The revenge of Sadman
Back in the day, a friend of mine used to organise his mates to go to a beer festival held every August Bank Holiday weekend in darkest Gloucestershire.
It was 2 days of physical devastation - drinking "warm" real ale in (if you were lucky) the sunshine, eating what were euphemistically called "Hog burgers", not washing, sleeping under canvas. All in all the sort of weekend it takes a week to recover from.
In any group of friends which centres around one person (A), there is often person (B) who is friends with A, but who A's friends C,D and E can't really stand. And so it was in this case - person B was known to the rest of us as Sadman. Looking like an overgrown child, he had the unfortunate combination of acne, thinning and receding hair, large glasses, a treble voice and stood probably 5 foot 5 inches tall. This, no-one could help. However he was also pedantic, boring, tight with his cash and would on occasions wear a straw boater. He could talk for England on a variety of topics he knew little about, cadged weed without either buying any or paying for it, and fell short of being eccentric as eccentrics are generally interesting in some way shape or form. This guy was just plain odd. And sad. Hence the name "Sadman".
Anyway, this tale is about such a person getting (inadvertently) the upper hand.
As I mentioned, all of us, including Sadman, camped during this beer festival. One year, his tent basically consisted of a sheet and two sticks. It looked like something out of Winnie the Pooh rather than a real tent. The edges came some way short of the ground - it was a typical Sadman effort - cheap, laughable, and stood out like a sore thumb on the campsite.
On the second night of the festival, with 36 hour's drinking behind us, we got to sleep in our respective tents in the early hours of the morning. A few short hours later, I woke up, convinced that I'd pissed myself. Strange, I thought, firstly as this had never happened to me, secondly because the "piss" was as cold as ice.
In the night, there had been an incredible storm, which was still going on, which had rendered my tent useless. I had finally sobered up enough to wake up, shivering, and feeling like death. As I moved to assess the damage, I heard a whisper from another tent.

"Mordred - is your tent dry ?"

"No - no point asking you if yours is ?". Both of us then woke up friend A, who'd driven us there, and then spent the rest of the night shivering in his car.

The only thing that kept our spirits up was the thought of Sadman's tent. Schadenfreude (look it up !) kept us happy in the knowledge that if we were soaked, he was going to be completely drenched. We awaited the coming of the dawn when we could see how his "tent" had stood up to the cosmic battering.

And, as per the title of the tale - miraculously, it had somehow (how ?) kept him dry all night. So he awoke with a smile on his face.

Sometimes God loves those who aren't quite like the rest of us. Even if I can't imagine the poor bastard ever had a shag in his life he didn't pay for, on that day, he was laughing, more so when we paid for breakfast on the way home and he was unaccountably without funds to reimburse us.
( I_Was_Mordred, Mon 3 Nov 2008, 18:35, Reply)