» The Worst Journey in the World

Midline mainland!
Anyone who's been on a midline mainland will tell you that the doors between the carrages only open when a button is pressed on the actual door itself, and that they like to close whenever they want to, and to hell with anything in their way.

I was going to Luton, on the Nottingham train. I couldn't find a seat, so I did what I normally do, open a door, stick my head in to see if there's a seat or not, and then go the other way.

Except this time.. the door closed. On my neck. Not a problem, I though, I'll just hit the button to open it... except this paticualr door now didn't want to budge. I try again. Nothing. By this time someone notices and tries to help me open the door. Nothing. Cue a few more people trying. Still nothing.

At this point I realsie something. The door is cutting into my neck rather hard, and thus I'm staring to become unconscious. The last thing I remember is someone going 'He doesn't look too good', before it all went black.

From what I was told, the passengers who tried to help me then pulled the emergancy stop chord, and eventaully I was freed not long after that. I woke up in an ambulence on the way to the hospital.

I did get compensated though! I now don't have to pay for my midline mainland trips for a year :)

NeoThermic
(Wed 13th Sep 2006, 2:55, More)

» Messing with the Dark Side

Well...
We lived in an old house (the front plate had 1901 on it, although we knew the house was built in 1907).

The house was... odd to say the least. There was something not quite right, and it showed rather well:

First, you never felt alone, even if the house was empty. It always felt like someone was in the same room as you.

Secondly, things would fall off of shelves randomly. Even things that were just put up (and properly so they wouldn't fall) would fall down a few mins later.

Thirdly, the second bedroom had someone in it, in the sense that at night, you could feel someone looking at you from the window, as if they were sitting on the inside. When I had that room, there were times where I turned away from the window, and the presense felt like it got closer to me.

Fourth, we were all away on holiday, except my dad who didn't want to come with us. Our parents room was the one at the front of the house. Directly down the hall was the bathroom, the second bedroom's door was halfway between the two. The parents had a full-length mirror set up, and it pointed down the hallway. One night my dad was in the bed, and he looked towards the mirror, only to see a woman standing in the bathroom. (We were all away on hiliday, so it wasn't us!). This freaked my dad out so much that he didn't sleep for the rest of the time we were away, to the point where he stripped all the wallpaper from the breakfast room.

The final clue that the house wasn't right came from the "incident". One night my mother and my sister and me were in the house. We were all upstairs, in our own rooms, attempting to get some sleep. There was this almighty crash, like something huge had broken downstairs. My mother and my sister assumed it was me, and I assumed it was one of them too, since neither left their room to invesitgate. In the morning over breakfast, we discussed the noise. "I thought it was you"... "No, I thought it was you..." We searched the whole house to find what had broken, and to this day we never found anything.

NeoThermic
(Fri 21st Apr 2006, 3:11, More)

» Restaurants, Kitchens and Bars... Oh my!

Oh dear god...
Lots to get through, but I'll try bring it down to just three.

I worked as a "general kitchen assistant" (read: dishwasher) for about 5 years. The horror of the real truth behind the scenes is... horrible.

First and formost, glasses. Those were a pain in the ass. Or the hand, as we used to break them often, many a time stabbing ourselves in the hand in the process. One such night I wasn't paying attention as I put the glass up on to the shelf. It hit the underside, and shatterd, with a huge peice stabbing into the middle of my thumb. I was the only person doing dishwashing on this busy friday, and thus I was told to put a plaster on it (read: blue medical tape), and wear a glove if it starts to leak. I nearly finished the night, but when my thumb started to turn blue, I insisted that I be allowed to leave for the hosptial, of which I was allowed to at 11pm.

Secondly, the walk in freezer. Normally those are safe, as there's a handle on the outside as well as the inside. Not so today, when me and another worker went inside the freezer to try find some fish. It was about 5 mins before work should of started, so we were the only ones in the building. We go in, the door closes, we find the fish, press the button to open the door.... and nothing. We try again... nothing. The freezing unit was positioned on the left as you open the door, and it was leaking water, which because the freezer is minus 18c, froze rather rapidly, making it impossible for the freezer handle to open from the inside. Cue us finding a knife and attempting to chip away at the ice for a good 10 mins before the door opens. It's our boss, who had been standing outside the door wondering what the hell was the noise comming from inside the freezer.

The final one was the dish washer itself. The industrial ones have a set type of powder to put in them, as if you put anything else into them, they foam up. Like hell. Cue to the new employee who, while I'm finding some drying up cloths, adds the floor cleaning powder to the machine. 5 mins later, the whole kitchen was covered in foam up to our waists. We had to close the place for the day and spend the time (a good 5 hours) getting rid of the foam. Suffice to say the new employee was fired, not before earning the nickname of foamy.

NeoThermic
(Tue 25th Jul 2006, 13:58, More)

» Your first cigarette

My first puff was also my last...
Thinking about it, this could also go under "how geeky are you?", but anyway.

I was at a Gentoo "Christmas" party. In November. A few people had gone out for food, so there was a few of us left.

I was being taught how to roll cigarettes, since I expressed interest. I had no idea why, I just did. Mae was teaching me how to backroll (where you end up with spare paper outside of the rolled cig. You burn the paper using a lighter to get rid of it). She joked at me that now I'd rolled it, I'd have to smoke it. I'd never tried a cig (and me being 20 shocked her), so I had no idea how you'd smoke it. She decided to get the thing going, and then handed it over.

At first I couldn't get the whole thing right. I'd not breath the smoke down. After a few mins, she finally told me in a clear way how to do so. I closed my eyes and took the first puff of a cig...

I have NEVER gagged so much in my life. My lungs burnt, I felt like I was going to throw up. My body was rejecting the taste, the smell and my lungs at the same time. It took about half an hour to recover. These days if I think back to the puff I took, I still gag.

Never ever again.
(Tue 25th Mar 2008, 5:09, More)

» School Sports Day

Javelin!
We had many kinds of events on a sports day, of which since I couldn't do any type of running, I did the "other" sports.

It was suggested to me by my PE teacher that I do javelin. Not sure why, since I'm not the kind of person who's got arms that could throw things, but I thought I would give it a go anyway.

So the PE teacher gives me a javelin, and walks about 30m and asks me to throw as best as I can so he can see how to improve my throw.

Unknown to him and to me, I was actually rather good at throwing the javelin, and I managed to strike him down with it in the foot. Suffice to say I never did PE again.

The PE teacher was actually rather nice about it though, and I did get a certificate for throwing 34.7m without a run-up, which was apprently the school record for our year. Ho hum..

NeoThermic
(Wed 5th Apr 2006, 21:09, More)