» Abusing freebies

Journalism
As a music / film / games hack of some 17 years standing, I've had my own weight in freebies over the years. Dozens of free festivals, thousands of free CD's, hundreds of free gigs (usually with a plus 1), hotel rooms, brand new computer games, etc etc. I've made thousands flogging some of them on ebay, and am rarely stuck for anything to do; for instance, last night I went to the Waterloo IMax cinema to watch the new Beowulf movie, with my missus, for free, a week before it cam out. So I do now qualify as a postgraduate level blaggist.

The two particular items that stand out for me though, weren't got through the hack privileges. A) My day (non-journo) job issued me with a metal business card holder. No use for me as I barely give out one business card per year, but ideal as a holder and portable surface for the naughty powder. And B) I managed to blag myself onto a medical trial testing the effects of cannabis - so I got paid £60 to get 100% legally stoned, having pure THC injected straight into the bloodstream (which knocks your bollocks off BTW). That's good blaggery in my book.
(Fri 9th Nov 2007, 14:12, More)

» Putting the Fun in Funeral

Eulogy
I remember a friends funeral a few years ago. He had died of cancer at the tender age of 23, and though we (his friends) had a few wakes for him (which were quite jolly and much the kind of occasion he would have appreciated), the funeral itself was a very grim affair. His parents were obviously devastated and doubly so as he had been an only child, while the vicar had clearly no idea who our friend had been and had cobbled together his words from a few anecdotes his mother had told him.

However one of these anecdotes did provide our group with some light relief. The vicar, hoping to show our friend as a lover of nature, told us a story of a time that his mum had come out into the garden to see him with his camera case on the grass. She had asked him what he was doing and he had told her he was photographing butterflies.

However we knew that he used hi camera case to keep his ganj in and she had obviously just caught him skinning up a fat one... we managed to restrain the giggles until later, but that story became a firm part of his legend! Lord love ya, B. mate!
(Fri 12th May 2006, 14:53, More)

» Spoooky Coincidence

Spooooky with FOUR "o"'s
I swear all this is true. To the letter. Not a word of exaggeration. I'll apologise now for length.
About ten years ago, when he and I were both about 22, a good friend of mine (we were stoner buddies) contracted cancer of the stomach. I was unemployed at the time and did as much as I could to ensure I helped him out wherever possible.
One stony day round at his he was telling me about his stash box. He had been watching some antiques show and there was some bloke on there talking about Picasso. Apparently Picasso carved a very small number of unusual triangular wooden boxes, which he signed with a particular stick man, one with a hat and a walking stick. These boxes looked almost identical to his stash box, though without the signature. "I'm having some of that" thought my mate, and promptly drew on a little stick man. In the fullness of time, he happened to tell me the story.

So, sadly he lost his fight with the disease. In the following proceedings, it transpired that he had asked his family to ensure I got the box. I still have it and have used it ever since for the same purpose he did.

Fast-forward a few years to Glastonbury 2000. I was there with some friends of mine, in particular one good friend of mine who was my other friend's ex, and had also been very close to him during the illness.

We had been there a few days when she and I found ourselves in the Air field down in the hippy bit of the festival at the south end. We had had a few smokes, and the conversation turned to our late companion.

Pay attention - here comes the spooooky bit. We had been engaged on the subject of him for approximately one minute when a group of people arrived and settled down right in our line of sight about ten yards away. The nearest of these people had a tattoo on his shoulder of THE VERY SAME STICKMAN FROM THE BOX, HAT, WALKING STICK AND ALL. I was so very spooooked by that it was all I could do not to explode, quite frankly.

Previously a 100% scientific thinking sceptic, that single incident completely changed everything I thought I knew. Coincidence? I do not think so. I'd like to see the odds.

I absolutely swear that all the above is 100% true and unembellished. No, seriously, it is. If you're about Bogsie mate, hope you're 'avin a good one...
(Mon 12th Feb 2007, 17:47, More)

» I hurt my rude bits

Knackering my nutsack
Being rather fond of ramming bits of metal through various parts of my body, and having a brother who works as a professional piercer, I got him to stick a large bar in my scrote. All well and good. Unfortunately, a few weeks later the piercing began to show signs of infection just as I was due to spend ten hours on a coach to Scotland.

So I packed one of the bottles of cleaning solution he had brought back from work. Knowing that the coach toilet was a wholly unsuitable environment for applying such things to testicular areas, I nipped into the loos in the station concourse and gave me nuts the once over with the cleaning liquid, before getting on the coach.

The coach was absolutely rammed with people, which made it particularly unfortunate that within a few minutes the tingling sensation on my jewellery bag transformed into a searing, burning pain. It turns out I'd picked up the wrong bottle - the solution I'd taken wasn't for cleaning piercings in situ but for sterilising and cleaning jewellery and was extremely irritating to the skin. Cue five hours of agony while I waited for the bus to stop at the service station in Leeds so I could get to a reasonably clean toilet and inspect myself. This revealed that 2 large and utterly black scabs had formed around the entry and exit holes of the piercing, which remained there for a week. When they finally fell off, the piercing was fine and every trace of an infection had long gone! Still, I'd rather have achieved this without incinerating my hairy sack of magic...
(Fri 14th Jul 2006, 15:05, More)

» Family Holidays

Why I don't holiday in France any more
Between the ages of 13 and 15, more years ago than I care to remember (well OK, the late '80's), my family went on holiday to Eurocamp campsites three years in a row. The first two holidays were pretty bad but the third did the damage required in order to finally prompt my parents long-overdue divorce.

Firstly, my father (who is fortunately a lot better these days) was a total lunatic and insisted on driving all the way from northwest England to halfway down western France, via a ferry. For the third year he had bought a smaller car than previously, meaning I was stuck in the back, in a smaller space than ever before, with my brother and sister doing their best impressions of satan's children. Bear in mind my brother and I were each 6 feet tall even at the ages of 15 and 14, this was less fun than eating pavement while hippopotami jump on the back of your head.

We set off at 5 in the morning to catch a ferry from Dover at 5 the following morning. By the time we got to the town right next to ours my mother had developed cystitis, necessitating a 4 hour delay while we drove round Manchester looking for the duty chemist at 5:30am on a Saturday. Due to the ridiculous amount of time my father had insisted on allowing to ensure we made the ferry, we still got to the terminal 12 hours early. Obviously, to us anyway, there wasn't a hotel booked, so we all had to sleep in the car. Personally I wanted to sleep on the tarmac next to the car but was denied as I would obviously have been mugged, stolen or touched up. Still, I had no choice but to sleep with the windows down and my feet out of them - quite how this protected me from the aforementioned fates I am still to comprehend.

Then halfway through France on the way to the campsite I developed food poisoning from the eggs I had eaten on the ferry and spent the first week shitting water and deliriously lying on a campbed in the shade while a series of hallucinatory demons attempted to take my sanity. All the while my mother was pissing blood, my father was losing it about once every thirty minutes and my sister was bored shitless and sulking for Britain. My brother, meanwhile, was off having a great time discovering the joys of amphetamines courtesy of a Swiss boy he'd befriended. The cnut. Oh, and the French doctor we had been forced to seek assistance from, who was supposed to speak English didn't. Nor did he appear to speak French as my mother, who speaks perfectly good French and was understood by everyone else couldn't make him understand her. Nor did he admit to knowing what we meant by diarhoeaa despite an increasingly graphic series of mimes and the fact that the French word is something like "diarhee" which I managed finally to recall. Thanks for that, you fucking French numpty, and also for charging us about £100 for seeing us and prescribing us medicines which didn't actually work - the better part of our remaining spending money according to the massive rage paying it out induced in Papa.

Though I was better before we went I managed to get pissed up and spill beer all over my bed which prompted not only my fathers rage, but became an incident I've never been allowed to forget, despite the fact it's not actually embarrasing - let's face it, I didn't piss the bed or anything. Plus, I was awoken by the unmistakeable sound of my parents at "it" through a cloth wall. Lovely.

Despite all this, I think the moment the divorce became inevitable was when we got home, and before we had even unpacked my father was trying to book for next year. Unsurprisingly, that was the last family holiday we took.

One other story for you now - I went to Brazil this year with some friends, it was totally awesome except for one experience. I had to get an overnight coach from Rio to Sao Paulo, and the bus was so full we couldn't all sit together. I was therefore condemned to sit between the window and a fat middle-aged woman dressed in white. She sat down, reclined her seat, immediately went to sleep and immediately after that let go one of the most skull-fucking stenches I've ever experienced. Not only did it make me bleed from my eyes and ears, it had a half-life of the entire journey and accordingly assaulted me for the next twelve hours. I still remember the moment at journey's end when she got up, treating me to a view of the distinctive brown spot the aforementioned guff had left on her white trousers...

Length? You should see my c0ck...
(Tue 7th Aug 2007, 13:59, More)