The snooker incident (apologies for length)
I used to work for a major high-street bank - the one which had a lot of newspaper headlines over the last year or so. The branch I was based in was actually quite a large building. The counter and back office occupied the ground floor, and the first floor had the Small Business Unit) which was essentially a group of business managers who dealt with a portfolio of small clients. Above them, there were two floors used for storage, and finally the top floor was full of telephony equipment.

One day we went up to the second floor to get some printer paper and we found that there was a snooker table, complete with a full set of balls and cues. The rest of the floor was occupied by large steel shelving units, a few easy chairs, and a very dirty rough wooden floor. After a tentative few taps with the cues we decided that it would be a good idea for us to have a nice game of snooker at lunchtime every day.

The games were extremely enjoyable, at least until one fateful day. Greg and Tim were playing and I was watching from one of the easy chairs. At one point Greg hit the ball and it shot off the table, rolling down the aisle between two of the racks of shelves. A thought crossed my mind, and with an excited cry of “I’ll get it!” I almost killed myself.

I sprinted across the floor in the direction of the aisle where the ball went and jumped onto an easy chair which stood at the end of the racks, using it as a springboard to hurdle its back, aiming to land in the aisle where I would collect the ball, then easily jog around the back and return to the table. That was my plan.

The reality: I jumped onto the chair, sprang over the back, but failed to notice that the shelves were all joined together by an L-shaped metal bracket welded across their tops to stop them toppling over like an enormous game of “Domino Rally”. My forehead made contact with the metal bracket, immediately stopped moving, but due to my momentum my legs carried on in the same forward direction, spinning me through the air with my forehead as my axis until I was vertical, feet upwards, at which point I fell, landing head-first on the floor with my bottom on the seat of the chair. As I crumpled into a heap I heard Tim laughing very loudly and Greg running over, shouting my name, over and over again.

I jumped to my feet, shouting “I’M OKAY!” until I realised what had happened, clapped my hand to my head, and asked “am I bleeding?”

“Look at your shirt!” said Greg. I looked down and saw my white shirt was now absolutely filthy from my roll on the floor. We looked for Tim but he had disappeared: he had gone downstairs to tell Neil (the manager) what had happened, in between fits of laughter anyway. I stumbled down the stairs back to the branch and saw Tim having to use a desk to keep himself from falling to the floor, and as I opened the door Neil raised his head and looked me in the eye.

“Knob,” he said. “I’m taking you to casualty – you might have concussion or something.”

“No, I’m ok, I’m not bleeding.” The door opened behind me and one of the managers from the SBU entered.

“We heard a bang from the second floor a few minutes ago. Do you think we need to call the police?”

“Not really – it was his head,” replied Neil, pointing in my direction.

I returned to my desk, pulling my suit jacket on to hide my filthy shirt, but after a few minutes my left eyebrow started to hurt. Greg had a look and said it looked as though it was swollen, and advised me to go to the chemist for some Lasonil ointment to suppress the bruising.

“Have you been fighting?” asked the assistant when I asked for the cream.

“No!” I exclaimed, frantically trying to think of an explanation for how I had bruised my eye. “I work for a bank and I was in the strongroom, and a safe deposit box fell off a shelf and hit me in the eye.”

“You shouldn’t fight, you know,” she said.

“A box fell on me!” I insisted, to no avail.

I returned to the office, finding a small group of SBU managers in the branch, all talking about my incident with Neil, and I quietly sat at the foreign exchange desk, rubbed the cream into my eyebrow, and proceeded to try to balance the till. As I added up the figures I rested my head against my left hand for a few seconds, and when I moved my hand away I noticed something.

“Neil?” I asked. “Have we got any Germolene or Savlon?”

“Why?”

“My head’s bleeding.” I held my left hand towards him, a large patch of blood visible on my palm.

He jumped to his feet. “That’s it – I’m taking you to hospital! You might have a fractured skull or something!” Needless to say, I refused.

That night I drove to see my girlfriend but spent most of the evening asleep on the sofa as I suddenly felt very tired, so as soon as I woke I drove home. The next morning I headed back her way to get my hair cut at the salon where she worked. She washed my hair very carefully (I’d told her all about the snooker incident) but the stylist had no idea, so as soon as I sat in the chair before her she took a comb, vigorously combed my hair, and ripped all the scabs off the top of my head. I actually screamed, and so did she when she saw the brush.
(nasalhair The Twix guy!, Thu 21 Jan 2010, 21:58, Reply)