» Strict Parents

Knives, Big Fack Off Pointy Ones . . .
Being brought up on the outskirts of the M25, by the age of six/seven, I had nurtured an unhealthy fascination with knives and swords. This was aided by my grandad and dads' collections, watching Robin Hood, Dogtanian and the muskerhounds and the cub scouts. My mum however did not like me having access to such sharp, pointy items. I was banned from touching the collections of shiny knives my grandad had collected from around the world. I remember being bought a Rambo themed action adventure playset whilst out on a shopping trip. You can find these things on the carousel in post offices or seaside novelty shops up and down the country. It was harmless, it contained a plastic colt .45, a blow moulded plastic walkie talkie, a blow moulded plastic grenade, a compass, a whistle and a life size, plastic, replica Rambo knife. Even though the Colt .45 was obviously a way of alerting a childs mind to warfare and killing it was the plastic knife that worried my mum. Before I had even taken the plastic instruments of death out of the packaging my mum asked for the knife.

"No, you can't keep it, you might stab someone, give it here!" She said.

"It's made out of bendy plastic, it hasn't got any sharp edges, why can't I keep it?" I grumbled.

"You'll poke someones' eye out!" was the retort.

The knife was confiscated, but like an elephant, I never forgot that day. Fast forward, five years later, aged twelve, and I was salivating over the Argos catalogue. Yes, the pages showing ladies demonstrating showers and workout equipment held my fancy, but it was the Victornox Swiss Army Knife that held my attention. I saved up for weeks, went and got the knife and brought it home. I played with it for a short while up in my room and noticed how wonderfully sharp, a fresh Victornox blade really is. I decided that I didn't want to keep it a secret and went downstairs to proudly state to my mum that, I now owned my own extremely sharp, pointy knife and there was nothing she could do about it.

"You'd best give it to me 42, you'll stab someone, or take out someones' eye." came her reply.

"Ha, not this time, I'm 12 now, I'm carefull, I'm mature enough to own a knife, I'm keeping it!"

About an hour later I was in the garden, whitleing a piece of wood, when I slipped and lopped the tip off my thumb, clean off. There was blood everywhere, I hid the wound, but it wouldn't stop bleeding. I owned up, I handed the knife over, my thumb healed. To this day, I still blame my mum. Oh sure, she was right, but if she had not confiscated that plastic knife in the first instance, making them seem dangerous, out of bounds and therefore more desireable, I wouldn't of hidden my knife fascination away, so at least I could have been supervised and safe! Ungrateful little sod, that's what my mum calls me!



length - well I lopped the tip off, so about 4 millimetres less than the original.
(Sat 10th Mar 2007, 12:37, More)

» Spoooky Coincidence

Meetakuoolooo !!!
I only know 5 people from Finland, It just so happens that 4 of these people are from the same tiny village.

Ante and Ilari were on my degree course and Ulla lived in a house with some of my mates. When they met they freaked out because it's such a small village in the middle of nowhere.

Then nearing the end of my 3rd year I was very lucky to travel around Egypt. There I am, having Din Dins and drinks in Dahab, a sleepy little tourist spot up the coast from Sharm el Sheik. In walks a group of sexy looking Skandinavians, I get chatting, two are Sexy Swedes the other is a Sexy Finn. In my excitement at meeting said Finnish girl, I try to impress her with the only word I know in finnish - 'Meetacooolooo' (which I've misspelt, but it sounds like that), it means 'Hello, How are you.' She is very impressed with my grasp of her extremely complicated (No Language is anything like Finnish) language. She enquires as to who taught it to me, I reply, "oh one of my mates from Uni, Ilari, he's Finnish, comes from a little village in the middle of nowhere" The girl looks intrigued, I think my lucks in! "Whats his last name?" she asks. "Ilari K" I reply. So you go to Uni in . . . I finish (excuse the Punnage) her sentence. She laughs, that's my little brother, she exclaims!

In the middle of nowhere miles from our own countries I meet my mates sister! Freaked us both out, but when I got back to Uni, Ilari was the most Freaked out, "What did you do with my sister in Egypt??!!!" Angry Drunken Finns who have Black Belts in most Martial Arts can be very scary people unless they get the answers to their demands instantly!
(Fri 9th Feb 2007, 16:55, More)

» Where is the strangest place you have slept?

Ha Ha Ha !!!
Right, another good QOTW!

As a cub scout aged around 7 or 8 there was a sponsored sleep, I managed to get about £10 for sleeping on the stairs for one night.

Many drunken nights at Uni I recreated this, one night I managed after many attempts to open the front door, trip over the step and fall asleep in the open door way with most of my body inside and my legs outside, I don't know how we weren't robbed!

After a mates 21st I fell asleep in full Black tie penguin kit on top of a climbing frame at the bottom of the mates garden.

I've slept after many drunken parties on stairs, landings, hallways, baths, under kitchen tables but my favourite has to be behind the TV. I remember looking at the after party chaos, seeing no space on the floor, I looked around for other possible sleeping sights. I spyed a tiny gap behind the TV, success! I managed to squeeze into the small space without pulling out any wires, it was warm but I could only sleep on one side due to the lack of space.

There was one teen party I remember, where about 6 different people had been violently sick on the floor of this room. I was the last to sleep and could not handle the stench of the puke that everyone was now snoring sweetly in, I found a deck chair in the garden and woke around dawn, surrounded by bunny rabbits!

There was one time a friend and I decided to get pissed up, deep in the woods, in the morning I opened the tent to see a huge deer grazing the debris that we had left in the night, I lay there for about 30 mins just in awe of the beauty deer, then had to move because I desperately needed a piss, scaring the deer and making it run off.

I used to walk home 8 miles from the pub, regurlarly. I have a route which is pretty much as the crow flys through fields, farms and two golf courses, I've woken up in bushes, hedges, in the middle of fairways and greens, half over stiles and fences and in the odd ditch by the side of the road.

My ultimate sleeping achievement has to be sleeping whilst on a 17hr - 21hr bus journey from Cairo to Dahab, whilst strange Egyptian comedy blared out of the TV screens at full volume.
(Fri 29th Dec 2006, 15:17, More)

» School Trips

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!
(Thu 7th Dec 2006, 16:26, More)

» Going Too Far

Well,
I have only excommunicated a friend from my life once. I do not want to do it again. We had been friends for over 8 years since we were at school. His dad asked us if we would come up with advertising for a couple of his business's.

I had been working on ideas for adverts for his dads various business ideas day and night, every weekend for 6 months. I came up with brilliant idea after brilliant idea. We made two TV Ad campaigns that I scripted, storyboarded, shot and directed only one was aired but it generated, on average £3000 revenue every day it was on. I was told if they ever made any money, I would be paid! He also said that if we completed these jobs well, treating them as a dry run, we would get loads of more paid jobs to do. I had been out of proper employment for 9 months and could do with some cash.

In the pub with my other friends getting drunk, he turns up an hour and a half after we had arrived without any money to pay for a drink, as usual. After I had bought him a pint of coke, he begins to tell us we are all alcoholics, all we ever do is go to the pub on Friday nights, he didn't drink alcohol ever, as he felt he wasn't in control whilst drunk.

When he proudly told us that his dad had made £10 million from the recent sale of his company, I quite rightly asked to be paid what I reckoned was about £1000 worth of work, infact I should have charged £20.000 for the use of my copywrite. Unfortunately, there was no written contract, just a nod and a handshake. He refused, claimed his dad had not earnt any money, shouted at all of us, calling us all alcoholics, losers, liars and every other name under the sun, infront of the shocked crowd of regulars. He stormed out of the pub never to be seen again.

I'd never entirely trusted him and decided to inform everyone we knew, all of our friends, via an email, everything that had happened. I wrote that I refused to ever talk to him again and I hoped that if our friends valued my friendship they should do likewise and ostricise him from our group. At length I described what a complete untrustworthy, spoiled, snivelling, shitty, little liar he really was.

Nobody ever wants to talk to him again, they have all forgotten about him, but I still feel pangs of guilt for telling everyone about it in an email. It was unfair that he took advantage of my kindly nature and tried to make me feel as though I was in the wrong, but I went too far by sending that email.
(Tue 14th Nov 2006, 17:38, More)