I used to live in a town with the best collection of high street mentals
Members of this crack sanity-defying team included a wizard; the worst tranny in the world; "The Hydrator" (essentially a tall skinny raddled boy scout humping several gallons of water on his back) and a pair of classic tramps with hats, rope belts and knobbled staffs.

I wish the Franklin Mint would release them as a set.
(Ronnie Spleen MMMMNEURRGH I AM A GAY SPAZ AND I LOVE IT UP MY BU, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 19:11, 3 replies)

My younger son
when he was about two or so was upstairs playing alone. Through the floor I heard music blasting from his toy cassette player and a lot of thumping on the floor. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called for him, and the music shut off.

He appeared at the top of the stairs wearing his underwear and a pair of sunglasses, with another pair of pants on his head. "What, Dad?"

Never did find out what he had been up to. Some things are best left alone.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 21 Apr 2011, 18:46, 3 replies)

She always said her feet were killing her but nobody believed her.

( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 21 Apr 2011, 18:36, 1 reply)

Seen at the Department of Motor Vehicles
A rather short and rotund black woman in her late thirties to early forties with braids that hung past the backs of her knees standing at a window about five feet from a six foot four white guy in his twenties at the next window, sporting dreadlocks that hung past his waist. His dreads were about the same length as her braids. They stood side by side like some sort of bizarro-world mirror image.

Neither noticed the other.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 21 Apr 2011, 18:04, 2 replies)

a good friend of mine
a fellow b3tan, was waiting for a bus not too long ago. from out of nowhere, a woman approached him and said "don't worry, you'll find someone to share your sandwiches with someday."
no, he wasn't eating sandwiches.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 17:54, 8 replies)

When I was 7ish
I was sat watching television with my parents in our newly built house. At the time, building work was still ongoing so there was no fence and lots of building materials lying around. Movement outside got our collective attention, I looked out the window and saw a little old lady reaching down to inspect a lump of dolomite, she picked it up, as if appraising it, then dropped it into her purse and shuffled off.
"What was that lady doing in our garden?" I asked, understandably confused by her behaviour.
"No idea son, she must be barmey." answered my Dad.
(Mong goose, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 17:52, 4 replies)

Not me, biut ...
while in Moscow, since I was tied up at a conference, the accompanying haberwoman goes off to see the Mayakovsky museum, containing many things related to this moderately famous Russian poet, playwright, and otherwise generally arty type.

Naturally, she picks the right date for some anniversary or other, and ends up shut in with a serious and intellectual art event, populated by entirely non-English speaking individuals participants. I believe they were utterly baffled as to why she might want to leave.

Not random from their perspective, perhaps, but is from ours.

Then again, perhaps some Russian intellectual is just about to post "who should turn up uninvited, but some utterly random foreigner, who care not a single jot for the works of the great VM!"
(haberman is singing in the changes, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 17:50, Reply)

Lovely sunny day this weekend.
As I was walking down the road I was looking in the windows (as many a fellow voyeur would understand... ) The curtains/blinds were all shut against the sun, protecting humans and TV screens from that invasive glare of light.

However, 12 consecutive windowsills each had a cat stretched out, snoozing in the sunshine.

Made my day, that. :)
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 17:46, 10 replies)

Last year
driving along when coming in the other direction was an old dwarf. The sort you'd see illustrated in White Dwarf magazine (and similar) in the 80s, complete with big straggly beard. All he needed was a large axe strapped to his back, and not be wearing a grubby tweed suit. However, the image was spoiled by the fact that he was struggling up the flyover on what was clearly a small child's blue bicycle.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 17:36, 2 replies)

Chip shop chaos
Oh it sounded simple enough to run around to the chippy for the family. Being fourteen ment being the lackey, so with a crisp twenty in my hand i rushed through the rain.The door was open and the shop was almost empty , no customers or employees.

One pidgeon stood alone helping itself to the spinning kebab meat.
Before i could cry out "theres a pidgeon" Someone came out the back and shouted "theres a pidgeon!".
Obviously startled the pidgeon flew away , straight towards me
I ducked and it flew over my head and straight into the glass paned door i just closed. Three times it tried leaving a bloody stain.
Tranfixed we were watching this display of mad fowl suicide.

The door was then renched open from the other side by a pensioner clad in a plastic hood followed by no less then six other old ladies dressed the same.
Cue feathery, plastic, umbrella carnage as the pidgeon tried to escape through the wrinkly talcum powdered mass. After it had made its way out it plowed itself into a parked car and dropped dead. (i didn't check but it safe to assume it had stopped moving for a reason)

Anyway thats how i got free dinner for the family for keeping my gob shut , they binned the kebab meat regardless, and i kept the twenty.

Length ? Oh about two minutes from sneaky meaty snack to horrendous death.
(shake'n'bake Tally Ho, Biatch!, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 17:23, 2 replies)

I swear this is true
Several years ago, I was in a crappy used bookstore with my husband. He was dawdling around somewhere in the back, taking forever as usual. I was bored and hanging around in the front of the store, waiting to leave. I'm an artist, so I walked over to a display of art books. I randomly pick up one called "An Artist's Guide to Making it in New York City" and open it to the first page. First page, first sentence is a direct quote from ME. I nearly fainted dead on the spot. I leaf through the book, and find that I'm quoted in there several times.

The funny thing is, I have absolutely no recollection of ever being interviewed for this book. I don't remember talking to the author, and even if I did, you'd think he (or someone) would have told me this book existed.

If you want to see it for yourself, here's a link to Amazon--you can read the first page, first sentence (and then stalk me): www.amazon.com/Artists-Guide-Making-York-City/dp/1581151950/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1303401389&sr=8-11
(WorksInDUMBO, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 17:03, 5 replies)

Last of the Summer Wine (plus one)
Walking up a main road in Bristol, saw a motorbike coming in the opposite direction to me, sporting a side-car which which was actually a bath. The bath/side-car itself had two clay pigeons on the front corners, evoking a double rolls royce bonnet emblem. The crowning detail was the passenger in the side-car - a particularly grizzly and stocky old man who may have been approaching seventy, not belted in, holding onto the sides of the bath. I got the impression that he had either been rustled or rescued.
(Shining Love Pig, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 17:01, 3 replies)

Heading to the pub...
...with my dad and one of his workmates. It was during the slightly cold spell in November.

We saw a couple of guys having a snowball fight. Nothing random there you might think. Until I tell you that one was wearing nowt but a towel round his waist...
(williamthebloody, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:58, Reply)

Student protests!
I was out in London the night the student protests kicked off last month (Work thing, not protest related). As my group of drunken associates walked to Chinatown we saw a guy walk across and stand in the middle of the road and stop a car in its tracks. He looked a bit pissed and like he was working out his next destination. The driver did the only sensible thing and hit his horn in a long beeeeeep. The guy in the road turned to face the car and held up one of those stupid horns (Those Voovoozella things), and blew it back at the car and stood waiting for the drivers response. The guy with the horn was louder than the car too. The driver and the horn blower just looked at each other. It was only the horn blowers mate who wandered out of nowhere who broke the stalemate and dragged him off.
(Beaverman Opulence, I has it., Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:45, 3 replies)

Jesus, If you are ever visiting the Sea Zoo on Anglesey and want to play on their mini-golf course. TAKE NOTE:

( Maffers I flow kinda strange like Spina Bifida footprints, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:38, 8 replies)

"Ooh, you should never pick seven numbers in a row for the lottery, they'll never come up. You should pick random numbers instead."
Leave my presence, right now, you fucking prole or I will explain why you are wrong. It'll probably require crayon drawings and finger puppets...
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:36, 11 replies)

Da, Comrade
Yeah, this is a repost, but it fits right in as possibly the most random thing ever to happen to me. (Apart from the time I was chased down the street by hundreds of women in their underwear, but I only posted that one a few weeks ago).

I was feeling under the weather a few weeks ago and ended up skiving off on Friday in order to sit around the house, coughing in a decorously consumptive fashion like a Victorian orphan and generally feeling sorry for myself. After a while of this I got bored and fired up Medieval II: Total war, in which I quickly got engrossed in conquering Europe as the Scots; a challenging but ultimately possible pastime.
Eventually, after invading Mexico and Jerusalem I looked at the clock and realised it was the early hours of Saturday - I'd played for almost a full 12 hours without really noticing the passage of time and it struck me what a futile way I'd spent my time; rather than making the best of my enforced confinement, I'd done little but clicketty on the mouse for more than half a full day.

As a result of this, on Saturday I got up and headed out into the great wilds of London intending to find something worthwhile to do. Naturally this involved a trip to Forbidden Planet, but walking past St Giles-in-the-fields church round the corner from Tottenham Court Road tube station I noticed a sign on the door saying something along the lines of "Russian Poetry competition today - Admission free" and thought to myself Russian Poetry, eh? That sounds great! and went in there instead.
It turned out that this was part of an International Festival of general Russianess organised by an organisation called "Pushkin in Britain" and the church was full of Babushkas and the like.
Curious to know more and not put off by the babble of Russian that filled the building (there were surprisingly many people about) I snuck in, not wanting to draw attention to myself, and sat at the back in a row of dour-looking types who wouldn't have been out of place in the 1950's politburo. As I sat, an astonishingly pretty in that high-cheekboned-Slavic-way girl came up and jabbered something incomprehensible to me. I nodded and smiled and she jabbered some more and I, not wishing to seem impolite, nodded and smiled again so she thrust a sheet of paper into my hands and walked off. Looking at the piece of paper, it turned out to be a judges voting form for the poetry competition.
So it was that, despite my knowledge of things Cyrillic being limited to Krushchev's "Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!" speech and having no real idea what was going on, I ended up being a judge in a live-reading Russian Language poetry competition.
I don't know what the form is for judging poetry competitions. Perhaps it's like a job rating pornography and you're supposed to sit there saying things like "Phwor, I wouldn't mind some of her internal rhyming structure!" and "Look at the iambic pentameter on that!". Who can say? At least things were helped along by some of the poems being partially in English, which allowed me to infer that the competition seemed to be about the experience of being Russian in London but when it came down it the only way I could do my judging job at all was to base my marking on the overall Russianness of the entrants.
I tried my best. I tried to take it seriously. But I'm not sure that the broad grin of absurdist glee slapped across my face was the expression I was supposed to have.
Nobody else in there looked very happy, I can tell you. It was one of the things I was looking for in my marking. I was looking for: Dour? Check. Passionate? Check. References to Potatoes, Roman Abramovitch and polonium? Check. Astonishingly sexy Russian accents? Boy oh boy, yes. Hoody Hoo.
My overall winner was a woman whose poem appeared to be called "Do not forget the motherland!" and was delivered in the manner of an enthusiastic newscaster talking about the tractor production figues in about 1962.

It was, without a doubt, the coolest thing I did all weekend.
(davywavy, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:36, 2 replies)

KITTINZ TIEM!

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:35, 3 replies)

Goats
Off the A1 north of Berwick, there is a sign in a field advertising a local tourist attraction of some climbing goats, with pictures of the aforementioned goats, and the tagline "You've GOAT to be KIDDING". Utter madness.

Proof: picture
( paulieg La, la, la, not listening, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:28, 3 replies)

Cycling Tranny
Many years ago I worked for M&S. This particular store fronted out onto a pedestrian area and so did the staff entrance. One night after a busy day myself and a workmate walked out of the staff door and out onto the actual precinct area where we were met woth the sight of a "person" cycling at speed on an old fashioned postmans style bike. Said person was a very skinny, but obviously tall, blond haired man wearing a long skirt and a ladies formal jacket. He/she looked like a blond Mary Poppins without the hat and bag.

My associate and I could do nothing but stare and wonder at where this tranny was heading to at such speed. When we told others at work about it the next day we learned that this guy was a regular visitor to the ladies fashion department of the store we worked in, where he often enjoyed trying to pass himself off as a lady and try stuff on. Security used to kick him out but sometimes had to detain him for pinching stuff. We assume the high speed cycling was one of these occasions.

Very odd.
(Beaverman Opulence, I has it., Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:25, 1 reply)

More sad than random
but every morning on my way to the urban paradise that is Archway junction I pass an old man in a wheelchair pushing himself along. So far so normal, except he doesn't use his hands to push the wheels - in fact I don't think he's capable. Instead, he pushes himself along with one foot, backwards, all the time looking over one shoulder to make sure he's going the right way.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:25, 1 reply)

I might start a publishing house based on all these stories.
I just need a name for it.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:17, 10 replies)

every town has em... but these were mine for a while...
My favourite ever ‘celebrity’ in Nottingham was the giant black guy who had made a collar out of cardboard, mounted crap little portable speakers into it and walked around, strutting and posing (finger pointed and everything) to famous theme tunes. The 1st time I saw him he was walking to the theme from the Indiana Jones movies... brilliant!

Other celebrities include:

2 stick man – a very old gentleman who wears all of his clothes at the same time, carries loads of bags and walks with 2 sticks letting out a small moan with each small step. But he walks miles and miles each day, even though it clearly hurts.

The Colonel (and his wife) – he looks like Colonel Sanders, she has a huge array of different coloured wigs. They tend to just sit in pubs.

Donna King – she has a quiffy hair do which is black at the bottom and grey at the ends, she talks to herself quite a lot.

And the sadly departed Xylophone Man (Frank Robinson) – he played a metallophone (so I therefore get irritated with him being called Xylophone Man) most entertainingly outside C&A/H&M for years, every year I would come back to uni and be cheered by the fact that he hadn’t gone over the summer/winter. I saw Ross Noble in Nottingham, he mentioned Frank in a gig and got a massive cheer and round of applause. He was a major part of street life in Nottingham, when he died they put an engraved paving stone outside H&M. That makes me really happy. Here’s a Wikipedia article on him en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Robinson_%28Xylophone_Man%29
(Ross McBingobangobongo bingobangobongo, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:16, 6 replies)

Blatant pig related pearoast
Picture it: 1996 Ecuador, Otovalo market town, half six in the morning at the animal market, a meeting place for hundreds of locals to trade chickens, horses, guinea pigs, animal feed etc. and a place where four burly Chichua indian men can bundle a live, fully grown and extremely distressed sow into the boot of a second hand New York taxi.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:11, Reply)

Totally random
Once I threw a dice 20 times in a row and every time it came up 6.

I thought, "how freakin random"
(spacemonkey, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:06, Reply)

Incidentally, for the knobheads who are crying about use of the word "random"
I've been led to belive that achieving random is nigh on impossible anyway.

Is that right?
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 16:04, 9 replies)

I saw a black swan

(McChinaman banned, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 15:48, 10 replies)

Poo tales
One day I'll do a poo that's like pissing rusty tea out of my prune.

The next it'll be like trying to birth a fat hedgehog.

I mean, like, whut?
(Chickenwire social lubricator extraordinaire, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 15:39, 5 replies)

While obviously
execrating the incorrect use of "random"... I sometimes run into this woman around my local area, standing in the middle of an otherwise empty street and shouting about Jesus. The odd thing is that the clearly goes out of her way to find isolated places with very few people about to do her top-volume ranting...


(Wong Fei-Hung - now with added flickr.com (see profile), Thu 21 Apr 2011, 15:37, Reply)

Random Snog #2
After I'd finished University I moved to another city and got a job. I didn't much like it - I didn't know anyone there and it was a pretty run-down, unfriendly sort of place. So imagine my surprise and joy when I ran into someone I knew in the high street - we'd both moved to the same place without knowing it! We arranged to meet in the pub that very night.

So I arrive at said pub looking forward to the first proper social outing in several weeks. I am early so I buy two beers (one for me, one for absent friend) and sit down.

The sight of a spare beer must do something to attract the deranged. As soon as I'd set it down a strange, bald man detached himself from the bar, walked over to me and gave me a big, smacking wet kiss on the forehead that lasted several seconds. As I sat, dumbfounded by a strange mixture of terror and surprise, he sat down opposite and started drinking the beer while chatting to me like I was his long-lost brother. I'd never seen the man before in my life.

My protestations that he was a complete stranger elicited more and more aggressive responses until half the pub were staring at us and I was becoming very scared. At which point the friend I was due to meet entered. Luckily for me he's a very large, intimidating man, quite different from my puny, weedy self. And as soon as he indicate the ownership of both seat and spare pint, my would be beau went on his way.
(MattDP (Squiggle), Thu 21 Apr 2011, 15:27, 1 reply)