Grenade!
My mate Jez went to Spain on his holidays. Instead of bringing back a fluffy donkey in a sombrero, he brought back a Civil War surplus German stick grenade.

A dud, he assured us. The lying turd.

Like normal, sane teenagers we went up to the woods and took turns throwing it at each other whilst shouting "Achtung Spitfire" and "Gott in Himmel!"

"Ha!" shouted Jez, pulling out the pin, "You think you're so clever!"

It was then he realised that it might actually be the real thing, and threw it, like a girl, as far as he could.

It bounced off a tree, and landed at our feet.

"Leg it!"

We legged it.

There was this bastard big explosion, closely followed by a collective crapping of pants.

How we laughed...
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 25 Nov 2004, 15:15, Reply)

One Dark Night...
...I was racing against a friend during a late-night Thrash around the hills on our Trusty Moutainbikes. We were riding through a stretch of fast and downhill field. We did it all the time.

This time was to be different: This time we were stoned.

Leering at each other (much like slavvering hounds with their heads out of the car window at 70mph) in the very murky darkness, we pounded on the pedals and hurled ourselves into oblivion. We were moving at warp speed into darkness. Scotty had nothing on us - He was right - HIS engines couldn't take any more - OURS however were pushing us faster and faster, until the world was a blur - We were going fater than humanly posible - We were laughing like maniacs - The feeling of speed was stupendous - the rushing sensation was..... GONE!
and so was my mate.
and so was my bike.

I was in pain. Really serious pain. I was alone in the dark, on the ground, and clutching at my nuts which seemed to have been violated in some way... I was a bloody and mangled heap of hurt.

It was then that I heard the noise. A deep gutteral gurgling wheezing noise that had no right to exist. It was scared the pap out of me, and then I realised where it was coming from... It was coming from my mouth.

I tried to stop it, but failed. The biggest thing on my mind was that I was making an embarassing noise and was powerless to stop. I was still wondering how to stop this incessant gurgling and groaning, when the cause of my crash made itself apparent: Thundering towards me was a particularly irate Bull. It was making a noise that's hard to describe. "pissed off Bovine" fails to cover it.
Try imagining the noise that a Gorilla would make if he was wearing a Ball-Gag, with his hands cuffed to his ankles, as you shove a Giant, Freshly-boiled and steaming hot Pinapple up his tightly puckered tea-towel holder.... Make it louder, and then add Thundering hooves as a background noise....

Worrying? you don't know the half of it.

It arrived on the same piece of field that I was occupying roughly 2 seconds after I had first sighted it.

*********
I can assure you, that if you're going to ride hell for leather through a field in the dark, It's a good idea to check for standing-and-sleeping cows.

Ride around them. Do not under any circumstances ride INTO them. Especially if they are giant bulls. Especially if you're doing 40mph.
**************

I was caught in a one-Bull stampede. It was not the most jolly occasion of my life. I realised that the beast was as blind in this darkness as I was. The pain of getting onto all fours and crawling took my breath (and silly noises) away. I crawled away from the meaty mother-lover, and found my mangled bike just as my mate re-appeared.

The damage list was surprisingly small
£600 Kona bike frame bent out of shape (but still ridable)
1 snapped handlebar. (bull arse)
2 broken ribs, (initial bull impact)
1 fractured finger, (bull stampage)
2 bruised nuts, (handlebar stem)
1 torn Scrote. (see above)

During the stompede I was convinced that I was going to die.
The Pain in my scrote for the next few days made me wish I HAD died.

Apologies to Farmer for arse-raping his bull with A mountain bike.

EDIT: Dear god that's one long post...
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Fri 26 Nov 2004, 12:45, Reply)

Human Candle
A few years ago, I was suffering with very heavy clinical depression, and took some nice sweeties that the doc gave me. I spent a good few weeks wondering wether I should just kill myself and save some long term misery, but stuff got rosier, and I decided to get on with enjoying life.

A friend of mine sorted me out with a blind date, but it was back home in beautiful cheshire. So, on a friday afternoon, I got on my obscenely fast motorbike, which due to the necessities of medication, I hadnt used for about a month.

Eager to be on time for my date, I went down the motorway at naughty speeds. 20 minutes away from my intended destination, hurtling through rush hour traffic at about a ton, I noticed a trucker looking at me in sheer horror. It was then I looked behind me, to notice I had a ten metre comet tail of fire shoting out the back of the bike.

On further inspection, it appeared the whole bike was on fire, and the only thing stopping me getting roasted was my excessive speed.

I found it ironic that after weeks of thionking about how to top myself, my bike was going to do it for me.

Anyway, by a mixture of bravery and sheer dumb luck, I managed to get the bike on to the hard shoulder, and jump of it at a sensible speed. As it groundto a halt on the shoulder, it went pop three times, and turned into a ginormous fireball. I caused huge tailbacks, got on radio 1 travel time, and even into some of the papers....

linky

When I phoned my date to tell her the reason I would be late, she thought I was bullshitting, and told me where to stick, my date.

How rude.
( Dr Nick Riviera, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 14:07, Reply)

I came near death once...
...I wiped myself off on his cloak.
(manky dog, Wed 1 Dec 2004, 10:22, Reply)

Lunar death run! May day! May day!
When I was an astronaut, working for a secret government organisation in 1806, I had a near death experience.

I was to be the pilot on the real first rocket to the moon. It was a steam powered rocket and, to keep it secret, we built it to look like a lighthouse. Suspicions were raised amongst locals, as the found the addition of a lighthouse to trafalgar square seemed a bit eccentric. However, we managed to quell interest in our project by travelling in time and starting the Great Fire of London over 100 years late.

The day of the launch, we had to distract the attention of the entire populous of the capital. This was surprisingly easy to achieve. We recruited Brian Blessed, who stood on top of the yet-to-be-built Millenium Dome and shouted 'Look over there' and pointed in the opposite direction of the launch.

Needless to say, with British engineering the way it is, the launch was effortless. We had practiced pulling all the levers and turning the dials for days, and all that effort paid off.

We arrived in space without a glitch. Now we had to set course, and for some reason our compass had stopped working. We decided to take our navigation method from nature. So, in moth-like mimicry, we kept the moon to our left at all times.

Two days later, we reaslised we were lost in space. We hadn't been keeping the moon to our left at all; we had mixed it up with the sun. What is more we were running out of air. Luckily, my first mate (A pre-'spit' Bob Carolgees) had bought with him a packet of twenty balloons of various colours. We quickly set about inflating them, and by this method we had created a considerable extra air supply, which we had to ration out for the rest of the journey.

Using an ordinance survey map and Bob's keen eye for navigation, we managed to figure out where we were; twenty miles from the Sun, directly above the M27. We recharted our course, and just managed to get to the moon before closing time. We stuck up a British flag as quick as we could, and set off for home.

Obviously by this time, we were very short of air. We opened all the cupboards in case there was any in there, but to no avail. As I slipped into unconciousness I remember hoping that we were pointing in the right direction, as we were all passing out, and we would have no opportunity to steer for ourselves.

This is when I had my near death experience. There was a tunnel of light which a vole lead me through. When I got to the other end I saw that it was the Dartford tunnel. Then I spotted my Grandmother, who was negotiating the purchase of a bungalow. I tried to tell to tell her to check for rising damp, but she told me it wasn't time for me to be there yet.

That's as much as I remember. The next thing I recall is waking up in the upside down rocket. It had landed nose first in the stoney beach of Southsea seafront. We hid the rocket under some leaves, and caught the next train home, stopping only to have tea and scones at the station in Liphook.
( baldmonkey a frothy foul-smelling vaginal discharge, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 11:39, Reply)

This might be the reason people have therapy
but not me. I'm an 'ard Northern lass. When I was 15, my mum took me to Meadowhall (large, rather woo shopping place in Sheffield). After exhausting ourselves with a heavy shop, we made our way to the train station. Standing on the platform, the track started to shudder, there was a veeeery fast intercity about to pass through Meadowhall station. I don't like fast trains much, so I held onto the timetable sign in preparation.

Now, the whole time, a rather odd looking woman had been standing in front of me, but I thought little of it. Then she grabbed my arm.

And jumped in front of the intercity.

If I hadn't have held onto the signpost, I would have been dragged under that train with her. People started screaming, my mum grabbed hold of me, and we all looked down the track where all we could see was a torso. Just a torso. They found other bits down the line.

We had to get a bus home.

The bitch.
(b3tasux, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 3:47, Reply)

Vehicular nastiness
On holiday in Spain, my friend had been teasing us about a so-called 'road of death' that we'd have to journey down each and every day. It turns out this entire stretch of concrete is an accident blackspot, with the central reservation missing large sections and the cliff face on one side of the road being erratically decorated with car paint, glass & seemingly, blood.

Being one of the many retards in the world who simply hasn't bothered learning to drive, I'm much more terrified of having no control of my impending doom. So it's with this deep seated fear that I find myself in the rear of one of two taxis driving us into town for the evening.

Everything's going well until the driver of the car in front radio's over 'Race! Race!' (which I am hoping is Spanish for 'slower! cautious!'). I was wrong.

The two fucking bastards start to race one another just as we pull onto the 'road of death'... I look up and see that we are doing over 100 and are less that 6 inches from the cab in front. Some quick maths based on braking distance, reaction times & the contents of my bowls leads me to the conclusion that I am, for want of a better word, fucked.

I start to panic and wind my window down in the feeble hope that it might slow us down, my eyes are fixed are on the brake lights of the car in front, waiting for the quick flash of red before I am liberally splashed across the bonnet of a Mondeo.

10 of the sweatiest minutes known to man pass and then, it happens. The car in front brakes - we brake... he swerves - we swerve. I decide instantly that I want to die with no dignity whatsoever and launch into the trillest most child like scream ever heard from a grown man.

My friends jump, the taxi driver jumps and the people at the bar we had just pulled up outside of stare nervously at the idiot in the back of a cab who seemingly screams when he gets to his destination.

I didn't pull.
( moonjam, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 0:14, Reply)

How do you scare a plane load of people?
Tell them the fuckin' engine has just blown up!
For my ninth birthday(bout 8 yrs ago if my maths is right), my mother took us all out to see my father, who was away on a business trip on some exotic island (ok, not so much a business trip, but he's in the RAF, and spent the best part of 6 months drinking shitloads of beer and snorkelling with sharks).
Excellent 2 weeks, spend loads of time with daddy, get a tan, but the shitty part of having to leave him returns.
So we are on the plane, im sobbing my heart out, face pressed against the window hoping to see him- even when the plane was taking off: cue near death experience
At the ironically named "point of no return", the engine im sitting directly behind (i always get window seats near the wing) decides to explode into a mass of flames and sparks- while im still looking out the window!
I turn to my mum, and say a bit more loudly than intended "Fucking hell! SHIT,MUM THE PLANE'S ON FIRE" ; cue lots of havoc, trolly dollys running around crying and what does mum do? Pulls the shutter down and says "go to sleep, it will be over soon".

I don't think she was trying to be ironic

*found out a month later that some rare bird got stuck in the engine, we had too much fuel on the plane, and we had 3 options after take off: turn left or right and fly into volcanic mountains, go into the sea and get eaten by great whites (in breeding season :)) or fly up

Maybe i'm invincible :-)
(cookie_freak, Thu 25 Nov 2004, 16:55, Reply)

TOO STUPID TO BE SCARED...
...yep! that's me. I was flying into Las Vegas, (with my friend and our wives) on a tiny little 16-20 seater plane.

My friend had never flown before, so naturally we ended up flying into a lightening storm, just outside of Vegas.

I'm laughing and joking about crashing as we watch the lightening zig-zag past the wings and screaming "We're all going to die!" every time the plane dropped a couple of hundred feet.

By this time my friend had a white-knuckle grip on both arm-rests and was crying like a baby.

When we landed I could hear my friend saying "Thank God, Thank God" over and over again. It was at this point that the steward said for us to take a look at the wing, which had a foot wide hole in it from where the lightening had punched straight through it.

My friend promply emptied his lunch over my shoes. There's probably a moral in there somewhere.
.
(SproutsAreEvil, Thu 25 Nov 2004, 13:45, Reply)

electric baby
TDub's dad reminded me of this.

Since I was a baby, I can't strictly remember this but it has been recounted to me on many many occasions so that'll have to do.

My Dad was replacing the bulb in a table lamp whilst his 9 month old son (me) sat drooling next to him. Being the DIY genius that he isn't, he had not only left the lamp plugged in & switched on but he'd also managed to break the fitting, so instead of a lamp he'd created some sort of table-top electrodeath device.

Admitting defeat, he wandered off (possibly to hit the oven with a hammer) as soon as his back was turned he heard an enormous bang and spun round to find that his baby had somehow teleported onto the sofa 10 feet from the table and was looking a little puzzled. Of course what had actually happened was that I'd jammed my dribbly fist into the lamp of doom and had been blown across the room accordingly.

Needless to say both my parents find this story hilarious and often tell friends & family about the time their baby was 'almost burned alive!', and how they are 'terrible human beings!' (failing only to use those exact words).
( moonjam, Sun 28 Nov 2004, 11:19, Reply)

When I was twelve
A guy who lived across the road from our house dragged me into his hallway, locked the door and started beating me with two iron bars about the back and head.After a while he rang up his wife(who had left him that day) and told her that he had me in the house and it was intention to kill me if she didn't come back to him.He fractured my skull and two lower arm bones and completely broke my upper arm bone.I was there four hours.If he hadn't have rang his missus,nobody would have known I was there.

I know it's hardly fluffy and there is no punchline.
(pikey, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 13:24, Reply)

Near Death........Been There Done That!
I dont know if I'm just unlucky or if someone up there has it in for me,

Just how near is NEAR?

I had my first proper "Near Death Experience",

As in "Sorry mate, thats your lot" when I was only 16.

While skin diving at a place called St Abbs,
trying to lever a large lobster from its home in an underwater crevice, upside down, feet up on the roof, pulling hard,(insert your own joke here!)
and .........Shit!
Rockfall !
Me, green as grass to the diving thing ,
Lost my mouthpiece,
Trapped by falling rocks and promptly gulped down what was rather too much North Sea.

(I dont even like lobster!)

Fortunately, A N Other diver
(Dave, to who I am obviouslly still indebted to) Who was near to where it happened, managed to get me free and to the shore and I was quite literally, pumped out and "kiss of lifed", back to life,(no tongues,honest!)

Having actually been Dead...!
Drowned,
Full hit ,
Flatline,
No pulse,
No Heartbeat,
Full on F****ed!
No lights at the end of tunnel or any of that...........!
Just an "Oh Shit" sense of panic and the memory of the metallic taste in my mouth on that one ,

Yes There's More.

Three years and numerous high speed motorbike crashes later...................

I worked out that the sense of slow motion thing was actually your body pumping more and more adrenaline to your brain to help it deal with what can safely be defined as an

EMERGENCY!

I'm not even telling you about the electric shocks!

Too many close calls to even list.

Then of course there was the Hang Gliding incident!
Sennen Cove near Pollpero in Cornwall,
Me ,
Big gang of Biker mates,

Ten minutes verbal instruction
(it was a long time ago)
on how to do this,
that,
and land.
"Who's First?" the geezer say's,

Why was everyone looking at me?

"Sounds easy mate!
I'll have a bit of that".
Shitting it really.

Two hundred feet high Cliff.

Great fun................Nothing like the feeling when you run off a cliff for the first time with a few bits of scaffold pipe and some canvas on your back
(well, looking back, thats what it was really)

superb sensation,
fantastic view,
really,really great!
What was it he said about not banking too tighly on the turns...........?

PLUMMET!

Oh Yes !
"Dont bank too tightly on the turns kids,You know it makes sense!

Broken leg ,three ribs, sprained wrist and, Never,I mean NEVER will you get me up on one of those things again.

Last one......................WELL I HOPE?

Five years ago ,BAD Pain...No.

BAD,BAD Pain,in guts.

I'm so tough!
(read STUPID!,
Pain is gods way of saying "your not well,no really, the more it hurts,like hell ,the more your probably not well).

Ignored the cumulating pain for four days before going to casualty!

Twisted Illium,

(Basically your small intestine tries to make one of those little balloon animals that those crap street entertainers do.)
Rushed straight to theater for an emergency operation .
Massive Scar from groin to midchest where some geezer had both his hands and a meccano set inside me.

Told post surgery that I was VERY,VERY lucky to be alive, He said I was a couple of hours off of Peritonitus and would not have survived .
Massive section of necrotic bike inner tube removed full of nasty's,

Dont even ask me about the old guy on the recovery ward who thought it was still during the war and kept trying to "escape".
I woke up on the second night being pulled out of bed by the various drains, catheters and iv tubes that were attached to the stand that he was climbing up, having crawled around the ward under the beds,

The bit that really got me about that was, I was fully paid up in BUPA and my operation could have bought my Private Surgeon a nice new BMW, if only I'd gone to the slightly further down the road private hospital,
rather than the local casualty..........!
Oh well ,I'll remember next time.

Dont talk to me about Near Death Experiences,
I've shit 'em.
(The Return of The Mack, Thu 25 Nov 2004, 21:43, Reply)

Not a very nice experience....
I used to live with an alcoholic who was gradually getting more and more paranoid and more and more schizophrenic as time went on.
I eventually decided that helping him out of it was beyond my abilities and arranged to move house.
A week before I moved, delusional, he stormed into my room with a 4-foot decorative samurai sword (still fuckin sharp), and held me hostage for approximately 30 minutes with the sword at my throat, telling me that I was evil, and that he was a soldier of God and it was his destiny to 'put me down'.
At some point he'd put the sword down and attacked me with his bare hands, during which struggle I got a broken hand and a few other bruises, but I got really lucky when he thrust the sword at my middle, as somehow I managed to half-grab, half-deflect the thing away from my body. It still punctured my skin, leaving me with an inch-long scar to show for it, but if I hadn't reacted so quickly, that sword would've gone right through my stomach, killing me for sure.
As I was sitting there, with the sword at my throat, I had all the 'life flashing before my eyes' stuff, and got a chance to evaluate my life and decided that if I actually got out of the situation (I genuinely believed I wouldn't) that I'd do everything possible to make a better life for myself.
Now I'm in a fantastic job in a fantastic workplace, surrounded by fantastic people in the fantastic city of London, in a wonderful state of mind (if a little wary of some personality types - I believe they call it emotional scarring).
My advice to everyone?
Don't try to help psychotic delusional alcoholics... no matter how good and virtuous you think you're being, the cunt's bound to hate your your guts for trying... if they even notice you're trying to help them.
Twats.
Now I deliberately avoid anyone that gets even the slightest bit aggressive after a few drinks. It's just not worth it.
( Lempraadon, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 18:24, Reply)

When I was 14
I was cycling with a mate by a river in France. We noticed some bloke carrying a bag and a twin barrel shotgun walking ahead of us.
My mate turned to me and said "I think we should go a different way"
Just as I was about to concur, the man (who was about 15 yards away) turned towards us, pointed to gun in our direction, and fired.
Everything went in slow motion, the bang reached my ears about 3 seconds after I saw it happen, and about 3 seconds after that came the stinging pain...

Luckily for us, he had loaded shot, not wild boar killing rounds, which are the norm round there. The shot mainly hit our bikes, but my mate got a few pellets in the calf, and I got several ricochets to the face, which was nice.

Two hours later the local Gendarmes had taken him down, but only after he changed ammo to wild boar killing rounds and put three men out of action! Turns out he was a local madman who had robbed a bank. Before he was caught he concealed the money in a drain pipe. The money was never found, and he's been in a padded cell ever since :)

Sorry for length and girth, I've been told its hereditary.
(lat297, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 14:13, Reply)

I did actually die:
When I was 16, on my last day at my first job, my boss took me and a couple of colleagues for a farewell drink.

The pub that went to was opposite our office and in the space of two hours, I drunk six pints.

Cutting a long story a little shorter, I got hit by a car doing 60mph as I crossed the road back to the office. The impact with the car's front bumper broke my left femur in three. My left arm broke the car's windsreen and I fractured my left shoulder on the windscreen post.

Here's the good bit: I then sailed into the air and landed back on the side of the road I'd come from, only for another car to run me over. One wheel ran over my already mangled leg and the other hit my head, fracturing my skull.

Then I died. Seriously, the company first-aider had to give me the kiss-of-life and said afterwards that I was gone for six minutes.

I have no recollection of this so can't report any lights or tunnels. If I had've stayed dead though, I'd have known nothing about it.

I subsequently spent three months in hospital and a further three months at home convalescing.

I have a steel plate and 14 bolts holding my left femur together and a scar that runs from my hip to my knee: something to tell the little puppy inferior when he's older (:
( <>Dog www.stevelaker.blog, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 12:29, Reply)

Tonsillitis
Doesn't sound fatal does it? What the doctor doesn't tell you is that once a few secondary infections kick in, your fucking throat can swell up tighter than an otter's arsehole. This makes breathing difficult and swallowing water impossible.

Three days of this, and spitting out little bags of puss, convinced me to get my backside down to the doctors. He's a nice guy. Gay as a troupe of hairdressers though, which, much to my shame, was probably why I refused to let him shove a painkiller the size of his thumb up my arse.

I left the surgery to go to the E.N.T. hospital in King's Cross. I blacked out twice on the way (it was only a ten-minute journey).

I was admitted after coughing up a load of nastyness over a nurse who, I think, only offered me the bed to get me out of the consulting room. I don't remember much after that, except for regaining consciousness to find two nurses taking pulse/temperature (106 degrees). One said 'We haven't had one this hot in ages". If I were feeling even marginally human at this point I could possibly have taken advantage of the situation. As it was, I couldn't talk and passed out again.

I was in that bastard hospital for 10 days. Thankfully I was put on intravenous morphine for good chunk of the time. Kids: anyone who tells you drugs suck is a lying sack of shit who has never had a cable pumping a pure opiate into their bloodstream. It's the best thing ever.

I staggered out on Christmas Eve weighing three stone less than I did two weeks earlier. The test for being released was being able to swallow a spoonfull of mashed potato. Isn't science wonderful.

To this day I thank the guy who runs the newsagents a few doors down who, when faced with an emaciated, dribbling near-corpse, still sold me ten Marlboro Lights.

Smoking the fuckers hurt like hell - but it was nothing compared to craving for painkillers I woke up with on Christmas morning.
( Bohica Anne Frank's Bukkaki Tentacle Storm, Thu 25 Nov 2004, 16:19, Reply)

Queens Day celebration
Over here in Holland, young people find it interesting to travel all the way to our capital to celebrate (= get dead drunk) Queens day, our national day of celebration (comparable to St. Patricks day, everybody gets as drunk as possible).
Being just 17 or 18 years old myself, i decided to join in on the fun and me and a couple of my friends are off to the nations capital for a day of drinking.
Cue to 4 pm. I've lost all my friends and I'm walking through the overcrowded streets and decide to walk in the next bar and have more drinks. Cue to what must have been somewhere around 8 in the evening. I wake up in an abandoned train (!) on a deserted piece of land i have never seen before in my life. I try to open doors and, still stupid drunk, decide it will be a good idea to vacate the train through a window. I crawl through one of those small top windows, lose my balance, smash my head on the railroadtracks and pass out.
Next moment of clarity; i wake up on the railroadtrack, manage to stand up and look straight into the headlights of an oncoming train. I manage to stumble aside, fall over and don't remember anything untill I wake up at the trainstation of the city i then lived near, with a painfull head, a black eye and a bruised arm. I decide to visit my cousin, who lived closeby and when i walk into his house, he mumbles "what the fuck have you done?" Only then I noticed the 10+ inch bloodstain on the back of my white t-shirt.
I never celebrated queens day in the capital again.
(Bokbiertrol, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 22:30, Reply)

White Spirit
A long time ago I suddenly felt I needed to know what white spirit tasted like. It tastes like months in hospital and the American Poison Department being flown in. That, and lemonade.
(Burb Lulls, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 15:12, Reply)

not so much near death
as near shat-on

I was walking along the road when for no reason at all I stopped. A moment later a massive birdshit landed exactly where I would have been if I'd carried on walking.

Well I guess it could have killed me. If it was an evil acid-shitter bird, for example.
(teasus likes tea, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 13:42, Reply)

hitch-hiking as a young man
this bloke who picked me up kept putting his hand on my leg. I pretended to ignore it, just moving his hand away every time.

Then, because he wasn't concentrating on the road, he had to slam on the brakes so hard he went into a spin, and landed in the hard shoulder.

I didn't get a chance to jump out, but he was totally freaked out after nearly wiping us both out, and he noticed I was completely calm. I told him God was looking after me. He started to ask what would happen if he "did something" to me, and I told him God would sort him out.

The guy somehow became convinced I was an angel(?) and started asking me lots of questions about God. He left my leg alone, and instead of driving me from near Sheffield to near Birmingham, he went as far as Exeter to hear what I was saying. And in the services there, he burst into tears and repented.

Hoorah! I wasn't raped and murdered and dumped in a ditch.
(teasus likes tea, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 13:36, Reply)

First year at uni
Living away from my parents I was terribly excited at the prospect of independence and responsibility.

To get things going I thought, "I'm going to cook myself my very own meal!" and so I got a lasagne ready to put in the oven.

Not having ever used an oven before, I remembered hearing people talk about "pre-heating" so I turned the oven on and left it for half an hour.

I had forgotten that this oven required you to light the inside with a match for it actually to 'heat'. Thinking "d'oh!" I ran over and lit a match inside...

My memory of what happened is a little hazy but I do remember a sound much like 'KABOOM' emanating from the oven, accompanied by an enormous ball of fire. I felt myself thrown across the other side of the kitchen by the force of the explosion.

Somehow I wasn't burnt at all, but if there's one thing I learnt from this experience, it's this:

Don't EVER use an oven. It's simply not worth the risk.
(soma9766, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 12:18, Reply)

I ........
Once saw Dave Prowse in a Chinese restaurant in Bristol - I was sat 3 tables away from him....... That was a "Near Darth" experience.

There was a light at the end of a tunnel - then a Chinese bloke came out of it and said "You wanna tha flied lice ?"

.
( dogfish, Fri 26 Nov 2004, 8:12, Reply)

She's electric
When my girlfriend and I moved into our new house some of the light fittings and switches had been ripped out and the bare wires were left hanging. So she asks, "Do you think these are live?" and before I can say "I don't know but I wouldn't touch them.", she grabs the wires and sticks her tongue on them to test! I scream in horror... she just looks at me like I've gone mad and says "Nah, they're dead! What's with you?" before walking off, leaving me shaking and stuttering and not quite believing the level of idiocy I had just seen.
(bobobrains, Wed 1 Dec 2004, 17:54, Reply)

Aberyst....Mid-Wales 2003
my friends and i were on a beach in wales for someone's birthday...

there were some very tall cliffs on this beach and we were all sat underneath them. one of blokes (who was showing off to some girl we wanted to shag) decided to climb said cliffs. now these were covered in huge pieces of *heavy* slate rock.

up he goes...almost to the top...

...DOWN comes a single *massive* boulder of slate...

there were about 30 people in the group, all sitting under the cliffs. the boulder thunders down the cliff hits a lip and is flung, sharp corner first, into *MY* back. Cue loud scream from me.

*blood*

*rushed to hospital*

boulder *just* misses my lungs and spine. i refuse to sit under cliffs now...but i have a great scar!

i kept the slate. he's called mick jagged and he lives on a rockery in my garden. he weighs just over 5stone :)
(Nos coeurs cocaine Montparnasse Le mix de gelée vodka et le beat, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 17:24, Reply)

I was cycling in Romania...
...and was having a few interesting days crossing the Carpathian Mountains on totally deserted dirt tracks (if you've been watching Long Way Round recently, you'll understand the sort of roads we're talking about here). A great time, although difficult cycling because of the state of the roads.

I'd climbed over a pass at about 1200 metres and started slowly to pick my way down the boulderfield that passed for a road on the other side. Because I was having to trickle down this road it was really hard work, squeezing the brakes like mad the whole way. The road was like one of those in RoadRunner cartoons - hacked into the side of a mountain with a sheer wall rising on one side and a sheer drop on the other side.

After a few minutes, just when my fingers were starting to scream from gripping the brakes so much, I rounded a corner and there, to my delight, found that the road had recently been surfaced with lovely smooth fresh black tarmac. Fantastic! I let go of the brakes and started to fly down the road, whipping freely round the corners and enjoying the amazing views.

This moment of delight lasted right up until I rounded another corner and discovered with a trill of happy laughter that SOME NUTTER HAD DECIDED TO GO UP A MOUNTAIN IN THE MIDDLE OF BLOODY NOWHERE AND TARMAC A COMPLETELY RANDOM TWO-HUNDRED-METRE STRETCH OF TIGER-ARSEING ROAD FOR NO APPARENT REASON!! The tarmac ended just like that, and I found myself back on dirt track, except rather than travelling at the 8-10 kph that is suitable for such rough roads, I was now travelling at about 45 kph. My front wheel hit a pothole the size of the Grand Canyon and I lost all control of the bike, bouncing from one side of the road to the other, and all the time with this sheer drop on one side. I had to brake by throwing myself off, and ended up if a bloody heap right on the edge of a dizzying 200m drop. What larks.
( Olembe Refuses to write in this space, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 10:03, Reply)

I just
moved to Baghdad last week
(junglejim, Sat 27 Nov 2004, 14:04, Reply)

Yes...daily.
I have had plenty of near death experiences, usually each day.
But being a paramedic they are usually someone elses.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Thu 25 Nov 2004, 15:52, Reply)

Electricity is fun...
As a student, the first house we moved into was newly refurbished with all new mod cons etc. Except the oven wasn't wired up properly; the thing was feckin' live. So much so that if you put your hand near it you could feel the tingling of electricity through your arm. (For those of you who don't know, apparently the oven is connected with a fat cable, not just a poxy kettle lead. How was I to know that!)

Anyway, I obviously thought the best thing to do was not turn it off and phone an electrician, but sensibly, to test the appliance by touching it with a screwdriver.

Next thing I know is finding myself being shot backwards all the way across the kitchen onto my (now buzzing) arse and having to spend the next couple of hours lying down recovering from the shock.

Now someone calls an electrician, who in complete disbelief at the incompetence, calls the thing a "fucking death-trap" and if there had been any water on the floor that I could have been "a goner", which was nice.

But I tell you what, the sensation was fucking brilliant. You can feel the current shoot up your arm, up and down your spinal cord, around your nervous system and into your brain. If you've got the balls or are stupid enough, I'd recommend it to anyone.

As for the gizmo that was in lastweek's newsletter (No. 159), those sparky's have got nothing on me; 100mA - not a problem.

Bring on the current.
(Roy Horn, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 18:53, Reply)

Irate father...
...I had stayed the nite in a seperate room at a girlfriends parents place (let's call her Nicola from Bucks) and was attempting a dialogue with her rather sullen dad in the kitchen the next morning. He wasn't at all receptive and kept on cleaning his rabbit hunting gun.
He then pointed it at my forehead and pulled the trigger.
No bang - just a loud click.
He then loaded the gun and and said "Try anything sexual with my daughter and I'll fucking kill you".
I dearly wanted to tell him of the rather excellent oral sex of the previous evening, but decided not to. When I mentioned the gun/kitchen incident to my girlfriend and her mum they both laughed and told me that "Oh, he always does that".

I have a daughter of my own now and am contemplating taking up rabbit hunting before she hits her teens.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 15:26, Reply)

Electricity + 12 year olds
Apologies for length in advance..

When i was about 12, we had a shed at the top of the garden, prefect for 'hanging out' in. By hanging our i mean reading crumpled copies of 'Razzle' or 'Fiesta'. Anyways, i decieded we needed some light and got an old spotlight from the garage and a really long, home-made spliced together extention. Plugged it all in - presto! Except when u moved the cable it went out. Aha! i though - it'll be that mountain of insulation tape in the middle. So i undid it all and proceded to tidy the wires and 'splice' them back together. Without turning it off at the mains. Apparently, the wires were burnt to my fingers, there was smoke coming off my head 'Carry On' style and 'blue lines of electricity' shooting into the grass. Once of my mates saved me by kicking the wires from my hand. It took a while for them to notice but the spotlight was working at the time!

15 mins of CPR plus a few weeks in hospital made me a legend around school - and i still have no finger prints on 5 fingers!
(TheManofScience, Mon 29 Nov 2004, 14:28, Reply)