I fell in with a bad crowd
Travelling back to university one weekend, I found my train delayed due to "a carriage on fire" at the preceding stop. That's probably a whole story on its own but in this case it merely provided the impetus for me, and a few other irritated patrons of Network Southeast to retire to the pub across the way for a pint while we awaited the next scheduled service.

There weren't many of us, and being alone I quickly got chatting to a gang of four or five chaps a little older than I who were returning to Staines for a Sunday evening curry. "Come with us," one of them said. "and try the best curry in Berkshire." Not an offer at which I'd normally jump but, by the time the train had been, inevitably, delayed another hour and I had quaffed another couple of pints, my curry craving intensified to unignorable levels.

Had I been a girl, I suppose the situation might have seemed sinister but the group seemed to be entertained by the nineteen year-old hanger-on they had acquired and were more than happy to keep bankrolling my steadily increasing intoxication. By the time we actually reached Staines, that city of dreams, I dimly recall having trouble effecting egress from the train without tripping over the door frame.

"I need to be back on the train by nine," I slurred them. "Or I won't make it back home to Brighton."

"Sod that, bud," came the confident reply. "You can stay at mine." In my present state this seemed perfectly natural.

The curry I have no idea about, but I do recall becoming nervous about the mounting expense and being astonished when they wouldn't let me even chip in for the bill. Again, a wiser man would have been concerned about what they expected in return but I was young, dumb, full of poppadom and possessed of a comprehensive lack of self-awareness such as only excesses of youth and lager can bestow.

We left the restaurant and, figuring that a free meal and bed for the night was fine but pinching a man's snouts was beyond the pale, I stumbled into the nearest tobacconists. Normally this would have been a quick transaction but there was a bit of a queue, they didn't have my brand.. long story short, the Beer Tardis came into effect and by the time I actually got out of the shop such a long time had passed that my guardian angels had departed and left no clue as to their destination.

So it was that, instead of relaxing in halls in Brighton this very middle-class white boy found himself alone and drunk in Staines at midnight on a Sunday night in the 1990s. Had Ali G been more of a thing, I might have been better equipped to deal with my situation but as it was I felt marooned in an alien landscape and was seized by social-displacement panic.

Blurrily, a Venn diagram began to form in my mind. Friend... near Staines... owns car... likely to be sober... clearly the centre spot was glaringly unpopulated but I did know a guy who ticked the first three and I called him. Of course when I say "him" I mean "his parents" who were as you can imagine thrilled to hear from their progeny's intoxicated aquaintance in the wee hours of Monday morning.

Chris, thank God, was uncharacteristically fit to drive and he agreed to come and fetch me from the big junction on the A30 "in about half an hour". I was saved.

Of course this was well before smart phones (indeed, in my skint student case, before any mobile phone) but sadly also prior to my having a working geographical knowledge of Staines town centre, so it took me a while to find the roundabout in question. When I got there I was tired and, unable to communicate further with my saviour, decided that the least hassle was to go and stand quietly on the top of the roundabout and keep a look out for his blue Fiesta.

Within 30 seconds I was bored.

It was a warm Summer that year (remember those?!) and what Staines council had intended to be a lush green mound had dessicated into fractured lumps of crumbly earth which looked like the surface of the moon in old sci-fi films. I pried up a good lump and hefted it in my hands. There was a lamp post on the far side of the roundabout and, looking around to see I was unobserved, I lobbed the mud at it. Missed. I flung another, which missed again.

The third connected. It was fucking glorious! The mud exploded into a cloud of dirt-dust and the pole resonated with a deep metallic gong sound that was straight out of a gothic horror film.

I was hooked. Occasionally glancing around to see if Chris was on his way, I must have lifted up and thrown about ten percent by weight of that roundabout at my target, and by the end I was getting a good ninety percent hit rate. It was wonderfully satisfying.

And then the riot van showed up.

No word of a lie, as I stood there dumbfounded a white Transit with metal caging on its windscreen screeched up to the roundabout and disgorged three fully-kitted riot police - helmets, shields, the lot - who rushed me and performed what, looking back, was a textbook three-sided kettling manouvre to enclose me facing a large uniformed man I presumed was their senior officer.

"We've had reports," he said to me. "Of a gang throwing stones at passing cars."

My first instinct being to save myself a night in the cells, I opened my mouth to deny the charge but then looked down and saw I was still holding a large clod of earth. Fucksocks.

"Erm," I stuttered. "I don't know about that but I have been throwing mud at a lamp post." Realising how unconvincing that sounded, I cast around for evidence to support my case. "Look! Look at all the mud in the road, barely any stones.. in it..." slowly my brain was realising what a total tool I'd been.

The cop, now that it was clear they weren't dealing with an outbreak of anti-government protest or wanton vandalism but rather just a drunken moron with a penchant for flying earth, smirked.

"Lamp post, eh?" He gestured up. "See that camera on the top of it?" And he was right.

Instantly, the image popped into my head of a mystified CCTV operator watching the young hoodlum throwing every projectile within his grasp and the image periodically blurring every ten seconds as the weapons connected. BONG! BONG! If they'd had the sound on it must have been rather like the intro to the News at Ten during the poll tax riots. Only shit.

I was utterly deflated. The cop was clearly fighting twin urges to (a) book me for various offences and (b) laugh uproariously in my face. At that exact moment, a very nervous looking Ford hatchback hove into view.

"Oh God, that's my friend," I said with relief. "He's come to take me home, I am so sorry I won't do it again, if I can just get out of your hair I promise I'll be good he's right there I'm not even from Staines.."

"Just go," the cop interrupted me. "And for fuck's sake don't do it again."

Personally, I blame Network Southeast and their flammable trains.
( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Fri 17 May 2013, 11:56, 12 replies)

tl;dr

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 17 May 2013, 12:13, closed)

I'm deffo reading that fucking essay. Def. Fo.

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 17 May 2013, 12:17, closed)

;dr
i was expecting the gang you befriended to have gang raped you or something
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 17 May 2013, 12:18, closed)

I read the entire thing, and it really could have been about four sentences long and told the exact same story.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Fri 17 May 2013, 12:32, closed)

It was a decent story on QOTW though
Let's just be grateful for that
( Major Turd for tonight only, Fri 17 May 2013, 12:36, closed)

But if he'd done that, how could the OP have canvassed for votes, if not by padding out an insubstantial story with line breaks and pushing all the adjacent posts off the screen?

( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 17 May 2013, 22:35, closed)

You have ADHD
AICM$5P
*clicks*
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 17 May 2013, 12:34, closed)

I liked your story, have a click.
Try not to get too drunk on all the whine up above.
( Reginald Donkeyfuck, Fri 17 May 2013, 12:35, closed)

^ What movie-maker-man said.
"tl;dr" - Gen Y's way of saying "I don't have the attention span long enough to read something with more than 3 points of punctuation."
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 17 May 2013, 13:13, closed)

That was glorious.
When I was 17, we would get drunk and dance for the benefit of the CCTV operators, as their cameras followed us around the town.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 17 May 2013, 12:47, closed)

You want to get yourself some of those 'paragraphs', everyone's going mad about them.
Other than that I quite liked the tale.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 17 May 2013, 13:41, closed)

I like your story.

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Fri 17 May 2013, 21:40, closed)