» Expensive Mistakes

Tax credits
When these things first hit the streets, me and the missus got a letter informing us we were due £470 pcm in benefits. We thought this was pretty cool, not because I was earning £30k at the time, but because the missus was about to drop sprog #2, so we kinda figured that's why we were getting a benefit.

We couldn't believe, however, that someone, somewhere, wanted to pay us best part of £500 per month for no good reason, so we phoned to check up - several times - many many times in fact! And we wrote. And we phoned again. "Yes, yes, please stop bothering us, you're entitled to all that money."

One last time I tried. "Oh Sorry! You don't deserve a penny - give it back. Now."

Long story short, the numpties in the end realised their error and tried to reclaim £1.5k off us in overpaid benefits. Because we'd come clean - and had records of who we'd spoken to and when - we got let off. Unlike the majority of the thieving chav twunts who tried to cover up the overpayments they'd recieved, then got all sh*tty in the press when the government asked for it all back.

Lovely, new carpets and a camcorder before baby was born. Thank you Tax Credit peeps.
(Sat 27th Oct 2007, 20:32, More)

» Teenage Crushes - Part Two

Sharon Gless
aka Christine Cagney. Oooh, watching her walk down the street on the title credits to that catchy 80s tune...

And Diana Rigg, too....
(Thu 12th Nov 2009, 8:36, More)

» School Projects

IEDs - 90's college student style
output'.

My friend at the time (he later 'dumped' me 'cos he thought his missus and I were getting it on - though to be fair, he created a self-fulfilling prophecy....) were in to fire in a big way. And canons. And guns - well .177 air pistol things were totally ineffective and causing anything other than a muted 'pop' when shot. Perfectly normally teenager interests.

I forget now, how we came to decide this is what we'd do...

A local carpet shop - this was the days of greengrocers in the high street, FineFare, Budgens etc. etc. - used to store its discarded cardboard carpet roll inners - monster monster toilet tubes - out the back.

We found that these 6ft-long tubes, about 1/2inch thick and with an internal diameter of little more than a Swan Vestas lighter re-fill gas cannister.... made an excellent improvised mortar tube!

After much experimentation - and wasting of pocket money on gas re-fill cannister after re-fill cannister after re-fill cannister - we worked out how to get the most out of these 'mortars'.

Our housing estate backed on to a nice woodland area, which in turn surrounded a number of fields. We would find a typical 3-strand barbed wire fence looking out onto a field, and lean a tube up against the top strand. We'd dig the base of the tube into the dirt a little, drop some rags down it, set these alight and then slide in the mortar - the lighter re-fill cannister. We later found pre-drilling the base of the tube at the position where the rags would burn really helped things along...

We found these re-fill cannisters would blow up big-time, then launch themselves (what I recall) up to a couple of hundred yards. When we retrieved the cylinders, we found they'd always blown around the seal at the top of the cannister. I'm not sure we'd have taken-out many Taliban, but we sure scared a few bunny rabbits.

So, not a school project as such - only 'cos our teachers at the time never asked us to be so innovative - but something that I remember fondly, a full 25 yrs on.
(Tue 18th Aug 2009, 21:31, More)