Stairway to Heaven....
What seems like an awfully long time ago now, I was sharing a house with some good friends in the areshole of the South-West of England, more commonly known as Swindon.

As it was a late Victorian terraced house, it had an incredibly steep stairway, which at the top had the 2 main bedrooms to the left and right. This meant that the first 3 steps out of my bedroom in the morning were a little precarious at the best of times, and bloody dangerous most of the time. Couple this with the fact that I was 19, and enjoyed a lifestyle which revolved mostly around getting horrendously drunk from Thursday to Sunday, and there is a latent recipe for huge damage to be caused to a person. This is one of several tales about that potential being realised.

The short version is "Drunken idiot falls down stairs.", but I feel like writing a bit, so here's the long version:

It had been a particularly successful Saturday night. Beer had flowed freely, and my friends and I had enjoyed the many fine sights, sounds and smells that Swindon had to offer (the endless procession of Chavette's and Rudeboys looking for meaningful 1 night relationships with their mating calls of "Oi! Whatchoo farkin lookin at, roight? I'll farkin 'av you!", combined with the smell of fetid urine and open sewers, it was truly an exciting time to be young and reckless.)and I was now firmly headed back to my abode to enjoy a nightcap with a few of my friends, before ending the night with a few rounds on Gran Turismo 3.

As we arrived, the talk had turned into embarking upon one of the endurance races on said game in shifts, carrying over into the morning. Truly, we were the most happening and exciting people in town.

The console was duly powered up, the fridge opened and cans of beer extracted, and we began to discuss which challenge that we should dominate as a team.

By this point, it was about 3am and I had decided that I was probably going to end up sleeping in the living room, and that it would be an awfully good idea to acquire my duvet so that when it happened, I would at least be warm when I passed out on the sofa. I duly made my way up the stairway and grabbed my duvet, rolling it into a ball and carrying it in front of me as I went to make my way down the stairs.

I didn't realise it at the time, but one of the corners of the duvet had worked its way out of the bundle, and now presented an extreme tripping hazard. I realised it fully though, when I took my first step back down the stairs.

With a wail of "OHBLOODYFUCK!" I successfully vaulted the remaining 23 steps and cannoned into the radiator at the bottom of the stairs with my head, neck, and right shoulder bearing the brunt of the damage. I don't remember making contact, mercifully, I was rendered unconscious immediately.

When I awoke several hours later, my first thought was "how did I get to the bottom of the stairs?", but it was closely followed by "Ouch!" as pain blossomed across the right side of my upper body. I rolled around on the floor for a few minutes, trying to get myself into something resembling a seated position with only half of my body functioning. Eventually I managed to struggle onto the bottom stair, and leaned the good side of my head against the wall. My duvet, which had ended up under me, had a liberal smattering of blood on it, which upon inspection had originated from my right ear, which had been effectively 'ground zero' of this incident. The hangover was also creeping into play now, which merely exacerbated the pain that I was experiencing.

The humming in my ears gave way to the unmistakable sound of console games being played next door, and so I stood, only to immediately trip over my duvet again and have a very good go at opening the door to the living room with the other side of my face.

Sliding slowly down the door, face first, to my knees, I began to gently sob at the pain and silliness of my situation, which had been brought on entirely by myself. It was roughly at this time that one of my aforementioned friends decided that they would open the door to the living room, resulting in me faceplanting onto the cold floor of the living room. Broken as I now was, my friends picked me up and lay me on the sofa, covering me with my bloodstained duvet before continuing with the marathon race session that had begun some hours previously.

The end result was me turning up to work on Monday looking like I had spent the entire weekend fighting. I had bruised a large amount of my head, neck, and shoulder, and I had to pay to get the radiator fixed. I was, however, remarkably lucky and didn’t die.

Don’t mix beer, duvets and stairways. It’s bad. Real bad.

Longest ever “Got drunk, fell over” story?
(Ryushin, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:39, 1 reply)

nasty
but properly slapstick, I love the attempt to open the door with the other side of your face then face planting the floor when the door is subsequently opened :)
(mr_spongmonkey, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 9:56, closed)