» Darwin Awards

Oh, the irony
Many years ago back in my student days I attended a family christening in Basingstoke. Being an Irish family christening rather a lot of beer was consumed, so I ended up back at the train station in an advanced state of refreshment.

I boarded my train back to Reading only to be told that nothing was moving as the IRA had bombed Reading station. After some time I was desperate for a whizz. Remembering that you shoudn't use the train toilets in the station I got off to use the one on the platform. As I wandered in I noticed that the floor was flooded, so I tip-toed my way through in my mate's best shoes (being a scummy student I had borrowed them to look smart). I had my slash, got back on the train and eventually made it back to Reading after clubbing together with a few other travellers and going by taxi.


It wasn't til the next weekend when I went back to Basingstoke to meet some friends that I was confronted by a large number of police, all asking whether people had been there the previous weekend. When I said that I had they whisked me off to be interviewed by a raher frightening CID copper. Turns out he had a brilliant description of me leaving the toilet trailing wet footprints. When I agreed that yes, that would have been me, he looked at me very serioulsy and in a low voice said "Do you realise you had a piss 10 feet from 5 pounds of semtex?" *Gulp* Turns out the bomb had been put in a toilet cistern, holding the ball cock down and flooding the floor. When I asked if that was a big bomb he said "It would have levelled the fucking station".

Length? Substantially longer than after I learnt the news and it shrivelled up inside my body
(Fri 13th Feb 2009, 15:16, More)

» Twattery

Served
I had recently awoken from a 24 hour migraine-induced sleep and was feeling pretty shaky. So, I headed off to the supermarket to get some supplies of good comfort food to get my strength back and generally make myself feel more human again.

So there I was, queuing up to pay like any normal person when, from out of nowhere, a pensioner sailed past me as the checkout that was mine by right became free. To make matters worse, the mouth-breather manning it decided to serve him.

Stunned, I walked up to him and politely explained that there was a queue he had just walked past. "Oh, no," he replied, "I never queue. I just take my chances."

Everyone in the queues' amazement grew as I explained patiently that, in this country, we have a system of queuing that he may not have heard of but served the rest of us pretty well. Nope, he couldn't accept that it applied to him.

So, I am sad to say, that in my enfeebled state my customary politeness left me and I explained to him that unless he moved to the back of the queue he would be making a trip to A&E in pretty short order. (Despite his advanced years, he was spritely and I felt that a ruddy good smack in the mouth wouldn't cause him to die, like so many of his kind.)

At this point the twat stepped back with a comment about young people being rude and that I should show respect to my elders.

Finally, my politeness returned and I retorted "Well, by your age I would have expected you to have learned some manners!"

This brought about much laughter from the others in the queue he had insulted by pushing in front of, plus the mouth breather on the till. Humiliated, he retreated and I paid for my shopping like I should have been able to before that twat barged in.
(Fri 13th Apr 2012, 11:33, More)

» Stupid Dares

Mountain Bike mayhem
Many years ago when I wasn't fat with a bad back I was quite a keen mountain biker.There was a small group of us who used to go out a couple of times a week through the Purbeck Hills, riding to pubs, necking several pints of Wife Beater and then wobbling back.
One weekend we decided to plan a trip abroad and so left the safety of Dorset and headed into the unknown wilds of Wiltshire.
We decided to ride around Avebury, which, if any of you know the area, is high chalk downlaod with some cracking climbs and fast descents.
Now, one of our number was nicknamed Captain Crap. He was a nice enough bloke but a complete prat. He had recently decided to buy a new bike and, being new to the sport, had asked our advice. As it was in the days before you got any suspension on a bike worth less than £1000 we suggested he get himself a bike with a sound frame (like a Stump Jumper) and added things like suspension forks to it as and when he could afford it. Rather than following said advice he went down Halfords and spent £3.99 on a Saracen full bouncer. This bike was so shit that it used to regularly chuck him off when he went round roundabouts on the road!
Getting back to the story, on this particular day it was raining and when chalk gets wet it's rather a lot like ice. We all got to the top of a really long, steep descent and an evil plan was hatched among the rest of us without even speaking. We all looked at each other and knew exactly what to do. We dared him to beat us all down to the bottom. He accepted the bet and we all got really pepsi-maxed up, track standing and really working ourselves into a frenzy.
As one of us shouted "Go!" Captain Crap tore off down the slope as fast as he could and disappeared round the first corner. the rest of us sat back on our saddles and grinned at each other.
Presently, we headed off down the slope rather gingerly, taking it easy given the hazardous conditions. As we rounded the first corner there lay his bike with Captain Crap laying some distance away looking very unhappy indeed!
Length? About 20 feet I think
(Wed 7th Nov 2007, 16:30, More)

» The Dirty Secrets of Your Trade

Charidee
Now some charities are run well by committed and efficient staff but most are run by total muppets who'd never survive in a real job. It's always worth checking the annual accounts of any charity that you feel like giving money to so that you can check whether they are actually spending money on what they say they are.

I'm not saying that it is outright corruption but I have been in the sector for a number of years and have seen some shocking examples of feathering one's own nest at the expense of the donors and the beneficiaries. It's a bit like the council - they're not really accountable for the money they produce and they keep a lot of dead wood in their organisations rather than sacking them cos they're worried about getting sued or that they are 'nice people' and don't do that sort of thing.

For example, I am aware of a kids' charity that spent next to nothing of its multi-million pound income on the cause but rather a lot on it's CEO's trips to the US. Another has over £150million in real assets but declares that they were a fraction of this on their balance sheet. This is because they were properties on the accounts at purchase price rather than curent market value. Given that most of the properties were purchased in the 1930s there's a fair disparity. And they were spending absolutely fuck all on their supposed beneficiaries but still raising oodles of cash.

Don't believe any charity that says it spends nothing on it's administration. That is a total lie and down to creative accounting. For example, they may use a single large domnation to pay for the admin costs and then not declare it in their accounts. As there is no industry standard for declaring costs it means that all sorts of creative accounting is performed to make their income vs admin expenditure look better.

And organisations that work in the third world waste your money by buying lovely air-conditioned offices, driving round in brand new 4x4s and delivering sod all to the people out there. For example they tend to employ sub contractors to drill for water and pay them whether they find it or not. So, the sub contractor goes off, drills a hole too shallow to find water and then presents their bill. Nice work if you can get it.

So, don't give your money to people in the pub flogging roses (they keep all the money anyway). If you want to help others, do your research, choose the right organisation and give a regualr donation tax effectively.

Length? About 1000 words I think
(Wed 3rd Oct 2007, 16:31, More)

» Sleepwalking

Not house trained
Several years ago I went through a stage of fairly ferocious sleep activities. Already bad, they were always exacerbated when I had spent a night on the pop, which I was doing a lot at the time. This led to a few scary and embarrassing experiences. My best are:
- going to bed in my own bed and waking up cuddling up to my mate who was asleep on the floor
- having sex with my girlfriend while completeley asleep (real caveman stuff too but luckily she liked that)
- while I was staying at a mate's flat after a monumental session, walking into his room, getting my old man out and pissing on the floor, facing the bed, in front of his rather startled girlfriend
But my best effort was when a little nurse took me back to her room, which was on the seventh floor of a tower block. The block was being renovated one wing at a time so there was scaffolding up rounjd the outside of it. She said that apparently I suddenly sat up in bed and walked out of the door. The first I knew about it was when I woke up seven floors up in the air on the scaffolding round the outside of the tower block, minus my top and my shoes!

Rarely do it anymore which I am glad about as it used to scare the poo out of me
(Fri 24th Aug 2007, 13:48, More)