Sporting accidents and life lessons
Regular readers will know that over the years I've charted the progress of my twin sons on here with stories of them setting fire to the chimney, wrecking a fire extinguisher at a toddler group, drawing crude pictures in the sand on the beach, and more recently their stepfather (currently going by the moniker Bicycle Repairman) has gleefully recounted Nugget #1's prowess in farting competitions.
Sadly this story is also about Nugget #1 and a sporting injury. Those of a delicate disposition may wish to look away now....

Nugget #1 is a talented sportsman - I strongly suspect that he was swapped at birth as I have no sporting abilities. At primary school he was put onto the Gifted and Talented register for sport (praying that it's the only register he ends up on...). I was very proud and have always encouraged him to try new sports. He and his brother have played rugby for our local team since they were five years old running around the tiny pitch all chasing the ball like a sugar-high flock of seagulls.
By the time they had reached the heady hights of Year Six - the final year of primary school - Nugget #1 played in various teams for the school and of course practised during break times with his class mates.

One Friday lunchtime an ad hoc game of football was taking place in the school field as usual. By all accounts Nugget #1 was set to score the winning goal but was fouled by a large boy who I shall call Fat Bob (his name was actually George, but Fat Bob sounds better). Nugget #1 hit the ground and Fat Bob stuck the boot in; aiming for the small but important family jewels, but actually making contact with his pasta filled belly. According to the teachers Nugget didn't get up but curled up on the ground and cried. When they finally moved him inside he was pale, tearful and in a great deal of pain. They telephoned me and as luck would have it I was at home that afternoon. I dashed up the school, bundled him into the car and was set to drive to A&E. "But Mum, I need to go to the loo!"

Okay, a quick detour home and then to A&E.

We got home, he limped upstairs looking sorry for himself. Five minutes later he hadn't come back downstairs. "Are you okay?" I called. The only reply was a whimper....oh dear. Finally he emerged, "Are you okay?" I asked again.
"My bottom is bleeding"
Good god! He's got internal bleeding! He's ruptured his spleen! He's perforated his bowel! It's lupus!!
"Quick! In the car NOW!"

Five minutes later we were parked up outside A&E some ten miles away. I took him in and explained briefly to the receptionist that he'd been injured in a football match, now had rectal bleeding, and I'd left the car in the drop off zone. No problem, they ushered us straight into the Important Bit with all the beeping machines, medical staff running about calling out for things 'stat', and an unmistakeable aroma of vomit, urine and NHS cuts.

Nugget was lying on an examination bed, curtain drawn around, nurses came and took blood, palpated his stomach, asked about the accident, and generally did nursing things. He looked wan, fragile, and all of his eleven years. Eventually a young female doctor appeared, she repeated most of the nurses' questions and examination, and then looked over at me with concern in her face. "I'll need to get the consultant to have a look at him. I think he needs to have an internal examination done."
I nodded, dumbly. She left to find the consultant.

Nugget looked up at me and asked what an internal examination was....
"Erm...well. Er. The doctor needs to check that everything in your tummy is okay...and, erm...the best way to do that is...by, erm...putting their finger gently..erm...into your bum."
"WHAT?!"
"It's okay! They need to make sure that you're not bleeding internally. They need to make sure you're going to be fine. It won't hurt."


I'm a parent. We lie.

A few minutes passed and the news sunk in. "Will it be the lady doctor?"
"I don't know"
A mixture of emotions crossed Nugget's face; anxiety, repulsion, embarrassment, fear. However, nothing had prepared him for the shock when the curtain was drawn back to reveal the consultant. Although I was sitting down I don't think I was far off in my estimation that he was about 6'5", skin the colour of polished ebony, and an accent which placed him somewhere from Central Africa. He introduced himself to us both and calmly explained that he needed to carry out this internal examination. Nugget looked at me in terror - he didn't understand the consultant's accent, so I explained it all again to him and reassurred him I'd be there holding his hands.

The consultant told him to lay on his side and draw his knees upto his chest. I told him to hold my hands tightly and keep looking at me.

"Gloves please"
The nurse handed the consultant a large pair of rubber examination gloves which he pulled on over the longest fingers I've ever seen.
"Jelly please"
The nurse squeezed KY jelly onto his long gloved fingers. I attempted to keep my face neutral.
"Okay Nugget, this is going to be a little uncomfortable, but it'll be over quickly. Just relax."
I repeated it all in a soothing voice.

Then I waited. Nugget waited.
Nugget looked perplexed.
Nugget looked apprehensive.
Nugget looked horrified.
Nugget's eyes came out on stalks.
Nugget's mouth opened in a silent scream.
Nugget's hands clamped on mine.

And then it was over.

The consultant looked up at me, "It's all okay. Once we get the blood test results back, if they're clear you can go home. No lasting damage."

An hour later we were in the car driving home. Nugget looked stoicly out of the window and said tersely, "That African doctor had bloody long fingers"

We try not to talk about it anymore.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 14:23, 14 replies)

A sporting foul
Despite being twins, both of my stepsons have very different characters. Nugget Two can be accurately described as a loveable but lazy little turdling while Nugget One – the star of this particular tale is athletic and fiercely competitive.

However as a wise person once said “success is like farts, you only ever truly appreciate your own”.

By the time he reached year six, Nugget One was the tallest, most athletic and fastest boy in his class. He’d become used to having a small giggling army of pre-pubescent girls staring doe eyed at him on sports day as took the tape at the sixty meters with almost arrogant ease. The same spirit was applied everywhere that required guts, grit and determination, from the local Rugby field to classroom arm wrestling. Nugget One was unbeatable and he knew it.

Life however has a way of teaching a humbling lesson to all of us, no matter how gifted and talented we think we are. A particularly cruel twist awaited Nugget One.

On the afternoon of their last day at their Primary School, chickenlady sat waiting in the car for the boys to take them home. She saw them walking towards the car and noticed that Nugget One looked a little more circumspect than usual. They got in the car and sat down.

“What’s that smell?” asked chickenlady, commenting on the suddenness of the meaty odour that permeated through the car “Does one of you need to sit on the toilet?”.

Denials poured forth from both boys, mixed with some sniggering from Nugget Two.

“One of you has farted!” she continued. Both boys were red-faced, Nugget Two was trying to contain his mirth.

Eventually the truth always outs and in this case Nugget Two spilled the beans.

“Well, George challenged Nugget One to a farting contest and Nugget One boasted that he could fart louder than anyone so he pushed really hard…and then had to run to the toilet” said Nugget Two.

Nugget One looked like he was about to cry. His little bottom lip had begun to quiver as the full weight of the realisation that he’d always be known as the boy who sharted on his last day at school. His attempting to sit on the evidence and adopt a policy of denial was fooling no-one. Upon arriving home, he was hurriedly shoved into the shower room as the salvage operation on his trousers commenced. After twenty minutes under the shower, three cycles in the washing machine and a rigorous sponging down of my car seats the physical damage was repaired. However it was evident that Nugget One now fully understood that it was possible to be both a winner and a loser simultaneously.

Lesson learned.

Or so we thought. Six months later, with the boys were now at secondary school I returned home early from work and headed to the bathroom where I found Nugget One, furtively scrubbing a pair of trousers in the sink.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“Farting competition in maths” he said, with a sad and resigned look on his face before he continued “followed through again. Don't tell mum”.

The moral of the tale is that sometimes an important lesson needs to be learned more than once.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 19 Apr 2012, 17:17, 7 replies)

Bit of a crossover from last weeks QOTW...
When I was a kid, I LOVED football. I loved playing it, watching it, reading about it... loved it. I was (and still am) a Manchester United fan (go on, boo), and collected anything I could that was to do with United.

Despite how much I loved football, I was never particularly brilliant at it. Actually, I'm shit at football, I make no bones about it. I have skills in other areas, but football I have always been shite at.

Anyway,

Around the age of 7, and still completely besotted with everything football, I joined a local Under 9's team run by a bloke called Bryan. He was a good bloke. He once gave me the man of the match award, despite my being shit, just because I was the only player who hadn't won it yet.

At the end of the season I was kept in the Under 9's team, as I was the youngest in the side and not really meant to be there. The new team was run by a bloke called Steve who, for the record, was about 40. He was a twat.

As the manager of a team of 8 year old children, he acted like he was the manager of a premier league side. He took everything far too seriously and would stand on the sidelines, getting physically agitated, and scream and swear at everything that didn't happen the way he wanted. At children. As well as that, he felt it was ok to single kids out in front of the whole team and explain why that person was shit, and was the reason we had lost that day. He once singled me out and announced to everyone that I shouldn't play football, because I "kick like a girl". This went on all season.

Throughout all this my Dad, a 6'3 foot ex-boxer working as navvy, would quietly observe proceedings and occasionally tell him to calm down when he got too colourful.

My last game for that side was when we turned up on the saturday morning, only to find the other team was down a player. Steve said they could have me. I said I didn't want to play for the other team. He said I wasn't going to get a game otherwise. I was pretty devastated.

I went back and my dad asked me why I wasn't getting changed. I told him. He went over to Steve and asked him why I wasn't playing. He said I'd be better off playing for the other team, because he wasn't going to play me today anyway, because I was shit.

At this point, my dad walked me back to the car and told me to get in. I climbed onto the back seat as he shut the door behind me. I then watched as he calmly walked back to the touchline, tapped Steve on the shoulder, and then hit him with one of the hardest right hooks I've ever seen. He dropped like a sack of shit. My Dad turned around, walked back to the car and got in.

"You're not playing for that team any more".
( PMGT -Bacon., Thu 19 Apr 2012, 23:57, 11 replies)

Ball Girl
As a fatty, obviously I never liked PE at school. While the actual games themselves didn't bother me so much (except for Athletics ["Miss, how about I just walk the 400 metres, because I'm going to be last anyway?"] and the dreaded dreaded Cross Country), the whole humiliating rigmarole of getting changed into awful grass-stained t-shirt, little shorts and netball skirt, being forced to get sweaty and muddy, then having to frantically get dressed again before the next class, lugging bulky and unpleasantly damp PE bag along with me were all just hideous parts of the school week for me.

While my school had showers in the changing rooms, they didn't actually work and even if they had, we wouldn't have had time to use them, and even if we had time, NO ONE was going to get naked and have a shower in front of everyone else, so they whole plumbing oddity was entirely pointless.

Nevertheless, good girl that I was, every week I'd drag the PE bag to school and go through with whatever sporting torture the games mistress had decided to amuse herself with inflicting upon us that day.


Year 9. I am 13 years old, it is the first PE lesson of the new academic year. We are - astonishingly for girls in a state school in the UK - doing netball. Today it's drills. Form teams of two at either side of the court or pitch or whatever the netball arena place is called, jog to the cone in the centre, pass the ball to teammate in a two-handed throw, wait for her to chuck it back, put ball down on cone, jog back. Simple.

I wobblejog to the centre, make a decent effort at throwing the ball, teammate actually manages to catch it (astonishment!) she lobs it back with deadly accuracy. It whacks me straight in the face.

BOOF! I'm down, fortunately landing on my well-padded arse. The ball sproings off my face, incidentally bouncing off the shoulder of the girl next to me - a double hit. Grins, titter, and open laughter and pointing all round. I shake off the phenomenal pain and spinning in my head, smile (because you've got to be a good sport, right?) and carry on.


Little did I know, that this was to be the first day of an entire year of ball-related PE misery...


Next week, and our games teacher mixes it up with hockey. We're playing a mini-match, Jessica Kyle makes a daring pass to a teammate, missing her entirely though managing to smack me with spectacular accuracy on the shin. I was not a sporty person, and wasn't going to waste my pocket money on silly, unimportant things like shin-guards. It hurt. A lot. Four weeks later, I still had the bruise to show for it.

Two PE lessons. Two ball injuries.

As it turned out, my PE lessons for the academic year of 1999 - 2000, Year 9 for me, continued in this vein unerringly for the ENTIRE YEAR.


The school year is 190 teaching days long. That's 38 weeks, and as I had PE on a Wednesday, therefore 38 PE lessons for me. And in every single one of them, I got hit somewhere by a ball of some kind. Every one.

They ranged from being boinked in the glasses by an errant ping-pong ball or tapped on the shoulder by a shuttlecock to twice, TWICE, being outright knocked unconscious whilst playing rounders, both under exactly the same circumstances: I'm batting, I miss the ball but run for first base anyway, the backstop lobs the ball to the first post to get me out, it smacks me right on the back of the head, I land up facedown in the dirt.

The first time, i was out for just a few seconds, coming round to the sound of the games mistress screaming "Carrie, get up and RUN!!!". The second, I was out for nearly two minutes. Teacher's response? You're out, go and sit down til it's your turn to bat again".


The being-hit-by-a-ball theme held strong whether I was actually taking part in the lesson or not. On three occasions, I had a note excluding me from PE, but the school policy was that students had to go and watch their classmates suffer. So even whilst on the sidelines, not even taking part, I got hit in some way or another with yet another fucking ball. I even got hit when we were doing non-ball sports. Once with a football from the boys when we were doing Athletics, and once with another rounders ball from the fucking Primary school next door during Cross Country. ARRRRGH!


"Oh ho!", you might say, (or not, because perhaps you're not a total twat), "surely you didn't have perfect attendance for an entire school year?" Well no, I did have one PE day off sick, so I wasn't actually in school that day. In fact, I was sent to the doctor. And it was while sitting in the doctor's waiting room, minding my own business, that a small kid playing at the Activity Table managed to break one of the bead-strung wires and catapult a bright yellow, spherical wooden bead - straight at my head.

Even when I wasn't even in school, the PE-day ball-curse remained unbroken.






(TL:DR? In Year 9, I got hit with a ball of some kind, in some way, every single PE lesson of the year, even when not taking part, or not actually in school.)
( Seventh is somewhat subdued, Sun 22 Apr 2012, 17:08, 25 replies)

Too lazy to come up with a new story, appropriately enough
I haven't been on a sports field since, so this roasted pea from my childhood days will have to serve.

Deep in darkest Somerset, a yellow-eyed headmaster peered through his tobacco-stained windows and noticed that, for the first time in three hundred and eleventy years, it wasn't raining. His brow furrowed atop his wrinkled head as he picked up the phone, dialed an extension, and breathed a single word into the receiver. A word which would change history, alter destinies, and cause more death than he could ever have imagined.

"Aerobics."

Plans were put in motion. A matter of hours later the entire school, all one thousand pupils, teachers, assistants, administrative staff and the creepy old goblin who ran the tuck-shop gathered on the largest playing field and stood facing two scaffolding towers topped with an enormous PA system. A crude stage sat between them, assembled from wooden planks, gym mats and old benches. Some of us nervously joked that we were about to witness a public execution. Hah! Today was not to be the end of just one victim. Instead of a hooded hangman there, stood on the stage, was Miss O'Leary, school Head of PE.

Miss O'Leary was, naturally, a raging lesbian with a red-cheeked love of physical excercise that made a Hitler Youth leader look like, well, a typical B3tan. Looking back, she resembled God's first, rejected attempt at creating Ellen MacArthur (who was fresh from completing the first solo circumnavigation of her mum's womb at the time.)

With a nod from proto-Ellen, Mr Armstrong (the music teacher) handed her a microphone and pulled a huge lever. Giant speaker stacks sizzled and hummed and her voice, electrically enhanced, roared at us:

"Just copy me!"

Kylie began singing The Locomotion. Miss O'Leary begain doing star jumps and slowly the rest of us began jumping too. There we were, over a thousand of us, bouncing away in an ungainly parody of communist state mass public excercise. It beat double maths, anyway.

The occasional laugh and shreik came to our ears over the deafening chart pop. Strangely the laughs grew louder and more frequent, despite the excercise. I could see ranks breaking as I looked around me. Something wasn't right, I could feel it, but what could I do? I could see no escape, nor any obvious sign of danger. My sense of unease grew.

Then, with a mighty, wet SMACK, the first worm hit me in the face. Lured to the surface by the rhythmic pounding of two thousand pairs of feet, earthworms covered the ground. The mud and grass was barely visible, we were star jumping (this is the only move I know) on top of a writhing carpet of slimy, brown worms. Pandora's box had opened. Hell's gates were breached, and battle was joined.

Raising my head as if recovering from shell shock I looked up to a sky filled with countless flying annelids. There was no laughter anymore, only terrified, disgusted female screams. Children running for shelter, diving behind other children, crying, shouting, desperately flinging squirming invertebrates to cover their retreat, scrabbling in the mud for more ammunition; it was Guernica with living bullets.

I saw heroism that day, true, but it's the horror that haunts my sleep now.
( Scrumper, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 21:19, 3 replies)

Sub (unused)
Remember the advert from a few years back about how you always remember a certain teacher from primary school?

---wavy lines---

May 1976. The football team from my primary school, which had only been founded a few years earlier, had made it to the borough cup final against the team that had won it every year in living memory. Which wasn't that long to be honest. We were 11 after all.

Now, I wasn't in the first team for football, but I did captain the second team. And so it was that I found myself named substitute for the final, held at a neutral school somewhere in the depths of the borough.

While we may have been young, we knew no-one gave us a chance of beating the other team, and the giants versus minnows aspect was reinforced by the fact that the other team wore all white, while we wore red and white striped shirts, black shorts and red socks.

Football fans amongst you may already have made the Leeds vs Sunderland connection. Except while Sunderland won 1-0 thanks to an Ian Porterfield goal and great saves at the other end from Jim Montgomery, our mini version of that cup final was never a close contest. We wiped the floor with our supposed betters.

With ten minutes left, we were 5-1 up. There was no way we were going to lose. It was exhilarating to be part of it. Except I wasn't. I was stuck on the sidelines watching, waiting for the teacher who ran the school side to decide that with the clock ticking down, it might a idea to give the substitute a few minutes on the pitch to enjoy being part of the day.

True, I got a medal, as did everyone else, but I felt a fraud in assembly the next morning when we were all up on stage, knowing that I hadn't played any part in the match whasoever.

So, Mr Adams of Southlake County Primary School, 1976, it may be getting on for four decades later, but I remember you alright. Not even five minutes, you fucking bastard.
(Capo, Sun 22 Apr 2012, 21:25, 3 replies)

What's better than winning gold at the olympics?
Not having dedicated your entire life to the utterly fucking pointless pursuit of running very fast in a straight line for 100m
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:12, 6 replies)

50 yard dash Mon vs Squirrel
(Wavey lines take us back to erm….Yesterday lunchtime)

An unusually clear day means that Mon is heading out for his usual lunchtime walk near the local duckpond to get a little fresh air and see if the local custard cream addicted ducks are still alive (See Bullies QOTW). On my way to the place I pass through a narrow alley around 50 – 75 yards long with an area to the left fenced off to act as some form of overflow for the place/ to keep the local oiks out of the wooded bit that backs onto people’s houses.

As I started walking down I noticed a grey squirrel on top of the fence next to me scampering along. “Ooh bet he’s thinking I’m going to chase him or something, I’d better stop” thinks I and so I stop still. Grey squirrel also stops. I decide to back off a little…so does my new grey friend. “So it’s a race you want is it then my friend?” I say aloud to the tree rat and I’m not too sure if it was due to the high quantity of Haribo I’d been eating earlier that day but he seemed to give me the look that says come on then. I start off with a decent jog and Fenrir my squirrel sidekick (named as he had a grey back and I’m re-reading the HP books to my second kid at the moment) seemed to match my pace. I wasn’t having this furry little sod beating me to the end and upped my tempo….so did he….grr that’s it! I let out a burst of speed and fenrir…….stopped. "Ha ha time to turn round and laugh in his furry face" was what was going through my mind…sadly that isn’t what happened.

Mid turn I managed to put my right foot in a patch of mud and as I was wearing a pair of shoes that had zero grip I ended up doing some form of mad wobbling attempt to keep myself balanced before eventually falling flat on my ass.

While doing the usual pick myself up and check to see that no one had seen me fall over I looked back to see Fenrir. After a short look at me he seemed to shrug his shoulders, turn away and run back to the beginning of the alley and stay there, waiting for someone else to turn up and fall for his trick. I swear he must have planned it all along and may have already done this to someone else (Maybe I was hoping that there has been more people than me outwitted by a squirrel)

If there wasn’t a risk of getting bitten and some disease I swear I would have punched the little sod clean off the fencepost. Thank god it’s raining today.

Tl:dr Man races squirrel, falls over
(mon bison powered by magnets, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 12:01, 4 replies)

The paralympics
is PE gone mad.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 20:47, 3 replies)

The Devil and the Idle hands of young men

Working at the tip over you summer holidays at uni isn't everyones cup of tea. The job entails sweeping and tiding up and making sure that some old duffer doesn't kick off when told he cant put his asbestos in with the glass recycling. Like the trenches this sort of work leads to long periods of boredom, followed by short periods of headless chicken like activity.

In a lull in stuff to do myself and one of the other lads came up with a new game to pass the time:

MAGNET CHICKEN. The rules are simple, climb inside a empty skip and take it in turn to throw magnets at one another.

you average tip is lousy with discarded stereos, a swift toecap to the speakers yields a collection of magnets. As your empty skip is basically a 5m long steel corridor a thrown magnet will vear off and stick to the wall with a wonderful 'SPANG' noise. The aim of the game is to see how hard you dare to throw a magnet at your friend.

One fine yet dull day me and a workmate decided to take up potions and begin a game. I tossed the first magnet, pitifully it slammed into the left wall whole feet away from my opponent. He retaliated by overarm bowling a 3lb monster from a car subwoofer at me at lightening speed. 'WANN-NNG' the whole skip reverberated as this thing slammed into the wall next to my head after missing my eye by mm.

"you cunt, have some of..THIS" I replied wrenching the magnet from the skip and hurling it back at him. I throw underarm and am quite cack handed so something different this time happened. Once the magnet had cleared the top of the skip, It shot over the side as if guided by a lazer and landed out of sight with an almighty reverberating KER-SPANG.

Leaping out of the skip we were confronted by a horrifying sight. A middle aged man, pale faced and shaking with terror was frozen to the spot halfway through the process of removing an oven from his boot. An oven with a crater sized dent centered around a speaker magnet, in it.

Quick thinkingly I came up with "errm, sorry its our job to look for the magnets cause sometimes they repel one another and it acn get quite errm dangerous" The man mumbled a hasty "oh I see" and hurried off. After that the game of magnet chicken was no more.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Sun 22 Apr 2012, 20:11, 5 replies)

she nailed the landing.
About a decade ago a group of us (friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends etc) were in the park- enjoying the sunshine, drinking beer and eating burnt yet raw meat from a bbq. Games were suggested and games were played. Touch rugby lasted all of 5 minutes before we all agreed it was shit and started playing football instead.

It was quite unofficial; more 'us lot here versus you lot over there' than an actual picking of sides, so there was a fair mix of people on each side ranging from people who could actually kick a ball and make it curve, to those who were there to simply bolster the numbers. I would put myself somewhere in the middle.

At one point the ball came to me and as I looked up the 'pitch' seemed remarkably clear in front of me so I trotted off on a little run. A dozen or so yards ahead of me was a female player of the other team and to proceed on my way to 'Barnes vs Brazil' individual glory I would have to get past her.

I sold her what I believe to be known in the trade as 'a dummy'. I dropped my left shoulder as if I was heading that way, when in fact I wasn't!! haha!! She bought it completely!! Unfortunately as she was in the 'number bolstering' section of the talent pool, rather than thinking 'he's heading to my right, I'll go that way and intercept' she actually thought something along the lines of 'Shit!! get out of his way!!' before unleashing a shrill yelp and jumping out of my way.

Or at least the way she THOUGHT I was going.

This is how all the other park users came to hear a scream and turned to seek out the origin of it just in time to see me ram my shoulder into her at about hip height whilst she was in midair, sending her cartwheeling over me and into the ground wrist first, and pretty soon after, head second.

She had broken her forearm and received a concussion. I was cunt of the week. I hung about long enough to see her placed into the back of an ambulance crying but it seemed no one really wanted to play on anymore and were calling me all kinds of names so I went down the pub.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Sat 21 Apr 2012, 17:19, Reply)

our school sports were fairly traditional: hockey and netball in the winter; tennis and rounders in the summer
we always had to bring our swimming costumes, in case we got rained off. those who forgot had to suffer the heinous plight of swimming in their aertex top and disgusting grey gym knickers. if the boys were swimming too, this was nothing short of disastrous.

it was the fate that befell my friend evie one day. actually being keen on sports and therefore not being bright enough to fake a period, she came out of the changing rooms to a round of applause. deciding to make the most of it, she did a big star jump off the diving board into the pool. mid-air her face turned into utter horror. after surfacing, she swam over to me. "i left my real knickers on underneath!" she said tragically. woe indeed.

at the end of the day, we caught up after last period to head home together. i asked her what she had done all day. she admitted that she had spent the whole day without wearing any pants. now, of course there are occasions when this can be sexy. but those occasions are NOT when you are only 14. and stuck in lessons all day. my face betrayed my disgust. evie got all defensive. "well what would you have done?" she snapped. "worn soaking wet pants ALL DAY?"

"noooo," i said thoughtfully. "i would have dried them out under the hand dryer and put them back on..."



i have now reminded myself of the time that we all had to play indoor hockey on another rainy day (this is why you don't go to school in manchester). the sadistic lesbian oberfuhrer who taught hockey announced that the proctor would be coaching that day. "so i hope you've ALL remembered your grey gym knickers," she said, gleefully swishing a hockey stick around. "i'm sure the proctor doesn't want to look at a row of schoolgirls' knickers."

"i'm sure he bloody DOES," shouted out my friend liz. detention for a week.

bet she was right though.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 18:43, 3 replies)

A polite request.
I just touched on this, but i think it deserves saying more seriously.

I know that this will fall on deaf ears. I know that this will get me mocked and shunned and ostracised because this is a 'humour board' and 'anything goes' and it's OK to be in bad taste here, but please, please, don't spend this week laughing at Hillsborough. It's not a laughing matter, these people, their families, their communities all deserve our support and our understanding. They are victims of one of the most tragic circumstances, one of the worst events that could befall any person. So please, put yourself in their shoes. What if it were happen to you? What if you had suffered the horror of being born in Liverpool?
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 13:58, 8 replies)

The Kids Who Were Shit At Sports had to set athletics stuff up for the Kids Who Were Good At Sports.
We used to make all the hurdles different heights, and random distances apart. It was fun to watch from the sides.
( Pope Shax XIII uses Visio for picture editing, does it show?, Sun 22 Apr 2012, 4:00, 1 reply)

If a group of b3ta members got together to play sport
would the fact that everyone on b3ta gets picked last cause a paradox?
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 12:14, 2 replies)

People who play sports are twats
People who watch sports are twats
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:11, 6 replies)

Golf.
A simple 9 hole game, par was 27 but that was so easy I'd beaten it by the third hole. My final score was a staggering 81, higher than anyone elses by more than double and the bastards still had the nerve to say I'd lost.
(Woodlouse say it with flowers. Send her a Triffid, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 21:18, Reply)

Get the tea out...
Well, as I was one of the people (along with Scarpe) who have spent years whining about this not having been asked yet, I suppose I’d better tell some of my stories…




I was a tubby child from the ages of 8 to 14 (partly related to an injury that made it hard to run very far without my ankle giving way), but I enjoyed most sports and tried hard even in the ones (i.e. football) that I didn’t. However, every school has its fair share of those unwilling or unable to participate in P.E. lessons, and CMS was no exception.

It was a wet and slightly miserable October day in about 1999, and we were out on the school fields for a nice game of touch rugby in the healthy autumnal sleet. First off were the throwing drills, and I was partnered with one of nature’s IT directors – a slightly otherworldly girl called D. We lined up in two lines some thirty feet apart and on the signal, we threw our balls. On this occasion, two things went wrong. Firstly, D was distracted by a swirling in the aether somewhere to her right, and missed the signal that she might have to catch something in the next few seconds. The second thing was that I lost my grip on the slippery ball and hurled it far higher than normal. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the ball drifted through the grey skies on a direct course for D’s head. On reflection, it was perhaps not a good idea to shout for her attention. Had I not done so, she might have not taken the ball quite so squarely in the face. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have the memory of her expression in the millisecond before the ball connected to remind me that things could be worse.

D never really liked me after that, and seemed to forget her kit an awful lot…



Moving on a few years, we see the beginnings of my love of skiing. Now, any sport that has as its main premise the act of sliding down a steep and often rocky slope with some bits of wood on your feet is going to be a minefield for crashes. Some of the more memorable ones (not all involving me) have been:


I wouldn’t stand like that if I were you:

It was my second day ever of skiing. I was eighteen and on a school trip to Austria with quite a few of my friends as a birthday present from my parents. Not having skied before, I started out in the special group – but after learning quickly enough to get very bored, I was moved up to the middle group, away from the safety of the nursery slopes. The jump was quite hefty and I had a lot of difficulty keeping up for the first few hours. At one point I had crashed near the top of a slope. When I untangled my knees from somewhere in the middle of my lower back I looked down the slope to see my group waiting for me. “Sod this” I thought. “I won’t bother turning. I’ll just snowplow down to them”.

(A quick interjection here – snowplowing is a learning technique where you hold your skis in a wedge shape to limit your speed. The catch is that it ONLY works if you lean forwards. As you were.)

Sadly, the first bump flung me backwards – but not off my skis. I was now sitting on the backs of my skis, unable to get up, and flying unstoppably down the hill towards the smallest and frailest thirteen-year-old in the group. He was standing facing up the slope with, crucially, his legs apart. I was heading directly for the gap between his legs. Various thoughts crossed my mind in the next few crowded seconds, not least of which was the fear that I might simply continue onwards over a cliff edge if I couldn’t find a way to stop. I could have tucked myself in and passed cleanly between his legs. I could have done that. Instead, my self-preservation instincts kicked in and just as he spotted me thundering towards him, I spread my arms wide and swept his legs out from under him.

I made another enemy that day, but death by cliff-plunging was averted.

Quickest ever slalom crash:

I always thought the idea was to ski down the course, not ski face-first into the side of the timing hut at the top. Apparently I was wrong.

How to apologise:

When you crash into a disabled skier at 25mph, the correct means of apologising is to shout “SORRY!” at the top of your voice as you frantically ski off down the mountain, pursued by various shouts.

I’ve broken my brain:

If after crashing heavily into a snowboarder his expression changes from anger to fear and he says “mate, you’ve got blood dripping out of your ear”, it’s a good idea to check that you haven’t merely torn your earlobe BEFORE you start panicking.

Where’s G gone?

Snow fences should not, under any circumstances, be used as trampolines. I never knew you could get someone’s back to look like that, although the tree and selection of rocks he hit as well probably didn’t help. I’m told it took G twenty minutes to find his right ski again.




For those that don’t know, I’m also a keen power kiter, and have been an instructor for a couple of years too. I would like to pass on a little list of things to avoid, in the hope that any other kiters find new and interesting ways to maim themselves.

If you’re flying at a night-time festival, make sure there are no children playing nearby. If there are, make sure you don’t make a jump that carries you directly toward the head of a four year old girl. If you absolutely have to do both these things, don’t try and flick yourself up and over her. The wind will drop and you WILL kick her with both feet in the side of the head. Her father will not be pleased, and karma WILL be satisfied when you walk smack into a tent pole later in the evening.



If you haven’t flown very much, for the love of God, don’t lie down on your front and let your friends hang onto your trousers. You will be dragged facedown and at speed for over a hundred metres of short dry grass. When you manage to get up again, your friends will have tied your trousers (which you were swiftly parted from) into another kite, and they will be flying proudly above the school fields. You will also be walking funny for a week as nine separate friction burns in a variety of delicate areas make their presence felt (disclaimer – this one wasn’t me).

If you turn up to Captain Hood-Butter’s “things that fly” bash and try to show off, you will crash heavily in front of several prominent b3tans, and feel extremely stupid.

If you’re performing a demonstration at a kite festival, make sure you’re not standing in front of a tree. You run the risk of thinking the wind is less than it really is. When you launch your kite, you may well be thrown seven feet in the air and thirty along the ground. Your smooth roll on landing will, again, not alleviate feelings of stupidity – but this time, you will have several hundred people laughing at you.

Don’t (at another kite festival) throw your helmet into a cornfield in a fit of pique after your kite has folded for the nth time that day. You only have to go and get it back again with, yes, several dozen people watching and laughing.

If you’re flying a tandem buggy (think two three-wheeled go-karts joined together, often used for giving people who can’t kite a feel for what it’s like), make sure the person in the back is lighter than you. If they are not, there are certain things you cannot do. When you find yourself pinned under the buggy and sliding across an airfield, by all means force your arm down so that you tear off large amounts of skin. When the kite lines snap and you stop, watch out. You’re not out of the woods. You should make sure that your seatbelt hasn’t shifted so that when your friends turn you over, you don’t end up with your left testicle trapped between your body and the straps. That will hurt more then the huge patch of raw flesh on your arm. To avoid adding insult to injury, move your hands away once you pull the release strap so that you don’t land, crotch first, on your own clenched fist.



Miscellaneous others:

Even if you think your opponent’s (70mph+) tennis serve is going out, it might be an idea to move. Otherwise the ball might dip at the last second, bounce off a stone, and rebound directly into your balls. He still beat me though, the bastard.

If you have a particularly ferocious serve yourself, try to follow through correctly. That way, you won’t hit yourself in the nuts.


Don’t cycle while drunk. Really. You will get thrown out of asda for making a scene, then you’ll ride into a bridge support on the way home, bending the front wheel of your three week old racing bike.

If you decide to distract your opponent in a pool game, don’t do it by hoisting your balls onto the table in line with his shot. He might deliberately chip the white so it lands squarely on your left bollock.
( MatJ LOOK, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 20:50, 4 replies)

the shame
A few years ago I was taking my fitness pretty seriously (training for an ironman). I happened to be in a queue with my brother filling out disclaimers prior to a kitesurfing lesson, when my elder brother snorts derisively at my ticking the 'excellent' box under 'fitness' and 'swimming ability'...

If you have older siblings, you'll know that the only thing you can do under this kind of provocation is act like a 5 year old... I think I started my sentence with "well ACTUALLY..." as I rattled off my amazing health stats, resting pulse, recovery rate etc and generally told the world what a super athlete I was.

Which was kind of embarrassing as the next guy in the queue was James Cracknell, 6 times world champion, double olympic gold medallist and all round super hero. And he was being filmed for a documentary, with a TV crew and a sexy interviewer and everything.

Even 6 years later I still hang my head in shame...
(pounana Slept well, and dreamed of large women, on, Sun 22 Apr 2012, 21:15, 4 replies)

Wrong event
In my yoof, I was a fairly decent middle-distance runner. The 1500m and cross-country were my events. In fact, I came third in the north-west cross country regional, and only missed out on competing the national because we were on holiday when it was taking place.

So, when it was school sports day rolled around, what even did our house sports captain (I went to a posh, public school with houses and the like) put me in for? The 200m.

So I go to him and point out that I don't do sprinting, I do middle-distance. He responds with "I don't give a fuck, I've said you're doing the 200m". I say "just swap me with whoever is doing the 1500m" he says "I've already done the list". Looking down the list, I realised he's just gone through the house alphabetically and put everyone's name next to an event. I've ended up doing the 200m by virtue of my surname starting with a letter near the start of the alphabet.

I point out the idiocy of this and he responds with "just do it or I'll fucking deck you"

Fine, I'm doing the 200m.

So the time comes around for me to run the 200m. I find which lane I'm in and set about stretching and warming up, so I don't injure myself in the upcomiing sprint. We are under starters orders, I crouch on the line.

The gun goes off and off I walk.

Yup: walk. I did the 200m at a nice, casual stroll, waving to my classmates as they cheer me on. Near the finish line is my house captain, who has the redest face I've ever seen as he's screaming "RUN! RUN! STOP MESSING ABOUT" so I stroll the rest of the way and finally finished in a little under 2 minutes, making sure I dipped as I cross the line.

I got a detention for that one. It still makes me smile when I think of it now.
(ScousersPet, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 10:22, 4 replies)

World record cricket shot
A few years ago I was in the Caribbean on holiday with the wife. One day I decided to join in a game of beach cricket with some locals and some other tourists.

Eventually, after lots of tedious fielding, it was my turn to bat and after a few blocks to get myself in I dropped down on my right leg and walloped a cover drive over everyone’s head and into the sea.

It was a magnificent shot!

Or so I’m told, as I didn’t see it as I had managed to dislocate my right leg at the hip and was rolling around squealing and eating sand.

The local doctor managed to pop my leg back in with minimum fuss and I was up and hobbling about in no time.

The next day I had to buy a new tennis ball for the guys on the beach as whilst during the commotion nobody retrieved the ball and it had drifted out to sea.

Which for the record, most likely means it didn’t touch the ground until it reached Ireland which is a good 4000 miles away. And that is a world record.

In your faces B3ta, I’m number one!
( Dervel OTBC, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:24, 1 reply)

PE doesn't exist
You do sports at school. I don't remember a single time I was actually told the rules of a sport in PE. I'm not making any promises, but if anyone had taught me the rules of football I might have been more interested in it. I can't think of any other subject at school where you're expected to know the material already.
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:08, 9 replies)

A warning to parents:
You may be thinking that giving your rapidly-growing child sports footwear that is slightly too big is a wise investment. They'll grow into the pumps eventually won't they?

Well, pay heed! When an older child (Laura Lee) steps on the end of one of the toes during netball practice, your child won't feel it. She'll attempt to carry on running, trip over and end up with a greenstick fracture on her wrist. Her teacher (Mrs Carter) will, after about 10 mins, try and force her back into the game without consideration for her general health.

After 6 weeks in plaster and around 20 years, she'll remember this incident and relate it to strangers on the Internet.

DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES HER PARENTS DID!
( e.m.m.y. foxtrot uniform charlie kilo india tango, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 15:24, 7 replies)

My first goal
At lunchtime all the boys played football on the playground. If you didn't you were gay or something. I would rather have read a book, but I was smart enough to realise that wouldn't do me any favours.

Given that at age 9 most playground football games consisted of a dozen people crowded around a football buzzing around the playground, I opted to play in defence, so basically just standing around waiting for the crowd-with-a-ball-in-the-middle to come somewhere near me. Worked quite well as a left-footed left-back, since I rarely had to do anything.

This particular lunchtime the "refereeing by democracy" had determined that the opposition be awarded a penalty since more kids were shouting for it than weren't. Everybody lined up on the edge of the penalty area, me right on the end, as the opposition goalkeeper, who had earned the right via the medium of raised fists, ran up and struck it hard and low to our keeper's right.

Only he got a hand to it (he later went on to two seasons in League Two, so perhaps not so surprising). The ball cannoned off his outstretched hand way off to the left hand side of the field. To me, in fact.

I had no idea what to do. Absolutely EVERYONE was pretty much in line with me, nobody was further up the playground. So I just hoofed it towards the opposition goal, hoping that our players could run faster than theirs.

As it turned out, it didn't matter, because despite their best efforts nobody could get to it in time to stop it trickling over the line with its last bounce. I'd scored my first goal from the edge of my own 18-yard box. I was a hero! For five minutes, at least.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Sat 21 Apr 2012, 0:22, 4 replies)

Girls and Martial Arts
Draconacticus's post about girls in martial arts brought back several painful memories from the years.

I regularly get beaten up by girls.

I have been studying a variety of martial arts for the last 6 years, mainly Wing Chun, but also TKD and a bit of Eskrima. Despite training alongside professional fighters, bouncers, police, soldiers and the like, I have come to the conclusion that the people you should be afraid of when training are girls. The smaller, the more you should be afraid of them. Especially if they're new.

Girls, especially more petite girls, have an inbuilt viciousness the likes of which you cannot train. In Wing Chun, as it is a means of self defence not a sport, we teach people to strike in more vulnerable areas - eyes, throat, kidneys, floating rib.....groin.....

Whenever we explain that to new girls, their eyes always light up at the last point, and we instantly know the rest of the evening is going to be spent getting kicked fiercely in the balls. It's like the go-to answer to anything:

Being grabbed from behind - Heel kick to the balls.

Being grabbed from the front - kick to the balls.

Bear hug - knee or shin to the balls.

Rear naked choke - Punch in the balls.

Standing there minding my own business - Kick to the balls...


On top of which, the smaller the girl, the harder they think they can hit you and you can take it. This is sort of true, but when when you spend hours and hours teaching people how to punch effectively, size stops mattering as much and it just fucking hurts anyway. I genuinely nearly had my arm broken once by a girl who was about 4'7 after I taught her how to do an arm bar. I explained very carefully that if you do it with enough force, you can break or severely damage someone's arm regardless of how big they are, so do it carefully.

She immediately put as much force into it as she could, and I could feel my elbow joint wrench as she did it. if I hadn't moved with it, she would have seriously fucked my arm up.

I asked her why she did it with so much force. She replied "Well, you're about six foot..."

"What did I JUST say!!!"

So yeah, girls are dangerous. Much more dangerous than men.
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:26, 17 replies)

I won a cricket match once
At school, I was firmly in the bottom set for every sport.

For some sports, this was a godsend. Top set boys hockey got to play the girls, and the girls who played hockey were scary. They outplayed, outweighed and outgunned their male counterparts, who usually returned looking like they had been trampled into the mud. Which they had.

Anyway, 4th-set cricket is tedious beyond belief, on the grounds that most of the runs are wides (from the terrible bowling), and most of the wickets are self-inflicted. For the rest of the time, you just watch the balls trundle by the inept batsman as he flails the bat at it 2 seconds late.

It was a hot, sunny day in about 1982. Our opponents this day had managed the impressive score of 7 all out, and we were on 4 runs for 9 wickets, with the last man (me) still to go in. My helpful team members had attached pads to my shins, thighs, arms, and I had one as a hat. After strolling in, then strolling out again to remove the non-regulation items, and strolling back in again, it was my turn to face the bowler.

Fwiff, fwiff, go the balls as they sail past. Fwiff, fwiff, goes my bat as it fails to connect. Zzz, zzz, goes everyone else. We switch ends. My partner gets a single. I'm facing again.

Fwiff. Fwiff. Clonk! Miracles, I've hit it! And as the fielders are all asleep or playing I Spy Wildlife, it bimbles aimlessly toward, and then over, the boundary.

Four runs! We win! Our teacher declares the end of play and to my surprise I am carried off the pitch by my team-mates, which is the most exercise they have had all afternoon.

The disaster was that this was my single positive memory of sport at school.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:07, 1 reply)

The Olympics
I have to pay towards this shit?

FFS what an absolute crock of wank
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Mon 23 Apr 2012, 13:25, 10 replies)

Sport with weapons...
My granddad was apparently a no-nonsense type of a man, died before I was born so I never got to know him. This particular story has been passed down the generations however, and will probably be told to my son as well...

Granddad was in the Army, the Black Watch to be precise, and saw a reasonable amount of action in WWII. After the war however, he developed an enjoyment of playing hockey for the regiment.

On one particular occasion, the Sgt. Major playing for the opposing team had been subjecting him to a bit of winding up, which was then augmented with some rougher than usual play on the hockey pitch. Not standing for this kind of thing from anyone, let alone a trumped up, cut-glass Sassenach, and furthermore carrying a large, wooden stick in his hands, granddad seized the next opportunity to introduce said stick to the Sgt. Major's shins at some considerable velocity, nearly breaking both legs.

Thus it was that a few days later my dear granddad was court martialled on charges of attempted murder on the hockey pitch. The court martial did not last long, though, it must be said as the general officiating it threw it out on the grounds that Sgt. Major had "bloody well deserved it!"
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Sat 21 Apr 2012, 21:20, 3 replies)

Rugby and dog shit.
I'm a skinny guy, always have been. This makes it thrice as painful when playing rugby or contact sports in school, so I always made excuses to not have to partake. This involved forgeries, tales of woe and other such bullshit.

But the one day I was FORCED to play ended up in complete disaster as no sooner had I managed to get the ball and run, I was crunched to the ground by some big guy and I lay in a stunned and painful heap. But despite the pain in my back and bruised pride, I felt blood flowing down my leg. Closer inspection revealed that I had been studded and it had torn the flesh and I was sent off the pitch and back to the shower room. Result!

All was good until I got home and then proceeded to fall sickeningly ill, completely nauseated, shivering, fluctuating temperate and feeling like death. I was rushed to the Doctors and it appeared that some dog shit must have been on the bottom of the studs which had cut my leg and had infected me.I was then given several injections and had to spend four days in bed.

This is why I don't do sports.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Sat 21 Apr 2012, 11:59, 1 reply)

Massive Ouchies.
Be gentle. Long time lurker, first time poster.

Like a lot of people on here I went to a school that insisted that everyone played rugby. Not a public school, just a grammar school mind you. That was fine by me because i'd been playing the sport since the tender age of four and had even represented my county at under 11 level.

There are several woes from my beloved sport that I could speak of on here, not least the time when a fat Scottish kid called hamish (I wont capitalise his name because he doesn't deserve to be treated as a proper noun) managed to dislocate my knee so badly that my kneecap was roaming free like an adventurous tramp. It was all OK though because the lovely NHS gave me MASSIVE DRUGS and sewed everything back together good and proper.

The time in question was when I was in the upper 6th form playing for the first team in the daily mail cup(again the daily mail don't deserve capital letters). This is the national schools competition and we had done very well. We had come through a difficult quarter final which we had to play twice because the first game got called off with ten minutes left because of heavy snow! I was playing the fine position of open side flanker. For those who don't know it is my job to annoy the opposition team as much as is humanly possible. I liked my position and I played it well, hardly a game went by when someone didn't want to punch me in the face. I didn't mind though because I had a very hard head (or so I thought!)

We were set to play the team who were undoubtedly favourites. They had sailed through all previous rounds and were expected to brush us aside easily on their way to the final. Their team contained no less than 9 England schoolboy internationals and they were all huge. The odds were stacked against us but what we lacked in size we made up for in confidence.

So the game starts and all is going well, we are holding them back in their own half and playing some good rugby. We scored a try which got the 3,000 strong crowd behind us and we were starting to think that this was going to be easy. Then the other team woke up as if they had been playing with us like a cat plays with a half dead mouse. We managed to hold off the pressure until just before half time when they scored a try and brought the scores level. The came out for the second half like they had been told that their dads would get get bum raped if they gave up any more points.

Ten minutes into the second half one of their bigger players got tackled and I was immediately there to pick up the ball. To this day I wish that I had had a chance to look around before I stood bolt upright because the next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor with cartoon birds circling above my head.

Eye witnesses described how a gentleman who is now an England international had tackled me around my chest with some serious force whilst I was standing directly in front of one of my team mates who was already crouched for the impending ruck. Physics fans will understand that in this kind of scenario, my head was on a direct collision course with the solid ground.

Once the cartoon birds had stopped circling I tried to stand up so that I could carry on the game. Rugby players don't let a small amount of unconsciousness stop them. The only thing that stopped me from moving was that my legs had decided that they weren't going to move. Panic and shock set in and a lovely physio lady ran onto the pitch to try and calm me down but I was absolutely bricking it. It took them a full eight minutes, EIGHT F**KING MINUTES, to find a spine board to carry me from the pitch. As I was being carried away I was treated to a standing ovation from the crowd which for reasons I will never understand set me off crying like an absolute baby.

I was taken to hospital in the ambulance with its sirens on full blast which is quite a cool feeling if you discount the paralysis. I was prodded and poked and x-rayed and probed and it was decided that the paralysis was only a temporary measure that my body had imposed on me because of the blunt trauma that my spine had received.

A few days later things were back to normal and I was thanking my lucky stars that I was back on my feet. You will never appreciate your legs more than you will after you have lost the use of them for a short time.

My team lost the game 24-7 were knocked out of the cup. I didn't play rugby again for a further 8 years, deciding that it was unwise to carry on with the sport that almost confined me to the Hawking brigade. That was until last weekend when I played again and was kicking myself for having left it so long. I love rugby.

Length, about four days before I was back to normal.

tl;dr - rugby is fun even if it does try to paralyze you.
(CasuallyObscene, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 15:05, 3 replies)