» Unexpected Good Fortune

Penniless in Heathrow
You can imagine my horror last year as I put my hand in my pocket to remove my boarding pass for my three week Japanese holiday to find something missing.

Not the boarding pass.
But my wallet.
With my Yen, all my credit cards and other means of fiscal sustenance.

I knew I had it earlier as I had used a card to pay for the beers in the pub on the OTHER side of security.

The plane was boarding and I was up a certain creek without a certain paddle.

I ran past security, and then got tackled. [They do not like people running through security in any direction!]

I then spent a hectic 10 minutes retracing my steps looking like a psycho pushing people out of the way while looking behind chairs and under tables.

Deciding that I would not miss my flight, and as worst seemed to have come to worst I could phone a friend to cancel my cards and wire me cash, I dejectedly returned to the gate.

But then, as I went back through security, I saw a Sun reading security drone flicking through my wallet while talking on the phone to someone.

I went up and identified myself and he grunted at me and said "don't fuckin' bother mate" to the guy on the phone.

Too happy to care about the antipathy of the drone, I returned to find that I was one of the last of the passengers to get on the fully loaded plane.

I approached the gate and produced my boarding pass.

"Sorry sir, we are very busy today, and your seat in economy has been taken..."

"Oh shit," I thought, "all I need."

"... so we have upgraded you to business class"

I had a nice glass of champagne to celebrate my newfound spawnyness.
(Sat 16th Sep 2006, 16:28, More)

» The Police

My Dad the axe murderer!
Back in the early 80s my family had a horendously coloured Austin Maxi [kind of a beige-like brown] and we lived in the wilds of Gloucestershire.

We had just moved there from the North West and so were pretty new to the locals.

One night at about 1am a bunch of coppers burst through our door, waking us all up, and took my Dad in for questioning.

It was quite scary to see your Dad taken away by the police to assist with their enquiries.
And seeing my Mum distressed for the first time was likewise scary.

He got released the next day and, as is the style in my family, nothing more was said about the incident.
Just as if it had never happened.

Many years later I found out what had happened that night.

A dismembered body had been found in the woods and a beige-brown Austin Maxi had been seen fleeing from the scene.

My Dad owned the only Austin Maxi of that colour locally and, of course, he was new in the neighbourhood. [Classic traits of a guilty man]

Of course my Dad could easily verify that he:
a) went straight home from work
b) was at home at the time of the murder
c) that his car was parked in our drive at the time of the murder
d) he didn't own an axe

But for one night the police had my Dad figured as an axe murderer.
(Fri 23rd Sep 2005, 14:07, More)

» Morning After Souvenirs

"Where the bloody hell did this come from?"
It was the autumn of '91 and I was attending University in the infamously debauched city of Newcastle.
Of the night in question I remember very little.
A fleeting memory of some attractive local girl telling me to "fuck off".
Some guy extinguishing his cigarette on my arm while laughing.
And then a blank...
A deeper darkness...

I awoke totally confused.
I still had my clothes on, including my shoes, my head felt like a lump of rock, my arms were like lead, I could barely lift them … and both myself and my bed was covered in a fine layer of sand.

"Where the bloody hell did this come from?" said my welsh student flat mate downstairs in a rather loud and annoyed voice.
"Uh oh", I thought.
The guy was built like a brick shithouse and, stereotypically, played rugby and had very little patience for shenanigans.

I heard them all go out and timidly decided to see what drunken trophy I had brought back from the previous nights escapades.

It was a traffic cone.
Which is a bit of a student cliché.

However, it wasn't your standard traffic cone.
It was one of those very large yellow striped motorway ones with a tonne of sand in the bottom of it.

I had set it atop the table in the centre of the room and the top very nearly touched the ceiling.

As there were no roadworks for miles around none of us could work out where I had picked it up.

It took two of us to lift the damn thing off the table and put it in the garden.
(Fri 27th Apr 2012, 14:27, More)

» Cheating cheaty cheats

I have never cheated but ...
I helped someone cheat. And got caught!

I gave a friend at uni the source code of a program I had written for a piece of coursework and she copied it verbatim.
Yes, even down to the comments!
I had not put in my name in the comments, which I soon regretted, as we both got done for plagarism.
(Fri 18th Nov 2005, 12:05, More)

» Posh

19th Century Nouveau riche
Well, when my dads family were fleeing the Potato Famine in Ireland, my mums family owned quite a few mills in Yorkshire.

They sold the mills at the turn of the Century and invested in a carpet factory in Lancashire.

In the 20's they divested most of their ownership and, with amazingly poor judgement, invested in German industrial manufacturers.

At this time my great great aunt was a senior member of the Royal Academy of Music, and had taught various members of the European Royalty and Elite to play the piano. [She had also attended the wedding of one of Tom Spencers sons. Yes. That Spencer. Of Marks and ...]
[She was a fabulous old matriarch by the time I was a wee lad. She eventually had a leg replaced with a protheses after a stroke, but still insisted on playing the piano!]

In the 1930's, during the ascendancy of Mr. Hitler, my Great Aunt, who would later work for Professor. Alan Turing at Bletchly Park, did the grand tour which was a traditional tour of European capitals by wealthy youngsters when they came out.[Different meaning back then]

By coincidence she actually met Chancellor Hitler, he had just been elected, at a British Embassy function in Berlin. She later referred to him as a nasty little man.

After the war, my mothers family losing most of it's investments because of it, became more middle class owning bakeries and the like.

Their fortunes dwindled during the 70s and 80s.
Having six children per generation made sure of it.

As a young lad I attended my great great aunts 90th birthday. In attendance were lots of posh people whose names I can't remember and a certain Roger Penrose, who was a friend on my great aunts.
[He was quite well known, and I remember getting introduced as the bright progeny who could do maths. However I was far more interested in the sausage rolls than dusty academics and so ran off.]

My great aunt, still in the 80s, received an OBE for her lifetime in education, she was a university lecturer, and received it not from the Queen, who was in some foreign country, but from Prince Charles.

So, I think the poshest people I have met are my spinster great and great great aunts.
(Sat 17th Sep 2005, 13:15, More)