Ooh . . .
So many memories . . .

Aged 10 - Geography field trip to the Yorkshire Dales, Mr. O'Herlihy was pulled over just as we were passing Birmingham, he was done for speeding and towing a trailer in the fast lane. Oh, how we laughed!

Aged 16/17 - Christmas Theatre trip to see Grease, everyone got sh*t faced before getting on the coach which got stuck in traffic. Coach driver couldn't stop and the chemical toilet was broken, so we ended up passing round a large bucket, which everyone, all boys, took turns pissing in, it stank, spilled everywhere and was poured in the gutter right outside the theatre infront of the large queue.

Aged 15 - CCF, Tregantle, Cornwall, Mr. Monk hit a large pheasant and drove around for the rest of the week with the huge bird strapped, spread eagle, across the bonnet of the Land Rover, it's head repeatedly banging on the radiator. I'll never forget that sound.

Mr. Monk and his colleague of equal CCF rank, Dr. Baird never saw eye to eye, I was not on the exercise when 'it' happened. Apparently someone threw a 'Flash Bang' grenade at Dr. Baird who retaliated with heavy machine gun fire at very close range. Mr. Monk was demotted from Captain and never went on exercise again. The shouting of 'Grenade' in a Northern Irish accent has gone down in School law!

Aged 15/16 - D Of E Bronze Award, We had to take an alternative route as the cliff path we wanted to use had collapsed into the sea. We saved Matt Nimmo's life when he fell from two metres with a heavy pack, onto his forehead. I lifted up his hat to inspect the wound and a large flap of his forehead came with it, we found the nearest farm house and sat waiting for the minibus with lots of tea and biscuits. He had to have stuff injected into the hole in his head to plug the gaps.

Aged 16 - D of E Bronze expedition deepest darkest Dartmoor, stupidly let the toff kid Chris read the map, without checking he was right. All he had to do was follow the road and say when we reached the third footpath on the right, which should lead us up a hill. I should have checked. We ended up walking an extra ten miles in near monsoon conditions. When I realised that he didn't know where the feck we were and was trying to cover up his mistake by saying, "only a little bit further", I had to take charge. We took the next footpath which led us up a near verticle slope through thick vegetation with strange ruins on either side, it looked like something from a 'Nam film. We reached the top and found a farmhouse with some lights on inside. The farmers wife kindly let us in (soaked through & caked in mud and various animals sh*t) so that I could use their phone, she made the five of us cups of tea and pointed me in the direction of the phone. The phone was in a cubicle in the hall way and as I dialled the emergency school number I noticed that the farmer/farmers wife had covered the entire inside of the cubicle with pictures of, I hope, their son and daughter. There on the wall in various states of maturity were pictures of the son playing his guitar, the most recent he looked about 15-16 and was completely naked. The pictures of the daughter showed her going through puberty getting bigger and bigger breasts. The most recent being of her swathed in a length of see through cloth in an 'arty' pose. Now I have to admit, that I was quite naive to such things as Naturists or just people who like to take pornographic images of their own, back then, and it freaked me out and turned me on at the same time! I went back into the kitchen where Chris had demanded that he be allowed to read the farmers fresh, pressed copy of The Times as "he hadn't seen the news in days" Now, I wanted to get out of that farmhouse as fast as I could, but Chris was starting to get comfortable. When the poor farmers' wife offered him a rich tea biscuit, he exclaimed, "oh no, do you not have any chocolate ones, I only like the chocolate ones!" About five minutes later the kitchen door opens and a bear of a man walks in and surveys his beautiful, large, stone kitchen in his farmhouse castle. Not only did he look pissed off that his wife had let us into his kitchen, but his face actually went bright red with anger when he saw the crumpled paper and then flipped. "Those are my chocolate biscuits!" he shouted,"I've been saving those!" We were out the door and crammed into his Land Rover in seconds, he very kindly dropped us back at the bottom of the hill we should have walked up ten miles previously, to find the local bobby and his dog shouting at the rest of the D Of E groups who had arrived on time and proceeded to destroy the campsite and peace and quiet of what would have been a lovly bit of England. I regret not stealing an arty picture of the daughter.

Aged 16/17 - D Of E Silver, Expedition to the Yorkshire Dales. For some stupid reason I thought it a good idea to bring my own tent for my sole use. After a night in a lovly country pub I woke up, in my tent shivering, I had on every available item of clothing but was still freezing. We packed up camp and I cooked tea and super noodles to try and get warm again. The moment we got up on the hills it started to piss it down. 4 hrs later, I'm soaked through and starting to lag behind, my mate Oli gives me a bottle of whisky and I downed half the bottle and carried on. The weather never let up and just got worse, out of the mist we saw a small hut which we soon found contained the rotting corpse of a sheep that had been attacked by something with big sharp claws. It smelt bad, but at least we were out of the cold wind and rain. I managed to make it another 5 miles or so before I was completely out of it, I was slurring my speech, could hardly walk and was shaking uncontrollably, I was suffering from Hypothermia. A few miles on, a school minibus appeared out of the mist and I was pulled, after much argueing, off the hills. I was pissed off because I was not able to complete the expedition and therefor the Silver Award. To add insult to injury, the two teachers were equally pissed off as we had disturbed them (the whole school new of their affair), they took me to a tea rooms car park in the middle of nowhere, Mr. C. went and got me a hot cuppa while Mrs. S. ordered me to strip off my wet clothes. My hands were numb and I was by now fully incoherant, so she undressed me, right infront of a group of shocked and staring pensioners. I was so embarrised, but apparently lucky to have survived!

Apologies for length and grammer, see at least i'm polite!
( 42 Loves Teh Funphenschnaffles, Thu 7 Dec 2006, 16:26, Reply)