More pearoast fodder: "Vlad's sisters and my near-impalation"
Or A short treatise on something rather stupid I did as an undergraduate.

I don't have a habit of endangering my life in stupid ways. I'll freely admit that I've said and done a wide variety of very stupid things in the past, but I'd like to think I'm doing reasonably well as far as natural selection is concerned. Nevertheless: it was a Friday evening, the week after my third-year exams had finished. My guitarist and I decided to spend an evening in the Blues Bar just off Regent Street. Turns out we made a good choice - they had a fine pint of Arran Fireside on the pumps, and Ian Siegal was playing at the back of the bar.

It also became very convenient at this point that my guitarist is Russian. During a quiet point in conversation, he gestured over to three women stood behind us and said "sounds like they're Russian." So I went to the gents a little later, and, when he came back - well, bugger me, he'd only gone and struck up conversation with them. In short, we had a superb evening drinking a large amount of beer and trying (unsuccessfully) to chat up three Russian sisters to the backdrop of some of the best modern blues in the UK. In fact, I'd had such a good evening, I decided to walk home. Walk, that is, from Regent Street to Barons Court.

A bit of a long trek it was, so by the time I'd got to Park Lane, I thought it would shave some time off the journey to cut through Hyde Park. I knew of a fence at the far end which I was able to climb over, so as long as I could find an open gate on the Park Lane side, I'd be fine. Granted, this was 2 or 3am, but someone had forgotten to close one of the side gates. Bingo!

Well, almost. I'd forgotten about the fence which runs up the middle of the park. I got this far, in the middle of the park, in the pitch darkness, and decided it was too late to turn back. Still, how to get over this fence? I tried to lift myself up to climb over it, and realised that if I wasn't careful, I'd put the (very pointy) railings into my abdomen.

So I decided to take my chances and jump over it. I took a few steps back and prepared to run up.

Then I took a few more steps back.

Then I tried a different angle.

Then I dawdled a bit.

And then I jumped.

I've made it!
Oh, almost...seems my jeans are snagged on the railing...
Hmm...okay, they're snagged quite firmly. Let's have a look...
Oh, crap.

It wasn't so much my jeans that were snagged as my thigh. I was halfway over a fence in a deserted Hyde Park, in the small hours of the morning, with a fence in my leg.

I'd like to think that the beer kept me level-headed, because I'm normally quite squeamish. Cursing and grunting enough to make a BNP rally seem family-friendly, I lifted myself off the railing and hobbled off to find a bench, where, in the middle of the park, I tried to administer first aid. The position of the wound required me to pull my trousers down, and as I tried to wrap a handkerchief round it, I realised that my thigh was, in fact, far too large for the handkerchief to encompass.

I pulled my trousers up and decided the best course of action was to get home. I got to the fence I knew I could scale and left the park, to hobble the last half-hour to Barons Court.

I thought I was doing alright at the time, though in hindsight, I must have been in some sort of shock as I remember being convinced that the couple walking 100yds or so behind me were, in fact, following me home.

In hindsight, I was immensely lucky in spite of my misfortune - if I'd landed just a few inches further in any given direction, there was a good chance I good have ruptured a femural artery or rendered myself a eunuch. I'll let you decide which of those potential outcomes would have been worse.

The following day I woke up with very little memory and a splitting headache.
Fuck...I didn't have that much to drink last night...
I pulled back the sheets to find a broad smear of blood all over them.

I've never been so grateful to live with a medical student. V, you're a legend. (And I'm an idiot)
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 15:10, 7 replies)

The place
on Kingly Street?

Great place, I worked a few doors down.
(Set your faces to Stunned Bigly, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 16:31, closed)

That's the one - Ain't Nothin' But
Haven't been back there for a while actually, I heard they expanded the place not so long ago.
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 17:02, closed)

An awesome venue.
However if they've expanded the place then it must have been the size of a shoebox previously, as it's fucking tiny and has been ever since I first went, a couple of years ago.
(ConanTroutman thought we would free the vulture, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 18:48, closed)

Curious.
Many years ago I tried to vault that fence one-handed whilst pissed to retrieve a frisbee.

I've still got an inch and a half-long scar from webbing between my first and second fingers and the centre of my palm where I inexplicably decided that I could bear my own bodyweight on one of the spikes and put it through my hand.

The fence is clearly up to something evil.

that, or drunk people are fuckwits. But I think it's the fence.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 17:17, closed)

"I was halfway over a fence in a deserted Hyde Park, in the small hours of the morning, with a fence in my leg."
Have a click for managing to make this sound vaguely dignified.
(berk, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 17:23, closed)

Have a click
Purely because its the type of stupid shit I would do.
(DownhillGardener no-one does it like that anymore, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 19:25, closed)

Weirdly enough I heard about a guy at Nottingham uni
who did almost exactly the same thing. Not in Hyde Park, I think it was a cricket ground.

He was home for the hols, woke up to red sheets, went downstairs to call an ambulance only to find that his granny was visiting.

Not wanting the old dear to panic he sat through a family lunch with a big hole in his leg waiting for dear old gran to go home.
( chenobble rocking his explorer beard on, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 23:45, closed)