My 2pence worth
A friend and I had been to the beach for the day - we'd decided to walk to the fort, from where we stood on the beach, it didnt seem that far - and we couldn't see the massive body of water that was between it.
We got to the edge of the beach, and decided that it was too far, and should go back to dry land, silly idea anyway.
(After looking on Google Earth just now, it is around 1/2 a mile off shore.)
To save time, we cut through what looked like a puddle on the beach, rather than walk around it - only it wasn't just a little puddle. The water level rose over my nipples and I couldnt swim, my friend started to swim towards me - being a young punk, i was wearing military boots and a backpack as was the done thing back then. I may as well have been wearing diving boots with bricks in my bag.
Luckily as I carried on walking, the water level dropped and I got out unharmed.

We walked into the town through the backroads, and had to cross a train track, with Cleethorpes being a seaside resort, we thought the track was just for one of them crappy little choo-choo trains that drives people around the sea front, it wasn't until we shut the gate behind us - we realised it wasn't, it was actually a working trainline - the single carriage that whooshed past reminded us of that, a few seconds later and we'd have been under that train.

At Leeds Festival 2002 - with the same person, we were watching the toilet fires and noticed a large Calor gas bottle in the middle of it
'If that blows up, it's going to kill somebody' I said
So what did we do? Walked into the enclosure and carried the gas bottle out through the flames.

Few other times not worth mentioning, mainly due being a bit nutty on a pushbike.
(Davethefan began lurking again on or around, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 17:24, Reply)

Remeber remember the 5th of november ...
But at the same time try to recall that if you drunkenly throw a handful of Cathrine wheels onto a bonfire the best place to take cover is not in a nearby shed full of fireworks with an open door.

You might spill your beer
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 17:21, 1 reply)

Whats that smell? I asked myself
Is this a dodgy cigarette?

No I thought to myself. The cigarette is fine that's your hair burning, you set your face on fire when you lit a fag of the gas hob.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 17:19, Reply)

"arts and crafts"
Close to midnight, cutting some stencils and I somehow managed to embed a razor-sharp scalpel cleanly into my wrist, nicking an artery. Blood sprays everywhere. Call an ambulance, get picked up, quizzed by the ambulance drivers.

When we got to the desk at A&E the ambulance drivers were checking me in. I could see the old girl mouth the word 'suicide??' to them, to which they replied: 'No love, Arts and Crafts'.
(kidcamel is due to call your mum at, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 17:18, Reply)

Murder by dairy : an epic repost

At the age of fifteen like most lads I was severely lacking in maturity, one of the infinite ways this manifested itself was school lunch eating competition.

the challenge: how few bites can you eat a cheese sandwich in? for weeks the record stood at two, held by me of course. When I was tied for first place I had to do one better (oh fuck off I'm a man I cant help it) and tried to finish a sandwich in one bite.

I slooooooowly pushed a whole sandwich into my mouth, pausing halfway through to allow my saliva to soak in. Mistaking this for failure a member of my audience shouted "he needs some encouragement!!" and punched me in the face forcing the entire sandwich into my mouth and a large slice of cheese into my windpipe.


"nnngh" I couldn't breathe. I ran to the toilets and threw up but it was no good, the offending lump was stuck fast. Are you ok my friends did ask , but i could only clutch my throat and make feeble wheezing sounds.

they ran for the most qualified medical professional available, a dinnerlady. She was apprehensive about going in the boys toilets "he'd better be really ill" i herd her though the door. At the same time my lungs were on fire and with every gasp i felt more and more lightheaded, with nothing left to lose i poked a finger down my throat and hoped for the best.

In my mind all i could think about was that I would die on the floor of the toilets a virgin in dirty pants The local news headlines "local teen dies in horrific sandwich accident"

"boy, 15 charged with manslaughter by dairy, consoled only by 1st place ranking in school eating contest"

"local man fails to heed warning about waring clean pants in case of death "

With one desperate heave I spat out the lethal cheddar chunk and collapsed. My mates burst in and found me lying on the floor surrounded by cheesy sick, whiter than Casper gasping for breath like 120 a day fag hound.

I survived.

the next day I came in with very finely grated cheese sandwiches and won the contest by taking the one bite record. Woo me.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 17:17, 4 replies)

I was walking around a disused landfill site
when I decided to take the direct route back to the gate and my car. I was walkting through some overgrown bits when my foot slipped down into a very wet bit of ground.

I looked at my site plan and couldn't see anything. I looked at the version from the 1960s and saw that I was stood at the edge of a faint circular outline on the map. The area was marked "toxic waste lagoon".

I backtracked and walked the long way around. I know it's 40-odd years hence, but they could've at least tried to fill it in properly. Bloody Avonmouth.
( M3rx likes the Asian ladies, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 17:16, 1 reply)

Tip No 1
If you ever happen to be in a foreign country and happen to be hidden away watching the locals as they fire various weaponry into the air in celebration, don’t ever, ever be tempted to take flash photography of the proceedings……
(SpangoTheWonderBadger is brewing beer, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 17:11, Reply)

Wibble
I once stole Jean Claud van Damme’s pint of Old Peculiar when we were in a pub in Bridgewater.

I think it was him.

Definitely French. No, no, Belgian. Like the chocolate. He wasn’t black.

*Dices with death*
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:56, 4 replies)

Snake hunt
Do not get anywhere near a snake - it will be poisonous. That is what our Lonely Planet book said about Australian deserts. It was difficult enough to find a snake, you could walk for hours and die of dehydration before getting anywhere near a snake.
You can therefore imagine our great enthusiasm when we finally came to see a real life, mightily pissed off brown snake of unknown type. We were driving through the middle of nowhere, and by pure chance met another couple who had stopped their car right in that middle of nowhere. Because they had seen the snake first. Now imagine 4 grown ups chasing a brown snake - just to take a picture! I got as close as 1-2 meters, when the snake suddenly stopped and thought about giving me a chase instead. I therefore also stopped and reversed back to the car.
It was impressively idiotic in retrospect, but it made sense at the time.
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:54, 1 reply)

ants
I worked part time at a gun store, and every so often someone would bring in some old gun powder because they had quit reloading their own ammo years ago and now the stuff was useless. You cant resell it so generally we just took it into the parking lot and burned it. I found a can of Black Powder and thought "fun time". My girlfriend (of 3 weeks) was the bookeeper and she told me "dont fuck with that its very old and doesn't work right". What does a bookkeeper WOMAN know about gunpowder anyway. In the parking lot I found an anthill that was perfect for the disposal process. I poured about 1/2 pound of Black Powder on the anthill and stood to the side to light it. It would not light! So a flash of Genius went through my mind;so back into the store for a piece paper to roll some of the powder into a spliff like fuse. I lit the end not noticing the some of the powder had gotten right to the end of the paper. It went of in my hand (very painful) and since I was squatting over the 1/2 pound on the ground that went up in a flash also(very very painful. See Wiley Coyote cartoons for a picture. I spent a week in the Burn unit and another 5 weeks off work. 5 years later my girlfriend still tells me I am an Idiot, and the anthill?

Bigger than ever.
(NatMcNasty, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:53, Reply)

Chainsaw
My dad was cutting down a tree in the back garden. He'd hired a chainsaw. I was watching, chainsaws are kind of exciting.

My dad steps back to admire his handywork, notices some of the chopped branches are on the extention cord and he needs two hands to sort the problem out.

"Spanky," said my dad, "hold this for a minute."

And he passes me over the bone-shudderingly powerful, incredibly heavy idling chainsaw...

...I was seven years old...
( SpankyHanky, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:48, 2 replies)

whilsts in..
the rurals of Wales aged about 14 I had come to the conclusion that having survived a loaded shotgun in my mouth and various other 'sillyness' I was pretty much indestructable.

I was the age some people might find dificult, well they may do now, but really I was a child, full of glee and coke.

So, gambolling down a small road, way ahead of my family I spy a wall, just over a foot high. The ideal rocky item to leap uponst, without a shimmer of doubt - upon the rockyness I did leap... to be confronted with a 100 foot drop onto water rockyness below.

I haven't looked at bridges the same way since.
(feedingtimeatthezoo day 1 of his bikini diet started, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:42, Reply)

Three mishaps so far in my short life
The first one I am too young to remember but I have been told many times about it from my family. I was 3 years old and I fell in to a pond, knocking me out for a few minutes. The resulting trauma caused me to lose my sense of smell and I gained a horizontal scar on the left side of my forehead.

The second one I was about 8 years ago. I was helping to clear a bridle path by sawing the overgrown branches out of the way. I pulled a big branch down to saw it and just as I got to the end, it pinged up and twatted me in the face, resulting in a concussion for 3 days and a vertical scar on the right side of my forehead. Luckily I had just moved 1/2 inch backwards otherwise I would have lost my eye.

The third one was a few years ago when I got my second motorbike, it was the 2nd jan and I decided that I wanted to have a go on it even though it was snowing. I was outside my garage (going so slow that the digital dial was reading 0mph) hit a piece of black ice, fell over with the bike falling on my leg resulting in a broken ankle and 6 weeks on crutches.

That was the year I stopped having "Will not end up in hospital for any reason" as my New Years resolution.
(Soaps Roller derbying your way since, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:35, Reply)

Gingerist
I once hurled a boomerang off a cliff with all my force. I then slurped from my can of ginger beer with my eyes CRUCIALLY off the ball.

When the boomerang came back it missed me by a mile but in theory it could have planted itself into my eyes socket with breathtaking force.

I had to drink some more ginger beer to calm down.

who am I kidding, there was no ginger in that beer…
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:34, Reply)

not very long or very funny
but, the 3 things that spring to mind are:

racing around fields on motorbikes aged 13 with NO helmet, road tyres on wet fields, and no working clutch (had to get a run up and then crash the box to get going)

the somewhat common passtime of throwing full cans of lighter gas or aerosol cans on fires in the woods and jumping through the fucking 6 ft fireballs that occurred!?

And finally the stupidest thing I can remember, throwing live 0.22 bullets onto an open fire and hiding behind a tree skinnier then I was! Some of the damn things hit the very tree I was taking "cover" behind, how I wasn't shot I'll never know!
(mr_spongmonkey, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:32, Reply)

Still surfin? Every day..
I've always wanted to be one of those tall bronzed surfer types. Unfortunately I would describe my looks as being quintessentially British; more Onslow though, than Jude Law.

Anyway about 15 years ago I went to Australia, and decided I was going to be a surfer. I bought a 'boogie board' and a wetsuit, headed to Bondi, zipped myself up and headed into the surf. I must have looked a bit like a hairy squash ball.

I paddled out for about 20 minutes. I didn't look back but I knew I must have got pretty far - I was just looking for the perfect wave.

That wave came a second later - a monster that knocked me off my board and into the cold, merciless ocean. I panicked and swallowed a huge mouthful of seawater. My days were up!

Luckily I remembered what to do in this situation - I clung onto my board and raised my arm in the air, praying that one of the lifeguards might spot me.

Moments later, thank God, the rescue boat came chugging towards me. It didn't seem to be in a massive rush, I noticed.

"You alright there mate?"
"Yes! Thank God. I think I'm OK, can you please help me?"
"Sure thing mate. Just put your feet down".
"What?!"
"Stop kicking and put your feet down".

I did as I was told. And stood up - the water came to just below my waist. I then turned around and realised I had, in fact, paddled about 5 metres from the beach. To add insult to injury a little kid in a rubber ring then paddled past me and waved.

I might have been mistaken but I'm pretty sure as they sped off one of the lifeguards muttered "bloody pommy idiot".
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:30, 3 replies)

Wrong Way!
Quite some time ago I did a stint in Her Majesties Army and found myself in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Peace had been declared, everyone was friends, except no-one had told the locals yet. The naughty little blighters were still trying to off each other with any ol’ AK (or anything else for that matter) lying around.
There were a bunch of us Signals chaps with the mult-national force at a hotel complex (Hotel Terme, if anyone is interested), doing various communication ‘stuff’. One afternoon, me and m’oppo were tasked of take a landrover around to the back of the complex and pick up some stuff or whatnot.
So I’m driving down this very narrow lane with open woods around us, and I’m pretty much lost.
“You’re lost aren’t you?”
“Of course not, whatever gave you that idea?”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Y--- STOP!!!”
SCREEEEECH!!!
We’d come to a point where that was a lot of tape around the place and small triangular signs.
“That’s Landmine warning signs, aren’t they?” Asks m’oppo.
“Why yes, I do believe you’re right.”
“They’re also meant to read from the OTHER side, aren’t they?”
……Oh bum……
(SpangoTheWonderBadger is brewing beer, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:12, Reply)

I take my life in my hands everyday
with cigarettes and alcohol if the health and safety executive are to be believed.

bindun?
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:10, Reply)

Washing Machine Man.
I'd been childishly splashing away in the warm shallows of the South Atlantic Ocean when boredom struck and I decided to make my way ashore.

The waves were tumbling coast-ways and everything was primed for an heroic belly surf all the way to the golden sands on which my friends lazily sunned themselves.

I set off at a casual crawl to where the waves began to break and where my stumpy legs could reach the bottom, so as to provide sufficient propulsion for my unforgettable effort.

People will be talking about this for years, I thought, as I prepared to launch with the necessarily perfect timing to catch the wave at the optimum moment.

Having all the coordination of a new born, bandy-legged foal; I managed to throw myself towards the bottom of the sea with the necessarily perfect timing for the wave to crash down on top of my head and spin me violently, as though I were trapped in a salty washing machine.

After what seemed like days of being tossed viciously in my soon to be watery grave, I had an epiphany and stuck my legs out in the hope of gaining some purchase on the ground I assumed to be below me.

Success. I stood to my lofty 5'6" and breathed deeply, taking in vast lungfuls of air until the water vapours made them sting. My whole body shook with adrenalin and I strode back to the beach as manfully as my quivering legs would allow, and nervously flopped onto the warm sand, trying to adopt a relaxed, nonchalant air.

"Did you see that?" I asked casually through my shaky tones.

"We saw you nearly drown, you cock." was the unified response.

I inquired as to why there was no effort to save me from my imminent peril, but apparently 10 seconds of spinning around under water doesn't warrant a Baywatch style charge up the beach, not even a slow motion one.
( Moey, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 16:05, 2 replies)

This is fairly topical...

Some time ago when I was revelling in the excitement of being on a Geography field trip to Lulworth Cove* I came within 10mm of certain painful and bloody death.

You see I was a teenage boy and as I was a teenage boy I was also a nob, and a show off.

We had spent some time sketching strata, pondering the geological reasons for the perfect symmetry of the cove and I now had enough energy to keep up with the Duracell bunny in an Olympic fuck fest.

As is the way with the countryside there was bugger all to do that didn't involve buggery, thus a new game was invited, cunningly entitled "catch the sheep". (For novelty purposes only)

Now sheep may not be the most intelligent creatures on Earth, they definitely put most of their evolutionary efforts into the production of wool rather than brain cells, but the little fuckers are quick.

No matter what we tried we couldn't catch one. i was not going to be defeated by a creature famous for having shit hair and I launched myself into a sprint of terrifying speed.

I sped down the hill after the woolly sprinter, only to find the ground suddenly got rougher and rougher until it was effectively, muddy, uneven steps. (Soil creep in case anyone is interested)

Deep in one of these ruts I plunged my foot tripping myself whilst at full pelt; witnesses say I span a full 360 degrees in the air before landing horribly on a barbed wire fence.

I shook myself off and surveyed the damage, I appeared to be unscathed, but then I looked down at my left wrist which had a thin scratch across it just where one might take a razor blade My Chemical Romance can no longer heal the pain.

Luckily for me I had been holding a thin excise book, which was no lying in two pieces on the floor where the barbed wire had ripped through it as it protected my wrist.

Tip for the day kids, take notes on field trips, they might just save your life.

*http://www.lulworthonline.co.uk/
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:55, 2 replies)

Toys
When I was six I happily sat out in the garden and proceeded to jam the heads of my lego men up my nose.

I managed about eight before I felt a bit woozy.

I went to tell my mum about my achievement. She was not very happy, not very happy at all, as I had managed to drench the front of my stormtrooper t-shirt in blood and snot. I looked, and I quote my dear old mum: "like you were about to die."

One brief operation later, I remember a nice old man who looked like Obi Wan Kenobi telling me not to do it again.

All went well for a couple of months, then I was back in casualty.

This time I had somehow managed to jam my R2D2 figure up my arse and the legs had come off inside me and were doing all sorts of mischief to my colon.
( SpankyHanky, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:52, 7 replies)

Why, oh why...
... do I have a little voice in my head telling me that I want to enter the Marathon des Sables?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:34, 7 replies)

Daegu subway fire
I was scared to death and people were dying around me.

I honestly thought I was going to die as well.

I lived in the Korean city of Daegu at the time and I was in a subway train going to work. I worked in a school downtown teaching English.

On that day, some utter nutjob brought some gasoline or something onto the subway train and set it alight. That train burned and virtually everyone died on it. I was on a second train behind it. My train pulled up next to the burning train and just stopped. Our train started to catch fire. I didn’t see then, but later found out that the driver of our train had legged it taking his train key with him. Without the key, all the doors were sealed shut. I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face because of the smoke. I fell to the floor and got my white pollution mask out of my pocket to put on.

It didn’t feel any better though.

I had such a headache that I just passed out. I woke up with someone dragging me onto the platform. The smoke was just as thick but the station was locked down and we all couldn’t get out. Just as I felt I was going asleep again, I was dragged out by a fireman to an exit and something caught my eye.

It was the Dunkin' Donuts shop that was the reason why I had taken the subway and not got a taxi that day even though I was late for work.

Anyway, I was in a Korean hospital for a few weeks with smoke inhalation damage. I was lucky though as almost 200 people died at the station that day.

Curse my greed for Boston Creams and strong coffee.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu_subway_fire
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:34, 3 replies)

I Dug me a Hole!
Last year the wife and I decided we’d have complete new kitchen and we’d do ourselves, including all the nasty jobs that are necessary for this, one of the ‘orrible jobs was to dig a bloody great big hole so we could put in a new drain. So there I was one Sunday afternoon, with my two new friends shovel and pickaxe, making a lot of mess and slowly going downwards (not that way, filth!) when my trusty pickaxe came across something a bit stubborn.
Probably a tree root, thinks I, let’s give it a bit of a hammering and get the bugger out.
Much grunting and straining. Then I notice that the tree root was looking smooth and black, funny looking tree root. No, that would the underground mains electricity cable that I’d been twating for past ten minutes. Had to go indoors and have a cup of tea and generally calm down.
(SpangoTheWonderBadger is brewing beer, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:30, 3 replies)

Not me, but a friend
Walking alongside a river in field with a couple of mates (one male and one female) when we were about 14, when suddenly I came across a piece of metal, about a foot long, round, about half an inch in diamater and most importantly spiked at the end.

I picked it up as all curious 14-year-old boys do and started throwing it into the ground to make it stick in the soil.

During this time my mates were having a bit of a squabble and my female friend decided to walk off ahead in a bit of a strop.

At this point I decided it would be a great idea to lob this spiked instrument of death into the air as high as I could...can you see what's coming?

The spike flew out of my hand a little earlier than planned (due to it being wet) and although it went pretty high, it aslo went straight ahead a fair distance.

I shouted to my friend to watch out and she promptly stopped dead in her tracks, bowed her head and covered it with her hands.

It seems she would have been better to carry on walking. The spike fell from the sky, spinning and hit my friend straight in the back of head...along the edge of the metal thankfully.

Half a rotation more and it would have been head kebab skewered into the ground.

Needless to say, she went ever so slightly apeshit on me.
(porkinator is a Rock n Roll nerd!, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:23, 1 reply)

Oh, the irony
Many years ago back in my student days I attended a family christening in Basingstoke. Being an Irish family christening rather a lot of beer was consumed, so I ended up back at the train station in an advanced state of refreshment.

I boarded my train back to Reading only to be told that nothing was moving as the IRA had bombed Reading station. After some time I was desperate for a whizz. Remembering that you shoudn't use the train toilets in the station I got off to use the one on the platform. As I wandered in I noticed that the floor was flooded, so I tip-toed my way through in my mate's best shoes (being a scummy student I had borrowed them to look smart). I had my slash, got back on the train and eventually made it back to Reading after clubbing together with a few other travellers and going by taxi.


It wasn't til the next weekend when I went back to Basingstoke to meet some friends that I was confronted by a large number of police, all asking whether people had been there the previous weekend. When I said that I had they whisked me off to be interviewed by a raher frightening CID copper. Turns out he had a brilliant description of me leaving the toilet trailing wet footprints. When I agreed that yes, that would have been me, he looked at me very serioulsy and in a low voice said "Do you realise you had a piss 10 feet from 5 pounds of semtex?" *Gulp* Turns out the bomb had been put in a toilet cistern, holding the ball cock down and flooding the floor. When I asked if that was a big bomb he said "It would have levelled the fucking station".

Length? Substantially longer than after I learnt the news and it shrivelled up inside my body
(give it six weeks and it might clear up would like to butter your muffin, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:16, 5 replies)

I like travelling
I go abroad at least twice a year, if possible, and have driven many thousands of miles on the right hand side of the road, in hire cars of various quality.

Driving on the 'wrong' side is not something I ever had a problem with, but on one occasion I'd been in the US and Canada for a few weeks, and had driven quite a long way while there. The following week, back in Blighty, I had been down in Edinburgh and went in to visit a mate on the way home. So I turned off the M90, up the slip road, and because I was turning right at the top, I was in the right hand lane.

You can see what's coming.

Unfortunately, I couldn't, because I was looking the wrong way. I glanced left, noticed a car going away from me and thought there was something odd about it, because it seemed to be on the wrong side. In fact, it is of course normal practice to drive on the left in the UK, but my brain had temporarily forgotten this.

So after my quick look to the left to make sure there was nothing coming, I pulled out. On to the right hand side of a single carriageway road. Against the oncoming traffic.

Fortunately, said traffic was far enough away to allow me to take evasive action, but I did require to clean the car seat later.

I'm much more careful to check both ways now, regardless of which side of the road I'm on.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:08, 1 reply)

I've just bought myself a new Mountain Bike...
...and I've decided that I really want to have a go at this.

I'm thirty five.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:07, 3 replies)

Desperate Dan
This would have fitted well into the last QOTW but no matter. I was a 17 year old pub virgin at my first hard man’s pub. I was there with some friends but I had wandered over to the pool table as I thought I was pretty decent (owning a second hand pool table) and that playing pool with some hard nuts would improve my machismo. There were a bunch of neanderthals already playing with the biggest one, a Desperate Dan figure, playing another one.

I stood by the wall behind but adjacent to Desperate Dan so he could use his cue properly. I was feeling smug as they weren’t playing very well. Desperate Dan missed a straight shot close up on the black. I tried not to laugh (such youthful arrogance! What a shit I was!).

Anyway, I was trying so hard not to laugh at the fact that he had missed a complete sitter that I unfortunately sort of coughed, and my chewing gum popped out of my mouth and hit his hand that he was using the rest the cue on. Oh and the gum stuck to his hand. And it was pink hubba bubba.

I instantly made like a 1.75 metre jar of liquid nitrogen with my eyes fluttering in the other direction as if I was trying to check the scores of the telly at the end of the bar.

I feel a hot beery breath blowing into my face from 35cm upwards.

“Is this yours?” he asked sibilantly.

“Errrr, what? Noooo…what?” I clenched disarmingly.

He brought up his fist to my face with the pink gum stuck on it glistening at me guiltily.

“The gum. Is it yours?”

“Uhhhhm, I dooooon’t really eat guuuuum much” I gurned spastically.

He levelled his fist at me until it touched my nose, then with great care, manoeuvred the gum so that it was nestling at the entrance to my nostril. Then he hefted his ham hock fist slightly so that the little ball of gum slid into my nose, plugging it instantly.

“I’ll have a pint of John Smiths, and my friends here will all have the same,”

I gave him a rictus grin and snorted with terror, unfortunately firing the gum from my nostril onto the pool table again. My mind gibbered and I tottered off to the bar, ordered the drinks, paid for them, then asked the barman to deliver them to the thugs playing pool.

I didn’t go back there in a hurry. I could get severe beatings at home.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:01, 1 reply)

Rope swing
For a couple of years as a child I had the full run of Cheltenham College's facilities on Sundays and during their lengthy holidays - a lake with punting boats, an assault course, a climbing wall....and a truly gigantic wide-branched tree.

This tree had, in various positions around its branches, ropes hanging down for intrepid boys to swing from. These varied from ones from which my little sister would swing with ease, going right up to death-defying daredevil level ones that NO-ONE HAD EVER MANAGED.

For no explicable reason, whilst bored one day, I took it upon myself to take on THE BEHEMOTH. The most dangereux, hard-man rope swing of all. I swung outwards and upwards as far and high as it would go, and then (and I recall this in a lucid but dreamline manner)... I let go.

I literally flew through the air for several seconds, paralysed with terror, until the inevitable ground/Monty interface occurred.

To date I lack a point on one of my incisors, but what really does my head in is the fact that this incredible feat was witnessed by not one single person. What the fuck was I doing?
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:00, Reply)