Rubbish parking...
Friend of my wife's used to get all sorts of stick from her boyfriend about her parking ability.

Back in January 2008 while out shopping she'd managed to reverse into a pillar in a carpark, bashing out the rear lights on one side of her car. Approximate cost: £150

Her boyfriend gave her the usual exasperated lecture about how she should be more careful and that spending £150 to repair this kind of damage was a waste of money, especially so soon after Christmas.

A few days later he was part of the flight crew that stacked a 150-tonne Boeing 777 into the tarmac at Heathrow. Approximate cost: £150,000,000

He's no longer allowed to criticise her parking.
(e_logic, Wed 19 May 2010, 19:15, 1 reply)

I am going to Stockholm
I am going to Stockholm for a stag weekend in a few weeks' time. The stag is a programmer and most of his mates aren't short of money either. I am a student.

Much as I love him, I think it's likely to be an expensive weekend.
( sanityclause is waiting until, Wed 19 May 2010, 17:04, 2 replies)

Wine and Seaweed
I went to the north of Scotland for a daft bender with a friend of mine a while back. Getting there cost us almost nothing because we locked ourselves in the toilet for the entire train journey and the accommodation there was dirt cheap cos we stayed in tatty bikers motel.

However, we did fritter away a bloody fortune on a complete load of nonsense over the weekend. We spent most of the time wandering around small villages raving drunk talking bollocks to farmers and finding pubs with jukeboxes so that we could play 'You Love Us' over and over again.

My fondest memory though was our day sat at the beach where I had a full birthday cake for dinner in the pissing rain.

It might not sound much but we were young and thought we were loaded, so loaded in fact that we had to hitchhike home from Inverness smelling like wine and seaweed.
(Pat Shatner ,in it for the buzz, Wed 19 May 2010, 16:48, 3 replies)

Well, more an expensive week actually...
I met someone on a Monday evening - devastatingly beautiful, couldn't believe she was interested in me. Or that she was hanging around my local.

The following day we met up for a drink and, well, while nothing happened that night, things definitely happened on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Cost me a fortune in dinners, drinks, not to mention massage oil. But some costs you can't complain about.

It didn't last though. We chilled on Sunday.
(sabre-tooth monkey, Wed 19 May 2010, 16:19, 4 replies)

The team with the arse in it
As a teenager I was poor. Very poor. Why? Because I was lazy. Very lazy. I really couldn’t be arsed to go and get a Saturday job and at the end of the day watching repeats of Columbo and masturbating* is completely free of charge.

So when I finally snared a girlfriend I suddenly found I was short of the wonga required to keep her interested (she was an awfully shallow girl, but fuck it, I was an incredibly shallow little shit back then too). So I scrape together some cash. I sell some of my beloved Star Wars gear which had suddenly become ‘collectible’, I beg cash off my parents on the promise that they wouldn’t have to get me anything for my birthday later in the month (fucking magnanimous, me), and I manage to cobble together enough cash to take her out for a day she’d never forget.

Pick her up at midday. Fill the day with some entertainment. Take her to a nice** restaurant later. I had it planned down to the finest detail. I was gonna woo the pants off her. And how best to woo the pants off a sixteen year old girl who would prefer nothing better than being stuck in a lift with those two gnomes from Bros, a pot of honey, some vaseline and a larger cucumber? Yep – take her to the footie.

Three PM. Saturday. Highfield Road. Coventry vs Arsenal. It was back when seating had just been installed in footie grounds and most of the crowd were still getting used to the idea that you had to use the seat to sit in, not stand on. We find our seats – cost me a fucking fortune. Good seats. She sits down in hers. I stand on mine like every other fucker round me.

The game kicks off. It’s the usual old shit. The fans get bored. A chant goes up aimed at the opposing fans. Some Midlands wit had used the name of the away team and the fact all those posh London-types were using there seats to sit in instead of stand on and turned it into an amusing*** insult: “SIT DOWN IF YOU TAKE IT UP THE ARSE, SIT DOWN IF YOU TAKE IT UP THE ARSE, SIT DOWN IF YOU TAKE IT UP THE ARSE!”

My girlfriend, sat next to me, was not amused.

The Cov fans didn’t get a response from the London types; they were probably too busy watching their team play out some entertaining, cultured football. Fuck that. Then one of the blokes stood near me notices this girl, my girl, sat looking pissed off while everyone round her's standing, being all manly.

Fingers point, a new chant goes up: “SHE MUST TAKE IT, SHE MUST TAKE IT, SHE MUST TAKE IT UP THE ARSE! SSS-HHH-EEE MUST TAKE IT UP THE AAA-RRR-SSS-EEE!”

Ended that Saturday minus an AT-AT, X-Wing (with realistic battle damage), a Rebel transport, a birthday present for a birthday I hadn’t had yet, and a real live, genuinue breathing walking talking girlfriend.

And back to Columbo and wanking I went for another year or so.


* I must stress that I was not masturbating while watching Columbo. He’s really not my type.

** Cheap.

*** Not really amusing, but its good to do a bit of a mass swear in a crowd of strangers every now and again.
( SpankyHanky, Wed 19 May 2010, 14:01, 10 replies)

Candles
The good lady wanted to brighten the place up with some accessories she had seen in Living etc or some such bollocks interior magazine. So I went to Prices candle factory shop in Battersea, I browsed through the various types, church, bees wax, perfumed etc and filled my basket with quite a few varieties went to the till.

I noticed one particular one I had picked was very unusual and cost a lot more than the other and I asked why that was, she patiently explained that unlike any other candle in the world it can glow a lot brighter should it need to.
Fascinated as to how this could be, I asked by what mechanism this is achieved by and she answered 'expansive wick end'....

I thang yow....
(nimrodihnio making gravy for one., Wed 19 May 2010, 13:57, Reply)

Tainted cash
Many years ago something bad happened to a friend (another story altogether), sometime after that bunch of solicitors argued, end result I got about £3000.

My thinking was this money had come to me as a result of something that still rates as one of the worst days of my life, I felt the money was tainted by this. So I decided not to invest it as I thought that money earned would be like fruit from a poisoned tree. I thought about giving it to a charity and tried to think of a fitting one, then it hit me - how would my friend have spent it? Simple answer - go somewhere you have never been and have fun, step one: get a map of Europe, step two: open and thrust finger at map blindly.

Three weeks later I was in a apartment in Prague with one mission - spend the money & have fun. I achieved both very quickly. Highlights of the time there include an encounter with the worlds worst pickpoctet (me 5'7" him 6'4" and we were the only 2 people on the street), getting so drunk that I woke up under the bed and drunkenly wandering into a pub/club filled with slightly dodgy Russians in leather jackets & sunglasses(the bodyguards & security were quite friendly).

Now to the expensive part of the story, I got chatting to one young lady who I tried to impress by buying her a drink - fine she wants a beer, now I try to be all James Bond and order us a bottle of champagne instead, hey why not? I want to spend the money and its only about £18. That goes down fine, a few of her mates arrive, lets have another bottle, whats that sir? you dont like the champagne! - get this man two of you finest beers, and on it goes.

My Bond inspired plan worked a treat, the stunning blond & I left for her place and a good time was had by both of us. Only problem was in my pissed state I had made a mistake with the exchange rate, it was not £18 a bottle like I thought, it was £120. I had ordered five of them.

Went back the next night and did the same thing.

Cost of the weekend, about £3000 and it was worth every penny because I still remember it as the last present my friend ever gave me.
(cname, Wed 19 May 2010, 13:19, 10 replies)

Training Disaster.
I've been training in Martial Arts for a few years now (this is not a story involving any driving of a Honda Accord). I decided to go for it and enter one of the all ages open entry tournaments hosted by a local club (not my own).

I'd been getting up for early morning runs, putting in the extra hours at the gym - anything to try and drag my fitness levels up. I only got into this during my late 20's after years of being really unfit and to be honest, I'd started to doubt that I'd be up to it.

One of the guys at my club suggested looking into sports nutrition to give that extra edge when training. I didn't think I had much to lose by giving it a go so I went and had a look on the internet.

After browsing through many, many sites of inter-lies, promises of titanic strength, flat stomach with next to no exercise and a massive dong, I settled on some creatine powder (£25) and a big tub of maxi-muscle (£40) from a Holland and Barratt type store. I read up on it and it all seemed legit, not steriods or anything that would turn my piss green.

A couple of days later it all gets delivered and I'm keen as hell to posses my new super powers!

I did the creatine first, reading the back of the tub it said to add a spoonful to a pint of water and drink at once. Which I duly followed. It didn't taste as bad as I thought, a bit chalky but not totaly unpleasant. Next for the maxi-muscle.

I added a couple of heaped spoonfuls to a pint glass, held the glass under the tap and started to stir in water, but instead of disolving like the creatine powder, it started to thicken, it went from a custard like substance to being almost dough like, and it was growing, not just a bit, but quite a lot.

The sticky goo started to pour out of the top of the glass. I dropped the glass into the sink which then broke. The pile of gunky muscle shit quickly filled the sink and started to swell out accross the draining board. Shit! it was like possessed insulation foam, it was getting everywhere. I did the only rational thing at the time and picked up the decorative bamboo kitchen lamp (£80 - Ikea) and proceeded to twat the shit out of this unholy growing spunk bubble.

With the damage to the lamp, the kitchen and my pummeled residue of my original internet purchase, I was left with one expansive whey-caned.

I won't appologise for length - I think I've done enough damage.
(deadsetgav, Wed 19 May 2010, 12:09, 5 replies)

Stag Do in Berlin
A mate chose to have his stag weekend in Berlin. After an afternoon of beer and football, we headed out for the night, drinking our way through a considerable amount of booze. The late night entertainment was a classy looking strip club with private dances costing 50 euros a pop. I'd apparently drunk quite a bit and when the lads were leaving I was told I "had my stripper face on" and they left me there. Now I dunno about you lot, but I'm quite bad at doing things in moderation after a few beers, especially strippers. (As an aside, it always amazes me how many strippers share a birthday and need champagne buying for them on exactly the day that I'm there)

I arrived back at the apartment we were staying in at 6am having spent all the cash I had on me (£200), withdrawn the full amount possible from the cash machine (£250) and maxxed out my credit card from empty (£800). I'd spent bloody £1250 on strippers which certainly wasn't a happy ending. Difficult one to explain to the missus.
(Siipod, Wed 19 May 2010, 12:07, Reply)

Explain this Derren
Was watching that Uri Geller geezer on the telly doing a live spoon bending thing. Not wanting to break my cutlery, I grabbed some biros and set about trying to bend them. I rubbed and rubbed them between forefinger and thumb but didn't manage to achieve much more than a slight kink where the outer casing has lost some of it's strength. The spooky thing is that none of the biros now work, they have ink in them but no matter how much I shake them or scribble, no mark is made upon the paper. Those are the ex-pens I've weakened.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Wed 19 May 2010, 10:33, 7 replies)

My sort of ex's sort of best mate's wedding arrangements
took the piss and then some.

The "Hen Night" was a two week holiday in Australia followed by the wedding which was held in Sri Lanka. The sort of ex didn't go, I believe her exact words were "fuck her". No idea how much it would have cost but for those who did go, I expect somewhere in the region of £5,000.

She didn't go to her cousin's wedding either which was held in Nepal and involved her dad and uncles, all in their late sixties/early seventies, having to trek up a fucking mountain to get to the temple.

Thankfully my family and friends are a bunch of pikeys have less expensive tastes.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Wed 19 May 2010, 10:22, 1 reply)

Computer games
Does anyone else remember that "philosophy" game for the Nintendo they brought out last year in Scotland?

Yes - that's right - that one!

It seems that those who do remember it are examples of the ex-pensive Wii kenned.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 19 May 2010, 6:52, 3 replies)

He had it all.........
Money, women, wealth and fame......but with such an abundance of women, Sean eventually grew bored of vaginas until he found Robin, who had a mutual love of bum sex. But eventually she could take no more of this and left him.

And that's the story of Penn's exes weak end


Oh shit! I can feel a tide of fury heading this way......
(El_diablo_blanco, Wed 19 May 2010, 5:26, Reply)

I was in my last year of high school
And I was taking a sicky. I just couldn't be arsed with school anymore, I was going to college after the summer so it didn't really matter anyway. A mate of mine had the same thing going on, so he came round and we borrowed my dad's car to pick up his bird. We went to a restaurant, saw a parade (my mate acting like a twat and joining in - he'll never grow up) and a museum. Some nice stuff there.

But when we were driving back I noticed the car had too many miles on it, and my dad would go nuts. I lost my fucking rag and battered the crap out of the bastard thing. Cost me a shitload! But I got my self-respect back.
(McChinaman banned, Tue 18 May 2010, 23:54, 8 replies)

Weekend trip to Barcelona for partners birthday
Flights £350

Hotel £400

Celebration meal £200

Sundries £400

Loss of earnings £250

Total £1600

PLUS

Expenses for the baby conceived whilst seriously trashed i.e every fucking spare penny for the rest of my life .

The thing thats concerning me is that next year she's 40 and I'm stuck for ideas to top that .

Apologies for length but apparently it works ok
(kilozerone, Tue 18 May 2010, 21:57, 3 replies)

Righto.
I'm ashamed to admit this, but I'm a Harry Potter fan. Loved the books, loved the movies and when the opportunity came to be in America, in the home of bad Hollywood films, me and a couple of friends grabbed it with both hands. I'm not going to factor the cost of the flights into the cost of the weekend, since to be absolutely fair I was going to America anyway. The thing is though apart from car rental costs, hotel costs etc (which ate up an absolutely huge amount of money) even the basics cost a lot. It wasn't as though we were shopping in the most exclusive of boutiques (we'd have a look but not buy) we were simply getting normal sort of stuff. But for food in particular if you weren't willing to eat greasy hotdogs, pizza and burgers there was absolutely nothing that was of reasonable value. We're talking $9 for a pitiful looking salad in a box, or $40 dollars for a bowl of mediocre spaghetti.

The bills were mounting up. My family had been extremely decent and booked me the flights, but everything else was basically coming out a student loan that was shrinking by the day. It reached a point about two days before we were going to home that I was pretty much broke. My taxi fare was protected and safe as was my airline ticket and I had a $100 left. So me and my friends did what we had come to California for and went to see the Harry Potter tour at Universal Pictures. Which in itself was hugely expensive, I winced as I paid. But it was pretty much worth it to see the sets and props and so on. You might be thinking well this all sounds like reasonable costs. However there were signs up all over the place about not touching anything at all, it was like being in a china shop- being warned that if we broke anything then we would have to pay.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm clumsy- all elbows and tripping over my feet, so I was being incredibly careful with myself. And as always happens when I slow down and try to be steady, I fall behind everyone else. And walk in the wrong direction. Away from the bright, shiny lights and fellow tourers, and into what was basically the dark part of film. I was still repeating the mantra 'look, but don't touch' to myself and it was working (pretty much) until I came across what was obviously a prop room. Filled with broken props- nothing special and therefore nothing valuable (I can be a bit stupid sometimes) including a large stone plinth and bowl. Now any Harry Potter fans reading this will know exactly what I'm talking about, though there was some confusion since the bowl was filled with screws, nuts and bolts and obviously not serving it's original purpose as a holder of memories. Looking closer I realised that the reason this prop had been taken out of service and off display was that part of it had crumbled and broken off. And being incredibly stupid I tripped over and landed on it. Naturally the unstable part broke off and sent me to the floor clutching an even more broken prop.

That was my adventure with an ex-pensieve weak-end

Disclaimer: absolutely nothing in this story is true. I have sadly never even been to America, nor am I a Harry Potter fan
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Tue 18 May 2010, 21:12, 13 replies)

Every fucking wedding
I've ever been to has cost me way more than I could afford. I now come out in a rash and start to twitch when I hear the "good news". Apologies for lack of funny; got 10p for a cup of tea?
( uncle bastard is twanging a dan moi, Tue 18 May 2010, 20:59, 1 reply)

Norwegian Wedding.......
A good friend got married to a Norwegian lass it a large church in Bergan norway. Now for those of you that dont know, Norway has loads going for it but its one major down side is that everything costs the bloody earth.

The first night i was there i shouted a round for 8 of us which basically was 8 half pints of Toubourg beer which came to a staggering £54! After that it was every man for themselve and by them selves.

By the end of the weekend i had done just shy of a grand, and i was being reserved!

As i say..... Norway, amazing place..... as long as you are tea total!
( caffeinefreak, Tue 18 May 2010, 20:56, 6 replies)

I'm sure they were all gay, too.
Quite a while ago now I went on holiday to eastern Greece (near-ish Delphi). I was part of a huge group and we were all looking to have a decent time, but frankly, I knew some of my companions were fairly rough characters and there was a chance they'd cause trouble.

I wasn't expecting much resistance to our partying lifestyle from the natives; we were throwing around a lot of moolah and they were practically lining up for it in a lot of cases. Just a few huge flash bastards (they were always oiled-up like wankers) who fancied themselves hard guys kept telling us to fuck off whenever we encountered them.

The tour group I was with was that big that there were actually a lot more of us than there were of them, so I thought they'd just see sense and stay out of our way, but things got bad when they pushed one of the black guys into a puddle (a really fucking deep one). After that the next time I saw them I told them if they didn't just fuck off I'd see the shit beaten out of them and vandalise their houses. I let them know I'd seen where their girlfriends lived and let the inference hang there. Maybe an overreaction but they really shouldn't have attacked one of ours. That was just insanity, no other word for it.

The ringleader just said something in Greek and it really kicked off from there. I'm not ashamed to say I backed off and watched it go down (I'm too pretty to get hurt) and the guys from my group tried to beat them up, but these guys were mentalists and weren't having any of it. Eventually my mates managed to surround them but they still went down throwing punches and I got whacked in the face by a stray projectile.

The rest of the natives took the psychopaths' side after that, saying we were causing too much trouble and giving us a lot of hassle from then on (even though they started it ffs) and we had to leave a lot sooner than we expected. I've no idea how those guys ended up but I assume they kept causing trouble and starting fights after we left. They can eat shit in hell for all I care.

Final cost of our sojourn? They gave us nothing and took from us everything.
(StapMyVitals wouldn't mind a bit of that, Tue 18 May 2010, 19:25, 7 replies)

Last year...
... was sad enough to go on a girlie weekend to... Disneyland. Me and two friends.

Found out our cards would work in the cash machines. So me and friend 1 brought €250 in cash each. Friend 2 bought €100.

Bad idea. Certain bank cards don't work on their machines. Out of the three of us, mine was the only one that did.

Only place we'd eat every night was Planet Hollywood and apparently buying crap to take home to your family and friends is a "necessity".

I left about €600 down, did get it back when we got home though.
(Melody was not PMSing on, Tue 18 May 2010, 17:57, Reply)

I cost BA £73 million in a weekend with a single fart
Next time I'll try to take your fucking holiday arrangements into account before I explode, shall I?

Love and kisses,

Eyjafjallajökull
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Tue 18 May 2010, 17:44, 2 replies)

My mate Kenneth is one of those twats that pushes you when you're at the urinal.
However, there was one night when we ended up on this boat moored up on the South Bank, and were somehow drinking champagne chased by proper martinis, in the company of the great, the good, and the ludicrously rich.

As I went to the bog, I saw Kenneth standing there, having his waz, and realised that he was probably pissing out fluid from enough drinks to at least see my week's wages if not more, and for some reason this made me furious. I made sure as I passed him I pushed him hard, revelling in the fact that that was an expensive wee "Ken"d.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 18 May 2010, 17:08, 3 replies)

Doing the business
One of the perks of my job is getting shat on from a great height by a bloke who looks like Adolf Hitler’s long-lost bastard grandchild who went to one of those posh schools and continually rips the piss out of me because I didn’t play fucking polo at my comprehensive back in the Midlands. Another perk is that I get to go away for ‘networking weekends’ to some of the most tedious, dull as fuck places Europe has to offer. I usually do my absolute utmost to get out of these trips as I don’t like being away from the Mrs and – also – there’s only so much mileage in watching Deal or No Deal with Noel Edmunds dubbed in a forreign language in a cheap Euro motel room before you actually consider suicide as the only reasonable, viable option.

The last time I went away I had the pleasure of flying into Findel late on a Friday with a co-worker named Dave who had never been away before. He was actually excited about going to Luxembourg... poor fucker...

Got to the hotel and discovered they’d been a mistake. We’d been booked in at this swanky place with fitted carpets, chandeliers, and a complete lack of bed lice and cockroaches. Things were looking up. Moments later Dave and I are in the rather posh bar supping drinks. We’ve got a meeting with some bigwig in the morning, so the evening’s our own. Fast forward an hour and we’re both pretty much into the spirit of things. Then at round ten an attractive girl in a swishy red dress and tits you could hang a couple of heavy coats on walks in and makes a b-line for us. She starts chatting to Dave. He buys her a drink. An expensive one. Then another. A really, really, REALLY fucking expensive one.

Dave gives me the unspoken signal with a wiggle of his eyebrows and a strange grimace as if he’s shitting grapes out of his japs eye – the look that says: I’m fucking in here! Do me a favor and fuck off, ehh?

“Dave...”

He turns to me, pushes a hundred Euro note in my hand and tells me politely to: “Fuck off and make yourself scarce.”

So I do. And as I go I hear Dave really pushing the boat out – ordering a bottle of champagne that’d set him back a couple of days wages.

The next morning we’re on our way to the client meeting. Dave’s silent. I’m silent. We have our little meeting. In the taxi on the way back to the hotel, silence. Over the meal that night, silence. We head back towards the bar then Dave pulls on my arm, suggests we check out some of the other delights Luxembourg has to offer. So we do. We find a nice little bar and settle down to a drink. Silence.

Awkward silence.

Then, eventually, Dave pipes up: “So, were you ever going to tell me she was a prostitute?”

A short pause. I enquire: "How much did you spend?"

"Well, including the 100 I gave you, about 500."

"And, errr, did you..?"

Dave shakes his head: "No," and for a breif moment I thought my colleague Dave had developed some kind of moral fiber, I saw him in a sudden new shining light (as if he'd just had is Reddybrek and had that saintly glow about him). Dave continued: "By the time I'd suggested we go up to my room I'd spent all my fucking money on booze and didn't have enough for a shag - she wanted 400 Euros for a shag, for fucks sake..."

We continued our drinks in silence after that.
( SpankyHanky, Tue 18 May 2010, 16:36, 9 replies)

Well
That's the last time I buy one of these.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 18 May 2010, 15:56, 4 replies)

Expensive euro holiday
back in my 2nd year of uni, 3 mates and myself decided to go on a mini adventure to a foreign land, as one of them was a Bulgarian we chose to go to Sofia as he lived there and he can speak the language as i struggle with english let alone bulgarian, i organised it all 4 flights leaving from luton to sofia and no need for accomodation as we were gonna stop in a plush apartment in the city centre.
it was all booked and once uni was done for the summer we were off for 3 nights to sample bulgarian customs and hairy women maybe,
being students we were fairly broke already so the cheaper the better,
the day before we were due to leave for sofia our bulgarian friend told us he didnt have a passport after losing and not realising he needed it to travel back "home".
that took us to 3 of us leaving the next day,
i drove to the airport in my old shitty car which subsequently broke down en route to the airport! we struggled to the airport and parked up and left for sofia.
when we arrived we had to get in to the city which was a £20 ride
find a hotel at the last minute and salvage our long weekend
we found a hostel that would take us, back on the other side of the city so unheard of the taxi driver struggled to find it, this was a recurring theme throughout the stay.
it was also guarded by 2 rotweilers without leashes! i shit you not, it was terrifying!
after 3 days of not knowing where to go or what to do because of our lack of knowledge we'd spent £110 on just taxis to get about the place
the whole trip cost just shy of £750+ per person which was a bitter pill to swallow not only that but i had to get my car fixed for £230 as well
i would still recommend going to sofia as it was an extremely good night out and brilliant place but just be prepared, and if you walk throgh the city after 3am beware of prostitutes that will grope you and expect payment for said groping, my mate paid her to leave with a library card!
(robbbbbbbb, Tue 18 May 2010, 15:49, 1 reply)

Expensive….and terrifying (For me anyway)
Time for my entry for this week and apologies for length in advance.

Last weekend was my daughters 5th birthday and as it was her first birthday at primary school my other half decided that the best thing to do would be to set up a party and invite all her classmates. As things are pretty tight cash wise at the moment the wife decided to host it our house and so the past few weeks I have been in the back garden making the whole thing presentable, buying a shedload of decorative gravel etc etc. I don’t actually class this as a wasted expense as the back garden looks pretty good now and we will use it for future barbecues. The thing that bothers me did not turn up until my daughters classmates had arrived.

As the party guests were running around the house screaming/ overdosing on diluted orange there was a knock at the door. Wifey yelled at me to go get it as she has her hands full. In retrospect I should have seen the evil glint in her eye but I was welcome to escape the mass hysteria from the group of 4 to 5 year olds.

I opened the front door to the sight of a 6 foot tall bloke dressed in neon colours , every patch of his skin was covered in face paint and had a comedy purple wig that was styled on the mad hatter. For anyone else this may not be worrying its just a kiddies entertainer turning up but for me it was as if time had stood still and my skin had turned ice cold. I may not have mentioned this before on this site but I have an irrational fear of clowns*. I know it sounds stupid to be afraid of blokes in facepaint but really that’s the only thing I have a problem with I am not affected by spiders, wasps, heights, ghosts, snakes, the dark etc etc, clowns just freak me out and will make me break into a cold sweat. What came next was even worse.

“HELLOOOO MON” screeched the brillo haired man from my nightmares

(Shit he knows my name thinks I while scanning the nearby area for something hard to hit him with before he bursts out into song or forces me to watch the entire run of 2 pints of larger and a packet of crisps**)

Clown: I’M HERE TO ENTERTAIN YOUR DAUGHTER AND FRIENDS TODAAAAAAY (Everything is in caps because the git actually yelled it and did the whole jazz hands thing simultaneously)

Me: You’re going to kill them aren’t you

Clown: IT’S OK MON I KNOW YOU ARE SCARED OF MY KIND, I LOVE ALL PEOPLE AND KIDDIES

(I would have cracked a pedophile joke but I was too petrified that he classed all clowns as his kind, which solidifies my theory that all clowns are either alien or demons created from souls of scriptwriters from unfunny BBC sitcoms)

While Mr Clown ran off to amuse the kids in the garden I hid in the kitchen and cautiously checked every so often as I didn’t want him appearing behind me when I was unaware. The other party guests were pissing themselves as the wife had posted the fact that the clown was coming and that I was bound to spack out due to my phobia on facebook earlier in the week. My plan was to stay out of the way while the clown did his magic tricks, made balloon animals and played DJ Otzi and the crazy frog at full pelt from his portable CD player. As he was finishing his act he decided to end on a high before the cake arrived:

NOW THEN I’M GOING TO NEED THE BIRTHDAY GIRL TO HELP ME WITH MY FINAL MAGIC TRICK declared the large footed vision of evil

My daughter went up to the front)

NOW THEN MONSDAUGHTER, WE MIGHT NEED SOME HELP FOR THIS ONE WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET SOMEONE TO COME UP HERE AND JOIN YOU?

(Choose the girl with the wonky eye or better yet the psychopathic little spoilt brat who has spent the last ten minutes twatting everyone with that plastc sword thinks I but we all know where this is going don’t we…)

HOW ABOUT YOUR DADDY? sings my new arch nemesis smiling like a rapist in a dormitory of heavily sedated convent girls

YAAYY yell a select few of parents that are now on my newly created list of people I plan on sending anthrax to

I then sat there and tried to look my best while the clown wrapped me in balloons, after an inappropriate amount of fondling from coco he eventually made the balloons spell the words happy birthday and made the kids sing to my daughter while the missuis brought in the cake.

As he finished packing up Mr Clown decided to leave me with one parting shot to scar me for a while:

REEEEMEMBER MON I KNOW WHERE YOU LIIIIVVEEEEEEEE!!!!!! HE HE HE HE!

(I Make a note to myself to arm the house via an array of heavy, swingable objects and if feasible a tesla coil or even look at another property)

So this weekend has been quite expensive for the missus as she has paid for the party, the entertainer and the therapy bills for her husband who is also plotting revenge on her in some possible way. I know that she is scared of wasps but I think that the chance of me being able training a wasp to turn up at our house and annoy her is fairly slim so any ideas from you B3tans would be appreciated.

*Before anyone asks it has nothing to do with watching a film involving Pennywise the clown at an early age, by the time I had seen it I realized that Pennywise was played by Tim Curry so everytime I saw him I had thoughts of him as Frank N Furter so he wasn’t really that scary.

**Both are actual nightmares that would probably force me to give up sleep without some form of tranquilizers
(mon bison powered by magnets, Tue 18 May 2010, 14:15, 14 replies)

Not me but a friend of mine
and it wasn't even him it cost. Still, this has to go down as one of the most expensive nights I've ever heard of.

Friend of mine worked in quite a swanky hotel. Very prim and proper, everything had to be "just so", not a hair out of place type of thing. No idea how he managed it, I would've gone mental the first time they asked me to remove my piercings. But the place reeked of money and so did the clientele. Then they get a cockroach infestation. This is bad. This is very fucking bad.

Management call in some experts and ask them to be discreet, which is fair enough really. Unfortunately they were staggeringly inept. I know of this because my mate was one of the staff - he reckons they could've populated the funeral scene in Gandhi between them - who had to clean up the next day. The floor they started on was knackered but manageable, mostly just broken crockery and a weird residue. The real problem was the ballroom downstairs.

Apparently these "specialists" had tried to smoke out the roach and got a bit carried away, there were burn marks everywhere, tables upturned where they'd chased it, the contents of the expensively stocked bar were smashed (oh! the humanity). Just totally fucked. Not only did the hotel lose business and have to spend thousands to fix the place up, the exterminators charged them somewhere upwards of $9,000. That is one fucking expensive night. And all for a cockroach. Although one of the exterminators did say to a guest that it'd take your head off.
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Tue 18 May 2010, 13:31, 17 replies)