola vending machine. A nice touch.

I reached the top floor, looked around, and saw that every door number started with a 4, indicating that I was on the fourth floor. There were, however, no more stairs to climb, so where was my room? I noticed a small alcove and, looking into it, I saw a narrow staircase, each step sagged through use over the years. The stairs were all of two feet wide, and I feared that this was merely a roof access ladder, so abandoning my luggage for a moment I climbed the stairs, finding my room and others at the top. I unlocked the door, switched the lights on, noticed a loud growling sound and a flashing light, then collected my belongings and went to settle in.

The flashing light was, it transpired, my bedside lamp, which was actually a fluorescent tube – unshielded – which had been screwed to the headboard. The tube was also on the verge of expiring, and was flickering slightly, but just enough to be noticeable and bring on either migraine or epilepsy. As for the growling noise, I found that it came from the bathroom. I opened the door, stepped inside, and realised that it was coming from the extractor fan, the cover of which was rattling noisily as a screw was missing from its underside. I turned the light out, waited about fifteen minutes for the fan to switch itself off, then removed the cover and put the light back on again. The fan whirred quietly, but it seemed to be encased in a large cube of fluff which it had accumulated, chunks of which were dropping onto the floor. Quickly I turned the light back off, put the cover back on as soon as the fan had stopped, and resolved to shower in the dark, an experience which made bathing somewhat like being a member of the cast of “Das Boot.”

As for the rest of the bedroom, it was ferociously hot and L-shaped, a narrow passage leading from the door before turning to the right. The bed more or less filled the main part of the room, a gap of around twelve inches between its clear side – the other side being pushed hard against the opposite wall – and the wall, and at its foot stood a dressing table and a wardrobe. The wardrobe had a hinged door, but as the gap between the door and the end of the bed was around eight inches in total, it couldn’t actually be opened fully, and so to make use of the wardrobe you had to put your clothes onto a hanger, hold them flat against the outside of the wardrobe, and then slide them into the gap before twisting your hand and attempting to find the hidden rail.

Upon the dressing table there was a television, and a small card standing on its top told me that one of its channels was “Sky.” Not knowing which Sky channel this was, I switched the set on and saw that it was one of the movie channels, so I left this on as I attempted to unpack. After a few minutes, however, the film became a cricket match, and I realised that the hotel had a single Sky box, and this was controlled by the man sitting at the reception desk, so whatever he watched was beamed into every room. Not being a cricket fan, I switched the set off, went to the toilet in the dark, and then went to bed…

…and promptly fell out of it. Because of the shape of the room, previous guests had been forced to get into the bed in a single place and, as time went by, this spot on the mattress sagged, so when you lay in the bed your backside was significantly lower than the rest of your body. In addition, for reasons unknown, the side of the bed away from the outside wall also appeared to be lower than the other, and as a result I had to lie in the bed on my left side, my hands hooked over the opposite edge of the mattress in order to stop myself rolling out. I took one last look out of the window at the snow falling over London, gripped the mattress, and settled down to sleep.

When I awoke the next morning I discovered that the bed was wet. I looked around, wondering if the room was raining in, even if I had wet myself, but neither was the case. The external wall of the room was coated in white gloss paint, and was a Dorma-style extension, against which the bed was positioned. As the temperature inside the room was so much greater than the world outside, condensation had formed on the wall during the night, trickled down the painted surface, and soaked the bed through. I leapt from the bed, had a shower in the dark, dressed, and went to breakfast.

“Morning,” said the man on the reception desk, but as I was half-way down the stairs and out of his sight. How did he know I was there? It was simple, really: he had positioned a mirror at the foot of the stairs, angled such that he could see people coming down. I walked into the reception, feeling a little nervous, and proceeded to look for my breakfast.

“You looking for breakfast?” he asked. I nodded. “It’s down here,” he replied, pointing behind the counter. I half expected him to hand me a plate of toast and some cereal, but when I looked over the desk I saw a trap door, a wooden staircase leading into the cellar.

“You’re joking…” I gasped. He shook his head. Deciding to humour him, I slowly descended. As I was half way down, I heard him lift the telephone and dial a number.

“He’s on his way,” he said, and quickly replaced the receiver. Instantly I had visions of a masked lunatic waiting at the bottom of the stairs, a cricket bat held in his raised arms, ready to swing at his latest gullible victim.

I found myself in a small room, a tiny window allowing a little light to enter, illuminating the motes of dust which hung in the air. Each table in the room had a glass of orange juice waiting, and a bowl of cereal, the milk already poured. I sat down, wondering a) why I was alone, and b) why I was there at all.

Moments later, a slightly mad-looking woman approached. “Yes?” she asked, not blinking.

“Breakfast?” I replied.

“Yes?” she repeated.

“Cereal?” I asked.

“There’s some there,” she said, pointing to the bowl before me.

“Can I have some without the milk already on them?”

“Why?”

I decided that an alternative plan was necessary.

“Tea and toast?” I asked.

“And?” she replied.

“That’s it.”

“No cooked breakfast?” she said, frowning, a baffled expression on her face.

“No thanks.”

“Oh.” And with a suspicious look, she scurried off to the kitchen. A few second passed, before I heard muttering and, as I looked up, I saw a few faces peer around the kitchen door, seemingly wanting to see the mysterious guest who didn’t want a cooked breakfast. Eventually, my toast came, and after picking at it, I left.
(nasalhair The Twix guy!, Thu 17 Jan 2008, 18:53, 1 reply)

Baaaasil
I stayed in a hotel in Norfolk on a business trip. The hotel was lovely and the guy running it was Basil Fawlty to a tee. The best Fawlty moment was over breakfast. I had the full english, when he brought it out I asked for ketchup our conversation went something like this (he shouted like Basil too in that unhinged, loosing it kind of way)

"Thank you can I have some ketchup please"

"those are proper sausages you know none of your crappy walls stuff"

"They look lovely but I like a bit of ketchup with my sausages"

"you've got a bloody tomato have that"

"It's a nice tomato but I really want some ketchup"

"oh for FUCK SAKE!!"

He stomps off. Everyone is looking at me like the ketchup loving pikey I am.

He stomps back in with a tiny bottle of unopened ketchup (I feel I may have been the first not to back down or perhaps he throws out the offending bottle once it's opened) and slammed it down on the table in front of me with such ferocity I thought it might shatter.

"your fucking ketchup sir"

stomp stomp stomp

I ate the delicious sausages with ketchup with tears of mirth streaming down my face

Length short, Girth fat ....nicely grilled
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Tue 22 Jan 2008, 13:07, 2 replies)

Swaythling - Blood Sphincter of the South
During my time at Southampton University, I lived in a suburb called Swaythling, without doubt one of the most rancid hamlets in the whole of the UK. Here are some choice details about the "house" (loosest sense of the word) rented to me and my five mates by kind old Mr Singh:

- Neither us nor the previous tenants had ever put the rubbish out. Instead it was "stored" in the garage. Imagine the foulness of four years worth of rubbish from a house containing six adults. You could smell it from a fair distance away.

- Aforementioned rubbish had attracted a large number of rats to take up residence under the house. Not happy with munching on our rubbish, they had clawed several holes in the floor boards giving them unfettered access to the kitchen. If you left a loaf of bread out for more than a couple of hours, you would return to find only the plastic clip and some shredded polythene.

- The place stank. This was self-inflicted after a particularly sophisticated game of "hide the turd". One house mate had frozen his log, and then "hidden" it by grating it into tiny pieces using the cheese grater and sprinkling it throughout the house. Because we did not own a vacuum cleaner, you can imagine how ripe the carpet got on a hot day as a result.

- Due to the poor living conditions and the fact that we all smoked, chest disorders and bronchial complaints were common. One house mate kept a "skronky pot" under his bed for coughing up his lung cheese into. It was particularly nasty when this pint of phlegm got knocked over and left on the carpet. Once the water element had evaporated we were left with a nasty gelatinous cube. I suspect that this eventually became self aware and started a ship science degree.

- The pest control man (when we eventually called him) discovered that electricity wires were holding up one of the top stairs.

- Only one room was habitable and kept under lock and key by the only tidy member of the household, who went home every weekend. We rewarded him by finding his spare key and using his room as a "wanking chamber" due to the pleasant conditions within. Also, one member of the team would ejaculate over the previous month's page of his Madonna calendar. Imagine how pleased he was in January when he went back to peruse the year and found porridge gun cartridges throughout.

Ahhh...those were the days.
(Mandrill, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 23:21, 11 replies)

Hotel Porn
As said in and earlier posting, I do a lot of travel in my job.
I have to pay for all the hotels and meals etc, myself and then claim back the expenses from the company.
Obviously, having the pay per view porno movies on the hotel bill would not qualify as a valid expense. I recall staying in a really nice hotel in Warsaw a few months back. My job involves heavy use of the internet, in order to connect through to our main data centre and then through to the remote offices, and while away on business we are expected to work through the night.
I noticed on the list of internet charges, that there was a choice of paying by the hour, or paying for 24hours (usually 24hrs charge is about 3X 1 hr charge), but this time there was a 3rd option, 24hours internet with all movie channels on the TV, it also stated that it would be shown on the bill as "Full internet communications package".
The next three nights was a major wankathon, I hardly slept at all, but watched every porno film listed, and shrek 3.
My cock was so sore, that for a week after that it hurt to pee.
( turb0t, Wed 23 Jan 2008, 14:14, 4 replies)

The Black Horse...
first!

and this is my first 'first'!!

Woo and yay!

anyhoo...



I happened to mention on one of my previous posts that my band often plays at a pub run by 3 Indian midgets – affectionately known as ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ – and that these guys were decent blokes.

By New Year’s Day 2008, I realised that I had been lying to you all.

First of all – there are four of them – Two of whom are identical midget twins and I never saw them in the same room at the same time...easy mistake to make.

Secondly, they are collectively the most evil, money grabbing, tightwad filth-ridden scum sucking bunch of cuntbuckets it has ever been my misfortune to happen across.

They run a pub called the Black Horse in a little village near us. Now it’s one of those gaffs that has abandoned its ‘village pub’ principles and decided to descent into the putrid pure profitability of becoming a curry restaurant…with a bit of a pub attached. (There’s no money in keeping the locals happy apparently).

They’ve been running this pub for about a year or so now and it’s quite a big place. Also, as nobody lives there as Landlord anymore they had apparently decided to make the upstairs section into a sort of B&B.

Here’s where we come in.

Our band’s usual New Year’s Eve gig cancelled on us (you’d understand why if you heard us) and we were stuck for somewhere to play on what is usually one of the biggest moneyspinners of the year, so we decided to let the Black Horse in on the opportunity to snap us up before another pub did.

And snap us up they did.

My suspicions that they did not quite understand the concept of Christmas and New year were first aroused as they flicked through their diary to enter the booking and asked when Boxing Day was?, and what it meant…but I digress…surely everybody knows what New years Eve is all about??

The negotiations for the gig were excruciating. Every detail was argued about to the nth degree so they could get us and everything as cheaply as possible. We left there satisfied though, because on top of the fee ( the lowest ever – half what we got last year) they had agreed to:

Free beer all day and night for the band
A 3 course meal for the band
A night’s free accommodation in the B&B.

This ticked all the boxes for us, and we promptly signed up.

As we were due to leave for the gig, I received a call from another pub, saying they had been let down and that we could ‘name our price’ to blow the Black Horse out and play there instead.

Like a total fucking spacker – I remained loyal and told them to “shove it”. That act alone, as you will discover, would qualify under the ‘Dumb things I’ve done’ QOTW. To quote Cher – ‘If I could turn back time’, I would happily sacrifice both testes and a kidney to be able to bite the bastard’s hand off when he made his offer.

But I didn’t…and we went to the Black Horse.

When we turned up there was nobody there to see the band. The pub hadn’t advertised or even put posters up saying we were playing, obviously assuming that the local’s crystal balls would provide enough information of our impending performance. When questioned on this, they said that they “didn’t realise New Year’s Eve was an important night”

“What the fucking fuck? Where the hell do you have to come from to not understand that New Years Eve is Important?” I gently enquired.

This angered the pint-sized twunts…and to be fair, an angry Indian midget is pretty funny to watch…imagine an Oompa Loompa finding you in bed with his wife. But the deal started to turn sour from then on.

“No free beer” they barked as they charged us their usual exorbitant price for their watered down pissy cider. “You only get free drinks when you’re playing”. This turned into ONE FREE PINT EACH ALL COCKING NIGHT – the rest we had to pay for.

I started to suspect that they were going to try everything in their despicable power to try and renege on the terms of the gig. Little did I know what was to come…We.were.proper.fucked.

Fortunately, the restaurant was heaving with revellers (feel free to come back to this part after you’ve finished reading the post), and as they spilled out, they realised that there was a band on and stuck around to party.

So we started, it went pretty well and ended at about 1:30am, which to be honest was a little earlier than I thought it would, and despite their tightwaddedness I still managed to get nicely squiffy and everybody seemed to get arseholed and enjoy themselves.

The gig ended, and then the owners decided to started negotiations…again.

“We can’t afford to pay you” They bleated
“You fucking well can!” We retorted.

This continued for some time getting ever pettier, as they haggled and raised their offer in £10 instalments.

Now I’m not a violent person, but when talks stalled on HALF the agreed amount, I threatened to rip the till out of the wall, smack it over the owner’s twatty head and take the contents for myself (of the till that is, not the twatty head).

At this point he suddenly remembered he had the full amount. In his pocket. Funny that. What a cunt.

It was now time for the ‘3 course meal’…’Better late than never’ we thought…but our anticipation turned to horror and then despair as we were presented with….

3 poppadoms….small poppadoms. One fucking poppadom each.

mmmf

By now I was past caring and asked to be shown to my room. The three of us were presented with a bottle of Indian lager each (which was cack) and then we were pushed upstairs. As we entered the ‘living quarters’ the door was closed behind us…and LOCKED. They then left.

We were trapped there. It appears that they couldn’t trust us to have access to the pub without them present and so our lives and safety in the event of fire etc was considered by them to be of miniscule importance compared to the huge and tragic loss of somebody possibly blagging a free pint.

Now this, in case you’re wondering, is where the relevance to the QOTW really kicks in. We had access to 3 small rooms – a kitchen area, bathroom and bedroom.

I’d heard about those hovels where they hide asylum seekers away to turn them into sex slaves – well, if this was one of those, I’m not surprised the poor fuckers climbed back into whichever lorry they sneaked out of and knacked off back to their own country.

If you look up the word ‘shithole’ in the dictionary…there is no definition…just a picture of this place.

There was no furniture except for three bare, broken beds with no bedding or pillows. The mattresses were so filthy and covered in suspect stains that I’m convinced they were picked up the previous day from the rubbish skips of the local incontinence ward. There were flies, woodlice and other insects I can’t even bear thinking about roaming the place. The carpet was blue – at least I think it was blue, from what I could tell it must have previously been the venue of the ‘Who can defecate and puke over the floor the most’ world championships. There were no curtains and grime was crawling up the half painted walls

The smell was intolerable, and as we looked around the place to find somewhere remotely hygienic to sleep we discovered that the smell came from half eaten food that had been left in the fridge….from the previous owners…OVER A YEAR BEFORE. Clutching my bottle of rank lager, I physically retched as I entered the kitchen and stepped over the piles of smashed chairs. It was like being whumped in the face by a sledghammer of stink

The building should have been condemned for the bathroom alone. The plaster had come off the walls, the bath was chipped and broken and had green residue covering the bottom. The mould surrounded you, and for some reason there were dozens of toilet rolls. Not in packets, just strewn about all over the mushy floor.

And then there was the toilet. Oh yes. Think of the one out of Trainspotting crossed with the portaloos from Glastonbury during a dysentery epidemic and you’d come close. Like a rainbow of splattered mucus following detonation of an expertly placed gorilla turd bomb.

Bizarrely, next to the toilet was a toothbrush….Who would stick around to clean their teeth in that place is anyone’s guess.

I should mention here that all of these rooms….were directly above the RESTAURANT. I shudder to think what their kitchen downstairs is like.

We were trapped in there until 2:30 the following afternoon because the owners ‘forgot’ we were in there(!) and then kept making excuses as we relentlessly called and threatened to kick the door down.

As we were finally released and able to breathe again, they poured out a pint for each of us (without asking), then charged us for them. We were then thanked for our efforts the previous night, and promptly told that we had to get out…immediately. With this, two of the midget’s larger friends started lifting our equipment and throwing it outside by the front door.

Finally, they took our drinks out of our hands, put them on a garden table outside, locked the pub up again and drove off, papping the horn and waving as they drove off leaving us in total shock.

I tell you, I’m really considering not playing there again.

Apologies for length, and delay… but as you can no doubt tell, the wounds are still fresh.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 17 Jan 2008, 17:05, 10 replies)

Iain's house - Bolton 1993.
I have a great many posts about the summer of 1993, a milestone in my life as I had just finished my A Level exams and was enjoying the long and boozy sabbatical before starting uni in late September. Three months of never ending summer holidays filled with teenage parties and acts of minor debauchery that I'll never forget. To the story:

My best friend's older brother Iain was living and working in Bolton, Lancashire. We decided that we'd invite ourselves up for a long weekend to see him and treat ourselves to a night of northern hospitality.

A four hour road trip in a superannuated Ford Orion fitted with the cheapest, noisiest tyres my mate could possibly buy (Stowmills, with treads half an inch deep which resonated the car with a steady "rwaarrrrrrrr" noise at motorway speeds and must have halved our miles per gallon) accompanied by the beats of The KLF (The White Room is even now compulsory for any long roadtrip I undertake), 808 State, Sunscreem, Tears for Fears, Fortran 5, Queen, Elton John and "Now Thats What I Call Rave Dance Energy Tip vol 12".

We were travelling far from home, despite me having spent nine months in Cape Town, the road trip to Bolton held the glamour of a weekend in Monte Carlo for us. Eagerly we drove into the evening watching the sunset being chased toward the horizon by the marching lavender coloured sky as we played a game of "wanker" on the M6, gesticulating at every BMW we saw. Such sons of fun were prepared to make the very best of whatever life in a northern town could throw at us. Bring it on.

We neared Iain's house as the sun was setting. Unperturbed by the rusting front gates with chipping glosswork and the common sight of a saloon car on bricks by the side of the road, we imagined ourselves driving through Beirut in 1982. In actual fact, it was probably very much akin to driving through Beirut in 1982 with its broken streets and furtive activities amongst the shadows, except the locals there were too busy throwing stones at Israeli tanks to imbibe ridiculous amounts of cheap heroin. Unlike here.

Iain opened the gates for us. Clearly they had not been used for such a purpose in a long time, groaning under protest. Iain's front garden had not been attended to in years, with grass a foot long and a Volkswagen Beetle rusting away forlornly underneath a tarpaulin.

Several pairs of rat like beady eyes in the street darted toward the unfamiliar Orion. Even though Iain lived in a cul-de-sac, it was infested with the very worst kind of drug addled proto-chavs with a penchant for nicking your stereo and anything else which can be persuaded to move. The Orion was duly immobilized with two Krookloks and the removal of the Distributor lead. The stereo was pulled out and we walked into Iain's bachelor pad.

Lordy.

Iain's attitude to domestic maintenance was up there with Santa Claus's work ethic. The carpets were that awful crunchy nylon which is supposedly allergic to retaining dirt. Sat in the lounge was a beige/brown velour sofa. We were ushered upstairs to the spare room, where two single beds had been set aside. I dropped my holdall on the floor and sagged onto the bed, weary from the travelling.

"Owwwww fuck! Whathfugginellistha?" I kid you not; a rusty spring had freed itself from the mattress and was attempting to violate my right buttock.

My right toe kicked something which felt a lot like a sagging pile of magazines holding the bed up. It in fact turned out to be a sagging pile of magazines holding the bed up. Closer inspection revealed a stack of early 90s bongo magazines amongst the copies of VolksWorld.

I elected to kip on the sofa.

Hungry, Iain, my pal and I trudged to the local chinese chip shop. We past groups of scruffy teenagers milling around and avoiding eye contact with us. Glancing over our shoulders as we walked on we noticed they were taking some time to detour past Iain's house presumably to check if the Orion had anything worth nicking left on it.

When we returned from the chippy, where I'd had an unfortunate language problem ("Sah-VELL-Oyy!" I repeated, phonetically when prompted with "ahh. Sos-Ahge, yah?") We sat on the sofa whereupon I felt a small bump in the cushion. Reaching down I extracted a VDO oil pressure gauge from a Volkswagen Beetle.

"Oh, I wondered where that went!" replied Iain as he munched through his chips and gravy.

This house resembled something from the Young Ones. I half expected to be insulted by a Glaswegian Hamster ("see yurgh jimmeh") as I trotted to the bathroom and steeled myself for the inevitable bath six inches deep in muddy gloop with a bicycle lying in the bottom. In fact, the truth was only slightly less disturbing.

In front of the lav sat an engine halfway through a rebuild. Yes, instead of reading a newspaper during his periods of quiet contemplation, Iain would sit on the bog reconditioning the engine from a Volkswagen Beetle.

Shaking my head, I walked out of the bathroom. Even I was not prepared for the sight that greeted me next. Yes, Iain was indeed respraying the front and rear wings of a Volkswagen Beetle. In his bedroom. At one end he'd arranged sheets and newspaper to stop the carpet and wardrobes being covered in paint. He sprayed and slept in the same room, he must have been off his tits on the fumes.

None of this put me off enjoying the night out, particularly when Iain's attractive next door neighbour Samantha chaperoned us round the town and several of her similarly comely friends joined us for the evening soiree. A piss-cheap swagger round Bolton's own Ritzy's at roughly half the price of a club from home and we were having a great old evening. Sam and her friends were easy on the eye and even easier conversation.

I'd love to be able to conclude this story by telling you that I spent the night on an uncomfortable bed with knackered springs, a suspicion of livestock in the mattress while sleepily writhing to avoid health threatening violation by a rusty spring, sick from paint fumes and the smell of used engine oil and six inches away from a stack of stiff-leaved low rent grot magazines, listening carefully for the sound of ferrety smack-addled chavs trying to pry their way into our car but I won't. For this was the night endured by my friend and he could paint a far more horrific picture than I could.

I was in fact spending the night next door in a clean and comfortable bed, thoroughly enjoying warm, welcoming and fragrantly moist third base with one of Sam's lovely lady pals. I've been overdrawn at the Karma Bank ever since.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 18 Jan 2008, 13:19, 9 replies)

She is much flatter now...
On a school trip to Bude, aged around 10, we were all in rooms of about 6 people. 2 bunk beds and 2 single beds. Obviously, the rooms were organised by sex, all the boys rooms on one side of a corridor, and the girls rooms on the other side.

At around 1am, we heard a huge scream, and someone crying, coming from the room across the corridor. We ran across, and went into the room, revealing that this rooms 'bunk bed' was just 2 single beds on top of each other, and the top one had fallen onto the bottom one. The girl on the top was thrown off onto the girl in the single bed, so they are both crying, while all we could look at was the leg sticking out from the bed sandwich.

The bed was really solid wood, so as little kids, we couldn't lift it, so had to wait for teachers, by which point, I was crying too, because I had got bored, and sprayed one of the girls' perfume in my eyes...
(bobman500 enjoys a grope as much as the next fella, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:22, 2 replies)

I was
at a works do in Maidstone once next to a hotel. Got pretty pissed so me and a couple of mates decided to go for a wander around the hotel and cause some trouble. Couldn't really find much to do and was feeling quite tired so went into one final room where there was a huge blue rug. "Lovely!" I thought, so went for a lie down.

Turns out the big blue rug was an indoor swimming pool
(davefromkent, Thu 17 Jan 2008, 23:16, 4 replies)

I give you...
Pontins, Camber Sands. A veritable oasis of sand. And shite.

Before you, dear reader, clap your hands to your mouth in horror, raise a cynical eyebrow and think "Well, what did you expect?" I would like to elaborate.

I never went to a holiday camp on holiday as a child. We went to Jersey and roamed around the zoo and stuff. So Butlins and Haven remained an unknown entity to me. I was an innocent.

A while ago I became slightly obsessed with exercise. I spent between 8 - 12 hours a week at the gym, mainly doing classes, and I met some strange and interesting people. I had a willing accomplice, a good friend of mine was eager to drop some weight, so she joined me in my obsession. It wasn’t long before I found a whole sub-culture. Did you know that you can go on weekends just packed with exercise? I didn’t, but once I knew I was intrigued. The warning words “Pontins”, “Camber Sands”, “£80 p/p for 2 nights” escaped my poor endorphin soaked brain. All I read was “4 exercise classes every hour”, “Hey Mickey! Dance class - Dance like a cheerleader!” and “ Step - Level 3”. I was agog. I signed us up.

I drove to Camber Sands. It was lovely - pretty little houses lined the country roads. Pubs welcomed us in with blackboards promising Sunday roasts. My boot groaned with the bags of supplies (my friend had brought), and our cases full of workout gear and deodorant.

We arrived. All I can remember of the reception area was an enormous pink cement octopus. We were given a map and sent on our way.

I want to tell you that the place resembled a concentration camp, but I’m trying to avoid clichés and so will restrain myself. It made the Hi-de-Hi set look modernistic and avant garde. It was horrible. I looked at my friend, jaw agape. She smiled and said “It’s quite nice, eh?” It was at that point I knew our friendship lived on borrowed time.

Our apartment smelt bad. It smelt like a whore’s tampon, wrapped in hair which had been burnt on a barbeque. (I apologise for this mental image) The perfume I spritzed about made it worse, so we kept the door open. In March. On the South coast. The mad winds blew, but the smell remained. The sofa resembled something which a poor old man may have died in while watching Family Fortunes. He may have shit himself - that’s how it smelled anyway. Like dead man’s shit. The bathroom would have made a maggot retch. It was bad.

The food my mate had brought consisted of bread, cheese, butter, pasta and alcohol. Not a great combo for a “Fitness weekend”. Her explanation? “Carb Loading”. I got drunk. We went out to an exercise class - I, rather predictably, hurt myself. That night I struggled to release her from a huge rugby player who appeared to be discovering what she’d had for tea by tongue. I dragged her home and fell into a miserable stupor. Until our neighbours decided to inform the entire block that her boyfriend was a “Naughty Boy - you like to fuck me in the arse don’t you?” and “Harder, Harder, Oohhhh” until 5 in the morning.

The second day consisted of me gamely limping through classes, and when we arrived back at the “apartment” it was a relief. Until the electricity blew out. I walked a half mile to the octopus reception. It was empty and desolate. Like me. I walked the half mile back to the security office and reported the problem. 2 Hours later, I answered the door, blue of lip and hard of heart. “Silly girls!” the caretaker laughed, “You can’t have the shower on and the oven at the same time”. Oh silly me.

When we finally left I felt joy. Until I felt itching. Terrible terrible itching, followed by strange red lines running up my arms. I went to the Dr. and discovered I’d caught scabies.

Length? 2 nights. The scars may haunt me for ever.
( my_cat_has_no_shoes meh meh meh MEH MEH, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 21:15, 4 replies)

Star-Trek Moment
When I worked in Liverpool I was frequently (OK,always) on the piss after work. A few of us would go straight out, have a few beers, then some nosh and then drink until the wee hours. If I tried that now I'd be in bed for a week.

So this one night I was severely lashed. 10 plus pints and a few whiskies and I could barely cling on to the floor. Then I had a Star-Trek Moment.

A Star-Trek Moment is when you're on the piss and you're enjoying yourself in some club. Then, a split second later, you're waking up back in your hotel room and you haven't a clue how you got there. That's what happened this night.

So there I was, in my hotel room and I had the hangover from hell. Blearily I forced open my eyes. Then it hit me. I had the feeling that I wasn't alone. Oh crap. What have I picked up this time? So I swivelled my eyes to the left and saw......

Red. All over the pillowcase, all over the sheets and, inexplicably, all up the wall. Oh fuck. What have I done now? Did I invite some girl back and then murder her?

So I dragged my aching carcass out of bed and headed for the bathroom. I flicked on the light switch and there in the full length mirror, in front of me, stood a 6 foot tall Geordie, bollock naked with a kebab stuck to the side of his head.

Cheers

P.S.Have you any idea how long I scrubbed the side of my face for to try and get the smell of chilli sauce and kebab out? Well it didn't work. For weeks afterwards I was followed by packs of dogs......
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 3:17, 2 replies)

How I spent two nights in a brothel without really noticing and certainly without getting laid
Ecuador is a country that I have visited twice: once in 1995 as part of a school expedition after my A-levels finished, and once in 1997 alone, because I liked the country so much the first time around. This story takes place on the second trip. For background, it is worth knowing that, to attract attention, Ecuadorians whistle.

One hot, sultry afternoon, my bus pulled into the city of Guayaquil. Tired, and with nothing but an out-of-date Lonely Planet to guide me, I set off in search of a place to stay for a couple of nights. The first place I tried was no longer in business, but another hostel across the square also had a reasonable write-up, so I decided to try there. They were open and had a room. I attempted to negotiate a price in broken Spanish. The man behind the counter looked puzzled, but gave me a figure. It was slightly higher than I’d expected, but bearable. I agreed. He asked for the money up front. In retrospect, this should’ve been a warning, but I was young and exhausted, and I paid.

I was shown a room. The man warned me that I ought to be careful, because the lock on the door was… well, there was no lock on the door. I protested; he offered to go and fetch a padlock. (Note to travellers: always take a hefty padlock with you.) I waited, and, as I waited, I looked around the room. I had initially assumed that it was dark in there because the blinds were shut. In fact, it was because there was no window: the only source of illumination came from the fluorescent tube that intermittently flickered in the bathroom. “Maybe,” I thought to myself, “I don’t want to be here after all. I should get a refund and find somewhere else to stay.”

“Refund” was not a word in the manager’s vocabulary – but, after a protest, he agreed to give me a different room. This one had a window with a view over a square, and a lock on the door. The light worked, and there was air conditioning of a sort. Granted, there was a leak somewhere in the bathroom, but… well, what the heck. 48 hours and I’d be out of there, back in Quito.

I didn’t see much of the other residents of the pension, but that was fine by me. I think it was on the second evening, though, that I heard someone whistling outside my door. Wondering if it might be the manager wanting to see me, I opened it, to be confronted by an old man standing in the doorway of the room opposite, trying to attract the attention of someone down the hall. Behind him, I noticed that the bed was unmade. I apologised and shut the door. And then something occurred to me.

The man had been naked.

Half an hour later, when I went out to find a bar and a restaurant, the door opposite was still open. In the dusky light, the bed was quite clearly made. Of the occupant – of any occupant – there was no sign.

As the sun set over the Gulf of Guayaquil, the lights came on along the Pacific coast and a light also came on in my mind. The puzzlement of the manager when I asked for two nights was easily explicable when seen in the context of his more normal schedule of bookings by the hour. (Maybe he’d been a little intimidated, too, by my supposed sexual prowess: I was going to need two days?) The lack of lights in the first bedroom would not be too big a problem to many of those wanting to use it.

Still: the sheets were clean, and the clientele was quiet. Moreover, in the end, I’d wanted somewhere to sleep, and that’s what I got.

And that is how I spent two nights in a brothel without really noticing and certainly without getting laid.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 17 Jan 2008, 20:15, 5 replies)

Crikey, I take it that no one here has ever been to ATP at Camber Sands...
I went to the one curated by Slint back in 2005. It made one think that perhaps Hitler had the wrong idea when he decided to gas the Jews. Instead he should have sent them all to Camber Sands to freeze to death in what can only be described as an Indie Concentration Camp. Mainly because;

a) It was the middle of fucking February
b) It was so cold there it should have been sponsored by a grinning cartoon figurine of someone suffering from acute hypothermia.

Our chalet apparently had central heating. If it had it then it was most certainly as mythical as a chinese unicorn because despite the pounds worth of electricity we kept pumping into the meter, the temperature didn't go above ball breakingly cold throughout the duration of the three days that we were there. And that's even before you got onto the fact that I went with one of my friends and his mental girlfriend who was trying to get impregnated by him against his will and Ex-Mr-Giro was staying right next door. Most nights saw me and my other female best friend putting on fifteen layers each, pushing our single beds together and huddling together for warmth. Which would make a really good porno film if we weren't both wearing duffle coats. It really says something when one of the highlights of a music festival is taking a massive amount of amphetamines to keep warm and then spending twelve hours hugging a radiator whilst your best mate refuses to come out of a cupboard because she's convinced it contains Narnia.

Still. Fucking great festival though...
(giro_playgirl is new here. Howdy., Thu 17 Jan 2008, 20:33, 3 replies)

Bath ski-ing - a new Urban sport
Six or so years ago, Mrs Osok made a very silly decision and said "I Will" and chained herself in a very legally binding way to the ugly bloke in a kilt who coincidentally happened to be standing next to her looking quite frankly terrified.

Hanyway, we were originally off to somewhere in Johnny-Foreigner-Land for the nuptials, but thanks to a minor airliner/skyscraper interface in the US the flights were all to cock. So we decided that we were off to bonny Jockland, to a wee 'retreat' hotel. No kids, double baths, view over the loch, charming hosts, lovely food, and no kids. Now that hotel was 100% as advertised, superb and wonderful and if it wasn't for the inconvenient rugrats then I'd go back like a shot.

However, I had decided to drive up rather than fly and hire a tin box. No probs. Rather late on in the planning, I was informed that She Who Must Be Ignored would rather overnight on the way up so we could have brekkie with the hideous remains of our guestlist from the night before, and have a nice amble Northwards.

And what could I book at short notice? A TravelHell sorry Lodge. All is not lost, they're OK really, it's only for one night etc.

Check in, allegedly a sesh of studly magnificence occurred to make up for the passing out in a drooling heap the night before.

My dear lady wife then decides it's shower time. Off she trots, splishy splashy.....and then a sound I can only descibe as "SkweeeekThudFUCKFUCKFUCK".

I don't know what they used to clean their baths after Dazza the photocopier salesman and Sloppy Sally from Sales have been in residence, but it turns baths into completely frictionless surfaces. Causing my moist, fragrant beloved to adopt the manoevre known vulgarly as "arse over tit".

This caused much rib-bruising, mostly when I noticed that she'd put the bathmat (that'd be the rubber thing to stop you slipping that they had a sign up about using OR ELSE YOU DIE) on the bathroom floor, took the piss, and was promptly punched. Repeatedly.

I think no more of this Incident of Random Blondeness, and we head off to our week of much bouncy-bouncy lurrve, a bit of hillwalking, distillery tours, and getting lost on the West Highland Way. Which is impossible.

Upon our return, she's still complaining, and nips to the scab-lifter. To discover two fractured ribs. Hard Lass Wor Lass or What?

(Of course everyone thought I was a wifebeating scumbag, but hey)
(osok Rebel without a clue, Thu 17 Jan 2008, 17:37, 3 replies)

The Bates Motel!
Or at least that's how we thought of it.

When my first son was a newborn my wife and I were going down to Westchester County (just north of NYC) to visit a friend for the weekend. Wally (a nickname, based on a slight resemblance to the older brother on "Leave It To Beaver") was engaged to a girl named Mary who turned out to be a true nutbar. The engagement was broken about a month before the wedding- and Wally, as one would expect from a friend of mine, decided to hold his own Bachelor Party on what would have been his wedding day, to celebrate still being a bachelor. Lots of food, lots of beer, lots of drunken louts hurling a football around and laughing like hell... in all, a great time.

So my wife and I left our son with his grandparents and started down toward NYC from the Utica area. We left rather late in the day, planning on getting as far as we could that night and finishing the trip in the morning.

As it happened, our route took us along the Taconic Parkway. To explain what this means, I will describe it thus: take a road going through the Yorkshire Dale, make it twice as wide with no shoulder, make it two lanes going the same way, and fill it with homicidal maniacs driving between 90 and 100 miles per hour. (That's between 145 and 160 kph for you metric types.) It was scary as hell for me as I was the one driving- so for my wife it was like being a Christian Scientist with appendicitis. (Cool points if you get the reference.)

So when we saw a sign for a motel, we got off the Parkway gladly and went looking.

Have you ever seen an American "motor court" from the 1950s? It's basically a square U-shape with parking in front of the units. This was a particularly grim little place, long since run to seed. When I went to check in I was confronted by a four foot tall woman with grey hair and wild staring eyes who rolled off of her bed in the next room to attend the front desk, and said about three words the entire time. In a prominent place behind the desk was an autographed photo of Phyllis Diller.

Seriously- I was looking for Norman Bates as we went to our room.

We got our suitcase and went into the room, which reeked of old cigarettes and other things I didn't want to think about, and found it to be quite up-to-date if you were living in about 1962. There was no TV, and the only entertainment was a clock radio boasting "Solid State Electronics". But it had a flattish surface with some sort of soft things at the end that served as a bed, so we elected to go along with it.

Bear in mind that we were in our late 20s at the time, and our hormones were still boiling at an almost adolescent level. So I suppose it's not too much of a surprise that we got a bit horny despite the surroundings.

As she was still nursing at the time, my wife was not on birth control pills, so we were relying on a diaphragm and spermicidal foam. Unfortunately we never did quite get the hang of that- inserting the diaphragm was a skill neither of us ever really acquired, or at least we weren't very good at it. But my wife went into the bathroom to do her best with it anyway.

I lay there in the horrid little bed, naked and waiting for my wife to emerge in her while lacy nightgown, as ready for a good romp as any young man. I lay there, one thin partition away from her as she struggled with the unfamiliar and awkward equipment that she was trying to insert into her nether regions. As I lay there I heard a muffled explosion and some very bad language, followed by a muttered "...all over the fucking place!" and tried not to think about what was going on in the bathroom.

Then my wife emerged in her white lace nightgown, her nipples hard and very visible through the thin lace, with a shy and demure look on her face- and, perched like a white lacy bow on top of her head, a large puff of spermicidal foam in her hair.

It took a couple of minutes for me to get control of my laughter enough to gasp out that she should look at the mirror.

I did get laid- but it took a while to get her calmed enough, and for me to get the giggles out of my system.

Oh, who am I kidding- I've been giggling even as I write this!
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 18 Jan 2008, 1:35, 5 replies)

Floody French
A few years ago I went on a cheap camping holiday with some friends in France. The first few days were excellent as we basked in the sun and drank numerous beers.

However, one morning we awoke to find our camp site had turned into a lake during the previous evening’s thunderstorm. To this day I have no idea how none of us woke up on what must have been a howling night. We were all sleeping on those camp beds that are about 1-2 ft off the ground and this is where the water had risen. Everything was sodden… absolutely everything. We abandoned the tent and set off through the water in no particular direction. It was an absolute nightmare and we didn’t know where to go. The local town was in a complete mess as the river had burst its banks and poured into the streets. All local transport had shut down so we headed off to higher ground.

It took us a good few hours but we eventually stumbled upon a small town. It felt like we had been transported from a comfortable/modern European/internationalised 21st century/ cultural exchange trip into rural medieval France. The sky was a dark grey and the summer heat had been replaced by a harsh wind. As we trekked along the cobble streets we noticed that everything was bolted closed. Eventually we came across a small hotel… and here comes the relevant part.

Did you ever see ‘Allo’Allo? No, me neither. Anyway, do you remember the old grandmother that used to live upstairs? (If not, imagine an 85 year old bat shit crazy French woman). This was the owner of the hotel… which was basically her very old house. Most people in the world would have looked at us with moderate sympathy… like four young kittens that had just escaped drowning. The old woman took an immediate dislike to these dirty English youths and sneered at us. I tried to explain to her in French that we weren’t English (we were Scottish – auld alliance my arse) but she ignored us.

“Only 1 room.” (in French)
“Err ok we’ll take it “
“Only double”
“Err ok we’ll take it”
“No men together”
“…”
“Only 1 person can have the room”
“Bollocks”

Two people had lost all their money so we were going to need to share anyway. This wasn’t a problem for us but she was making it quite clear only one of us was getting in that room. We were sly bastards though so one of us booked the room and the others disappeared for an hour before breaking in through the back window.

The ‘hotel’ itself was something I’d imagine was near the front line trenches of WW1: No towels, no bath/shower, one sink with a dripping tap, no curtains, no carpet, no bed sheet… no bed. It was a hollow excuse for a room with an empty bed frame and two wooden chairs. We changed into some partially dry clothes and jumped out the window to get some alcohol.

The evening made the day bearable as we wound up in an old pub and drank our sorrows away. With a few beers in us we crept back into the rustic charm of our hotel and drifted off to sleep. The next morning I woke up hearing two sets of raised voices. One belonged to my friend and the other to the hotel owner. She had unlocked the door at 6am and came into our room whilst we were still asleep. She then proceeded to wake up my friend by poking him in the balls with her cane. She then started shouting at us in some of the most horrific sounds I’ve ever heard in my life. When she began to throw stuff at us we all made a quick exit out the window and ran out of the town never to return.

It remains one of my most favourite stories to tell. When keeping in contact with that particular group we always wonder two things. “Did we actually go back in time?” and “Do you think she would have provided a breakfast?”

Length?
The cane was bigger than her.
(bigbillybaws, Wed 23 Jan 2008, 6:25, Reply)

Pikmin porn
A couple of years ago my company, either as a reward or punishment, relocated me to Canada. While I tried to find somewhere to live, they paid for me to stay in a very average hotel out by the airport.

It was miles away from anything, and I had nothing to do in the evenings except read and watch telly, which got boring pretty quickly. Salvation came in the form of the in-room Gamecube, which cost about 5 bucks to play for half an hour; I got hooked by the game Pikmin and eventually racked up about $120 of room service charges.

Upon checking out, I sent the bill off to expenses, not realizing one thing; every single half-hour session of innocent Gamecube playing was itemized as "In-room entertainment charge." Or, to put it another way, exactly what it would have looked like if I'd been ordering new porno every half-hour.

This led to an 'interesting' conversation in which I had to try and convince the nice lady from HR that I'd actually been trying to help the spaceman get back to his home planet with the help of some magical flowers, rather than masturbating myself into a frenzy. I ended up paying the bill.
(silencer, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 20:47, 2 replies)

Bunch of truckers
Driving long distances in ridiculously small cars provides a wealth of stories, usually toilet-focused. This one involves the Ukraine again, a country so lacking in hospitality that Chernobyl was probably the best thing ever to happen to it.

Midnight or thereabouts. I'd been behind the wheel of a clapped out nineteen year old VW Polo for so long that my hands were clenching the steering wheel in a vice-like grip and I was chain smoking and singing show tunes to stay awake, which was impressive since I don't usually smoke and can't sing at all. The ProPlus was wearing off and I was exhausted. My co-driver had long since crashed out in the passenger seat and I didn't have the heart to tell him I was falling asleep at the wheel.

We were tired, we were hungry, and up ahead just off the patchy motorway we saw the bright lights of the long distance lorries. The convoy of four useless cars pulled over. We could hear music somewhere. The warm, crackling flames of bonfire danced outside a long, low building and the smell of the meat-on-a-stick enticed us in.

Using the tried-and-trusted international gesture for food (moo-ing and pointing at our mouths) we each managed to secure a portion of meat-on-a-stick. There was even beer - cold beer - the moisture trickling down the outside of the icy bottle. I was going to eat and sleep. This was good.

A smart person pisses when she can, not when she needs to, so I somehow managed to mumble to word for toilet. The kindly harridan behind the counter led me out of the building, along a row of trucks, up a small hill, and pointed at a small wooden hut. I took one step closer and the smell of ammonia nearly knocked me out. A second step, and I had to stuff my scarf in my mouth to stop me gagging. I made it to the hole in the ground smeared with crud and splashed with piss. This was girls' toilet; thank god I never saw the blokes'.

I held my breath for a very long minute and a half before bursting from the shed and legging it down the hill towards the trucks. There I had the delight of bumping in to the hairy lardiness that is the Eastern European truck driver, accompanied by the lovely young and nubile ladies of the night who were selling their wares in the lorry cabs. I arrived back into the cafe to find the harridan screaming at us for more money. Once we got the cars going (no mean feat when you have to bump start it every time you stop) we left hastily to the dulcet tones of Cyrillic swear words and found a lay-by several miles away where I could sleep on the back seat and pee in a hedge in comfort.

Moral: truck stops are maybe not the best places to get a good night's sleep. But then, you knew that already, right? In retrospect, it was not unlike a scene from the Lost Boys. Had I stayed, I bet I would have been vampire fodder.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:48, 6 replies)

Suprise bitch, unexpected sheep!
My dad has a number of mates who, like him, like to hurl heavy objects as far as they can. Some of these guys can be slightly mad. Our hero today is called Hamish (as I recall. He's definately scottish, so it'll do.)

Hamish turns up for a competition, drops his stuff off in a room, and goes for some practice. When he gets back, he discovers that some official has stolen his room. Hamish is unimpressed.
"Ya took ma fookin' room."
"I am an official, this is my room now."
"We'll fookin' see about that."

So Hamish wanders outside, picks up a sheep (remember, he's a big lad) and hurls it through the window of said room.

Official scarpers, Hamish wanders back inside, throws the somewhat bewildered sheep back out of the window, and lies down for a kip.


He was not charged for the window.

With apologies to whoever did that rather brilliant christmas card for stealing the title.
(Bearded Whumpus In chav Britain, schoolgirl offers sweets to YOU!, Wed 23 Jan 2008, 10:12, 1 reply)

Tortoise racing
...was the highlight of our stay.

Morocco, 2001, over new year, we booked ten days too many. The first five days were in a villa/complex, which looked fantastic on the website.

From the airport to the villa was an arduous 8 hours. The driver, who spoke no english, stopped down dark alleys and picked up shady passengers, only to stop, leave the car again, and leave us sitting in the car like a load of lemons from time to time.

The villa was in miles of arid flat scrub land, small bushes and goats the only features. Access was by a road so bumpy it took 30mins to get to the main road, scraping the sump all the way, past a bedouin settlement (concrete lego).

We'd booked it expecting to go with a full house of mates, but for various reasons there were only now four of us.

The villa looked beautiful when we arrived. Bedecked with candles, lights twinkling, unusual shaped rooms, very quaint.

It slept ten in five double rooms. The bedrooms looked fab - goatskins on pebbles, designer baths. Unfortunately, the goatskins were exceedingly manky, like cardboard, and still had clagnuts attached. The pebbles were sharp. The designer bath was heated by a small propane canister, which spat out steam when working and ice cold water when on a break - we both managed to burn ourselves whilst trying to shower (the activity was affectionately known by the end of the 'holiday' as "going for a wet shout"). The plug didn't fit so the water drained away at about the same rate it was filling, unless blocked by testicles.

We asked about aquiring some of Morocco's finest and were charged £10 for a pea sized piece. Oh hello. It's fleece the tourist time!

I can do squalor and inconvenience, but the real issue was this.

Once it became apparent that we were only four, the bedouin kitchen help slowly, surreptitiously, let in her mates, her mate's kids, grandmothers, pets etc to live in the empty rooms. They sat, gathered round small fires, scowling as we passed, as if we were in their space. No manner of smiles or waves would get their acknowledgement.

There was a swimming pond, but it was full of leaves, and empty anyway. It was only 18 degrees. The sky was grey. The nearest town had a couple of food shops selling bags of lentils and tins, but was totally dry. There was no electricity, and they'd not bothered with candles since the day of our arrival. The food was the same every day, some flat bread for breakfast and a watery suspect flavourless tagine in the evening.

Fuck. We'd gone on holiday by mistake!

A few days of this - there's only so many books you can read by torch light, and under duress - and we gagging to get home - then - salvation - a lovely French lady who had a guest house a mile away invited us as fellow lost souls for New Years Eve - yay!

Got there to be immediately stuck €30 (!) each (to cover food and drink and musicians) and spent the next couple of hours listening to some smug Germans who'd camel trekked in from somewhere or other. We'd already eaten, and had to hide the excess food.

Then - the finale! - the musicians! Don't get me wrong, I like world music, Tuvan throat singers rock my world. But never have I heard such a cacophony. Atonal plink plonk, dreadful instruments, no rhythm at all. We clapped politely after what seemed an age. They came round with a hat for contributions. They looked strangely familiar. They were. They were staying in our house!

P.S. Tortoise races, even with giant wild tortoises, are less interesting and zany than you might first imagine. And slower.
(Countryslicker, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:44, 3 replies)

B & B Filth....York
Ran a pub in York that had a B+B attached. One random Tuesday night I checked in a reasonable lateb 30s couple, well spoken, just visiting etc...

They left in the morning, paid the bill, had breakfast, asked directions, nice and polite.

Got to the room to clean it. Oh. My word. Blood and red wine on the sheets. Broken glass in the bin, on the carpet, in the sink. A pint glass filled with piss on the nightstand, the remnants of a couple of lines of charlie next to said pint glass. And a 9 inch turd in the bath. Just beautiful.
(jameslib, Sat 19 Jan 2008, 20:03, 8 replies)

The Shah's favourite hotel
This isn't about a bad hotel so much as a wierd one.

Ramsar is a city on Iran's northern, Caspian, coast. The Grand Hotel there, apparently, had used to be the Shah's favourite. (There's a strange video of it here for the curious.)

I stayed there for a night in April 2004. It was plush and comfortable - in a 1970s kind of a way - and almost completely deserted. And it was huge, both in terms of the number of rooms, and the height of the ceilings. Because of the low number of guests, lighting was kept to a minimum - hence the rather eerie feeling of walking long, high, dim and utterly silent corridors.

It was sad, as much as anything. In the evening, after a dinner of sturgeon kebab (stick that, your Majesty!), I wandered to the bar. Being Iran, the bar was not a heaving drunken joint. Nevertheless, it was themed - roughly - along Scottish lines, with every possible soft furnishing covered in Royal Stuart tartan. It, too, was dimly-lit, and almost completely deserted, with the exception of the people from my party. The barman was heartbreakingly keen to sell us tea and ice-cream: he confided, though, that what he really wanted to do was to sell us cocktails, just as he had been employed to do to the Shah 25 years previously. Instead, he satisfied himself by giving us embossed cocktail twizzlers as souvenirs, and showing us around the (once again, dimly-lit) casino, the roulette wheel of which had not turned for a quarter of a century.

Outside, the weather was dreich and as melancholy as the atmosphere. As we sipped our tea, a lone microlite headed out over the Caspian, north towards Baku...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 14:43, 7 replies)

Thailand
land of discovery, land of opportunity land of freedom. Or at least that is what the young French girl thought before she met a friend of mine, who we shall call Clarence.

This guy is a liability, you all know one, drugs, alcohol, cars, women he's abused them all, but somehow his cheeky grin always gets him out of trouble.

On an ill advised and barely planned trip around South East Asia he met up with a similarly loveably cretin, who we shall call Jim, and they proceeded to go out on the lash, a lot.

One fateful night however they overdid it a little and Jim a little lot the worse for wear crawled into his top level bunk bed above nice young French girl and passed out. All was well for a while before the inevitability of biology and physics of a limited bladder size took their toll. Jim gently emptied his very full bladder in his sleep and the fetid concoction seeped straight through the anorexic mattress and soaked the poor French girl below.

“Mon Dieu” I would imagine she exclaimed, before berating him in French. However her stereotypical rantings fell of deaf and very drunk ears.

“Oo la la, sacre bleu” I imagine she muttered under her breath as she flipped the mattress and remade her bed on the other side of the room right next to the bunk Clarence was sleeping in. After more clichéd Fench ramblings she once again drifted off to sleep happy that at least it had only been a little bit of wee.

Unfortunately Clarence had similar bladder issues and a little while awoke in that weird way you do when rat arsed, where you don’t know where you are or really what’s going on. Consequently in his semi conscious state he knelt up on his bunk whipped out his winky and proceeded to piss all over the already yellow tinged frog, before passing out for a well deserved kip.

I’m sure many people have pissed themselves whilst under the influence or even been pissed on, I’ll bet not many have been pissed on twice in the same night when they were sober.

Apparently the young French was gone in the morning, leaving nothing behind expect the faint smell of ammonia.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:34, 2 replies)

Halls of residence 1987 - 1988: A tale of boy meets girl, loses girl, and jumps out of window
School French trip, 1984. Ah, the memories. I’d got talking to a girl sat in front of me on the bus, and instantly felt an attraction to her. It was her eyes, I think – deep, dark, mysterious, exotic. I was intoxicated by her. However, being a painfully shy, skinny adolescent, I didn’t do anything about it. Plus, it appeared she was more interested in my mate. Anyway, after a week, we got back to the old homestead, she moved away a couple of weeks later due to her dad relocating, and that was that.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I’m off to college. A last minute decision (even though I’d been accepted months before), my dithering indecisiveness being based on the fact that none of my mates were going (having all opted to stay on in sixth form and do A levels). I think I made the decision on the Friday before I was due to start, buoyed slightly by my mum giving me an encouraging push. “Don’t be such a fucking idiot” I think were her exact words. Anyway, off I went, and because of the travelling distance involved, I stayed in halls Monday – Friday and went home at weekends.

The halls of residence were a slightly daunting experience at first, and certainly not what I was expecting. You could, I suppose, call it quaint in this day and age. Whilst it wasn’t desperately crappy, it was ruled with a rod of iron. Almost like being in public school in the 1920s, one would imagine. The first night pep talk from the halls overlords was like a lecture on the perils of male/female social interaction. Indeed, even though the halls were mixed, there was clear segregation of the sexes, both wings of the four story block being sealed off on each floor by a locked door. You could play pool or watch TV with each other, even sit NEXT to members of the opposite sex at breakfast and dinner, but post watershed relations were strictly forbidden. The rooms themselves were little more than a 10 by 10 box, the visible breezeblocks covered in very thin Happy Shopper whitewash bought as a job lot from the council, offset by a basic bed with the loudest springs and stiffest blankets imaginable. Alongside the bed was an MDF construct masquerading as a bedside table / drawers combination, plus a built in lockable wardrobe and a sink unit with mirror. Toilets and bathrooms were along the corridor next to the communal kitchen. Curfew was strictly 10:30pm, at which point the main doors to the outside world were locked and bolted, and it was lights out at 11 (yeah, right).

Despite these restrictions, and despite not really knowing anyone, I soon struck up some friendships outside of the initial body of people with whom I’d been at school but hadn’t really kicked around with. It was the usual scenario really – anyone who seemed to have vaguely the same tastes as you (often identified by what was blaring from their stereos), and you would strike up conversation. Within a week I had established a new circle of friends to go to the pub with. Until 10:20 at any rate – we did, after all, have to get back to our POW camp before the overlords meted out a severe punishment (usually by not leaving biscuits out in the kitchen to go with our milky drinks).

One acquaintance, though, was totally unexpected. The object of my desire in France all those years ago was also residing in the halls, and pretty soon we struck up a friendship, followed by more. My first love. And it was shackled somewhat by the overly security conscious hall overlords. Damn them and their keys and their curfews. Damn them all to… What’s that? One of the lads doing a building course has his own toolbag, you say? With a screwdriver that fits the mechanism of the doors of chastity? Well, get to work loosening the mechanism so that the cover can be moved and the catch released then…

So that’s what happened. And every night, we’d go trooping off upstairs, have our biscuits and milky drinks, then wait until after 11 when we were sure that the overlords were settled in for the night. At which point, the doors of chastity would be sneakily opened and bodies would disappear into realms where they quite frankly shouldn’t have been…

And thus started 9 months of almost nightly bucking the system and getting one over on the adults in charge. Until one of the cleaners noticed that cover on the locking mechanism wobbled slightly as she let herself through and reported it to the powers that be, who struck us down with great vengeance and furious anger. By securing the mechanism again.

Ah well. It was discovered only a few weeks before the summer break, so it wasn’t so bad in the end. After the summer, on return to college we broke up (more her decision than mine) and I began to question my decision to move back into halls. I made one last ditch attempt to speak to her (if only to find out why she had ended things between us), which rather daringly involved me following her up to her room to try and talk and resulted in my jumping out of a second story window after she stormed off the get the overlord… I still don’t know to this day what happened. However, I do know that she took up with a bloke who used to regularly thrash her, and who she subsequently married and had kids with. Haven’t seen her in nearly 20 years.

I moved out after two weeks and into a shared house with a couple of mates I’d been in the halls with the previous year. That’s where my education really started, and where the quality of accommodation really went down the pan…
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Tue 22 Jan 2008, 13:32, 1 reply)