» Get Rich Quick

The deutschmark scam
I'm surprised no one has posted this, but before the currency changes, the old one and two shilling piece, which became the old 5p and 10p piece (you could glue two fives together and spray paint gold for a pound coin looky-likey, TH to davywavy), were dead ringers for the 1DM and 2DM coins in Germany.

That's not so useful, until you know this and go to Germany on a school exchange, and realise that vending machines will sell you tabs* at 4DM a packet at the time (about 2 euros or £1.50, and IIRC that was about the same as in the UK at the time). So the next year, the school exchange is a tab-buying festival, for 20p a packet (which was a bit less than the price of a Mars bar) **.

It was unbelievable, the coins were precisely the same weight and size, despite being totally different values, I can't believe that it was allowed. Good for our school's smokers, though (and smoking was one of the sports we excelled in back before the coke craze). Now of course, tabs are EUR3.50 (£3) a packet in Germany so it seems that cheap anyway...

* cigarettes
** not for me - I have many vices but tabs is not one of them. ***
*** I may have done it once to confirm the 'urban myth' of it all...it was just too unbelievable.
(Mon 4th Aug 2008, 21:00, More)

» My Biggest Disappointment

Beer/ Real Ale
Not as exciting as it might be. But for me, there are six things that always disappoint when having a pint of real ale.

if it is ...
Sour
Soapy
Heathery
Old
Eggy
or Nutty

then the longed for pint will be a disappointment. Part of the attraction of real ale lies in getting a really nice one. The delicious pints of Bateman's Middle Wicket on Saturday night were perfect. But it always means that - through no one's fault in particular - there can be a disappointment lurking round the corner. Trying a new pint in a pub can be like a particularly low stakes version of Russian Roulette.

Nutty beer. A particular disappointment. But I think that's the difference between disappointment and disaster, a bad pint of beer is a disappointment - losing 25m people's bank account details on a CD is a disaster.
(Mon 30th Jun 2008, 22:06, More)

» Shoplifting

Also fits with 'told off as adult' QOTW
A long time ago, a group of school mates and I were in the habit of going on a pub crawl, in a seaside village in North East England, where we lived.

At the end of one of these heavy sessions, we were turfed out of the pub at the end of the crawl, which was also at the end of the street of pubs.

We'd drank a fair bit and one of our cohort - 'Tim' - decided that that glass that had half a pint of his guinness in was also HIS glass. This was before Guinness went all upmarket with the clever Arab Strap adverts and branded glasses - in 1993 it was just a standard straightsided pint glass, probably cost 20p from the pub shop. Not the point, though, it wasn't ours...

So we walked out of the bar with the glass and the guinness. We made our noisy schoolboy way past all the pubs towards the chinese takeaway for our habitual feast of authentic chinese cuisine (really- if you know the place, it's absolutely brilliant).

Walking past one of the bars, managed by someone who in another village would be the world's rudest curmudgeon, but is about average given the appalling levels of grumpiness of most of the village, he was stood outside.

As we walked past, he stared at us for a long time, and just as we passed us, sucked in a deep breath and growled, told us, not asked, but said in a voice that brooked no dissent, "you are taking that glass back to the stuffed dog."

Schoolboy bravado vanished, immediately obedient, "yes, of course" all of us shuffled back to the final pub and gave them their glass back, now sans guinness. Somehow, they knew we were coming back and were waiting to take it off us.

And that is how a life of crime was avoided by us all.

Length - about fifty metres back to the stuffed dog - but with eight pints in the bladder it felt a lot further.

(First post, so still learning...)
(Sun 13th Jan 2008, 12:43, More)

» Gyms

First page
Yay! Now I have to think up a story...

Edit: my most shocking moment in a gym was on a treadmill between two old ladies who proceeded to say some shockingly racist things about other gym users. I was too flabberghasted to tell them to stop.

Having been into the powerlifting in my youth, I've seen - and been involved in - my fair share of disgusting things. I've poo-ed my pants a few times whilst straining, and I've likewise had a few nosebleeds, particularly when caught in deep squats without a spotter.

I also perspire 'rather heavily' when doing cardio-vascular stuff, and have been described as totally disgusting by one person, in the summer of I guess 2002. It hurts, it still hurts...

Never mind the length, just feel the striations...
(Thu 9th Jul 2009, 13:51, More)

» School Days

Weird QOTW premonition
Wow! Last night, sitting in a cafe in Belfast, a vaguely funny story from school dropped into my head, and I had the compulsion to text it to a friend. So i claim a moral first post!

*Wibbly lines*

In sixth form General Studies drama, which I wasn't doing but was an excuse to hang around with people with a "props budget" that was almost entirely spent at off-licenses and tobacconists, we were doing a production of a David Brenton play.

Now this was an all boy's school but we'd teamed up with a nearby all girls school to do the show. Inevitably, being directed by schoolboys who were really interested in rehearsing the smoking scenes and impressing the boys/ girls that had caught their eye repeatedly meant it was a bit of a half-arsed production process.

Much to the irritation of our child star. Yes, at our school we had one boy who'd been in a children's TV show for a few years, and had pretentions that he was some kind of artiste.

After one particularly shit scene rehearsal, we decided to bicker and blame one another. And then the lad exploded - into tears - he bowled up to the director and just laid into him, through a torrent of tears, saying that we would never understand how exhausting this was to him, how emotionally draining because he put everything into it, he was a professional.

And then flounced out. I can't remember if he came back to the production. but we had a great after show party ... ah, school days...
(Thu 29th Jan 2009, 21:40, More)