The bears, THE BEARS...
I had quite a serious operation on my ankle a couple of years ago to repair/replace my Achilles tendon that had me on crutches for about six months. Prior to the operation, I was placed in an air-cast for a couple of months (very large, bulky thing that you pump up air-cushions to keep the foot/ankle completely immobile) to see if the tendon would repair itself – it didn’t.

Whilst I was in this air-cast, a very good friend of mine’s sister was married over in Somerset – being a very close friend of the family I was invited along with a couple of other guys from Jersey.

As anybody who has had a very obvious injury knows, many months of people asking how you were injured in the first place and having to repeat a very dull story gets tiresome, quickly. Being (a) cataclysmically drunk; and (b) an arsehole, I decided that instead of being boring, I could have some fun. Cue me (with my Jersey mates backing me up) telling anyone who asked more and more unlikely tales about my injury – I was shot by an American sniper in Afghanistan, being run over by a Ferrari after pushing a mother with child out of its path, a professional sports injury (badminton, lacrosse and jai alai).

The piece de resistance was concocting a preposterous story to particularly gullible sod about having been caught in a bear-trap which had broken the leg and destroyed the surrounding muscle and that I had to wear the ridiculous cast for the foreseeable future. Being of Somerset stock, and not having been to Jersey before (which often retains the reputation of remaining in a bygone age), this was accepted without question.

Cue a few months later, post-surgery, when I was out and about (again, slightly inebriated) in Jersey when who should accost me, but the Somerset local who had believed my bear-trap story, visiting mutual friends in Jersey. He asked me how my leg was, and proceeded to explain to the gents that he was with how I had had my leg caught in a bear-trap. My utterly blank look (steeped in incredulity that he had swallowed this story hook, line and sinker) seemed to make his friends question his sanity somewhat.
( Hunter Stockton was murdered by a bicycle wielding axolotl,.,.,.,., Thu 12 Jan 2012, 13:44, Reply)