» Bullies

Revenge is sweet.. well more chilli tabasco actually.
I was undoubtedly not the coolest kid in school.. blonde, acne, actually into learning stuff, listening to what people said and one of the few normal people in my class which had the reputation of being the "worst behaved in the year" as the teachers always kept reminding us.

As a result of learning to deflect the general shit that came with a class of nutters I had an okayish time at school.. I got along with the class bully (who's family was pretty messed up) and even learnt to laugh off and avoid the enevitable conclusions of his favourite catch phrases such as the mirthful "Doo yoooo WANNA PUNCH?!" and the classic, slightly more rhetorical "Doo yoooo want ANOTHER PUNCH?!" Basically you kept him sweet talking about making bombs and anything else that he found appealing and you just got along dandy.. For all his "little faults" I actually got to like him by the end of school. I saw him a few years back and he had a stunning wife who didn't even look bruised. - Though her shirt did cover her upper arms and the ever favourite "BCG" target point. (Maybe he'd reformed or maybe some women just love a violent nutter.. the world is a strange place)

Anyway I digress from my only real pinacle of fame while at school..
I used to hang out with the other quasi-normal members of my class in a maths room where you could get away from most of the nuttier side of our year and play games on the old BBCs. This was great until a nasty piece of work from the year above (who we nick named "psycho kid" (behind his back for obvious reasons)) started to make our lives hell. He'd turn up mid break with his laughing-boy cronies before their lesson started and just lay into us for no reason. You could see him trying different ways to intimidate you and generally try anything to make his mates laugh at us.. wanker.

I've never been worried about being a bit short, but this guy was and had the personailty equivalent of a small psychotic pit bull.. you know, sort of undersized, a bit of a chip on his shoulder and mainly scary due to excessive mouthyness and the odd bit of unrestrained psychotic behaviour. Think Ben Kingsly in Sexy Beast..

Not being one to get pushed around and not do *something* about it I devised a cunning plan.. Lemon sherberts were the sweet of choice at that time and for those not in the know they're an old skool hard boiled sweet filled with err.. sherbert. I found that if you painted them with Tabasco sauce and left them to dry in the sun you could turn something that looked like an innocent glazed lemony treat into the sort of uber-hot food you'd require an arms export license for to sell abroad.. The sort of thing your local indian might serve you if you called the waiter a poof, belched in his face and then bragged about how you "always order a Phal!!" to all your laughing dickhead mates. You know.. really really quite hot.

One weekend and several re-applications of Tabasco later I was ready to go.. In walks psycho kid, my mate Matt gets pushed about a bit first, at which point I offer John a sherbert out of an innocent little white paper bag. John eats the "safe" lemon sherbert he had already pre-concealed in his hand and starts crunching as loudly as possible in case psycho kid hasn't noticed..

Psycho Kid: OI! What's that you got there?
Me: (mumbles) nothing..
Psycho Kid: Give us one - NOW.
Me: have em, sniff. (I dump the whole bag on the table and act like I'm about to cry, quickly legging it out the class room.)

Five seconds later I was 10 meters up the corridor looking for somewhere safe when I hear psycho kid shout "SHiiIIT!!" followed by the sound of hard boiled sweets bouncing off a window and much laughing! :-) What a result! I stop to smirk and he runs out of the class room and up the corridor towards me looking red faced and out for blood. I was feeling a bit cocky by this point with the confidence that I'd made him look a total asshat infront of his mates. I figured I may as well go for the nuclear option and have it out with him there and then as well. He got right up in my face, saw I wasn't backing down and then suddenly "realised" that he badly needed the water fountain to save face. i.e. I faced up to him and he completely wussed out. Yay!

For some reason we never got any more hassle after out of that lot. My dad was amused when I told him about my day at school and used the same lemon inferno sherberts a few months later when he found snacks kept on getting stolen from his desk at work.
(Sun 17th May 2009, 19:52, More)

» Spoilt Brats

Rich foreign kids..
When I was growing up my parents mortgaged themselves to the hilt to buy a nice place and to help pay for it they rented the two small bedrooms out to the local language school. The deal was that foreign students learning english would board with us for breakfast and dinner and be treated a bit like the family every day so they could pick up the language in a natural way. As a kid this rocked as you were always living with some amusing, occasionally quite schizoid (a story for another time) and sometimes *insanely* wealthy people. So here's my three favourite rich kids:

The Saudi guy in his early 20s who's mate dropped by to see him and parked up on my parents little drive way in a Ferrari F40. (My dad figured it was worth at least twice the price of the house!) I think it was the same guy who didn't really like english cooking.. and what do you do if you don't like your host's cooking? Cook your own tea perhaps? - NO don't think so small!! - Why you phone home, your London home, every evening and tell daddy's buttler of course! Then he gets the chef to make enough for you and all your friends. Then the chef gives it to one of daddy's Chauffeurs who drives it 60 miles from London up to Cambridge. EVERY DAY. I think it was the same guy who bought Terminator 2 on video before it was on general release.. he just paid the £80 to buy it with the full rental rights and naturally just left it behind when he went home! (He also left a nice leather jacket which was a bit baggy and I kept.. though it did smell a bit of overly strong aftershave! Still can't complain too much, beggars can't be choosers..)

We had a nice Brazillian girl who must have been about 18 stay with us for a few months. She actually seemed quite normal.. yes she bought small bars of cheap soap for £20 from Harrods and so on, but she was polite and friendly so all was good. We didn't really figure out how loaded she was until a bunch of her family visited to see how she was doing one day. They were all having a weeks break in the UK and "dropped in" for a cuppa as it were. My mum got chatting to the grandmother who was saying how the whole extended family all lived on one big farm. My mum commented how it must be nice that she can see her grandchildren so often. Grandmama's response was "oh no, it takes most of an hour to fly across the farm to see them" Filthy rich? I think so.. but in a nice way.

My last Rich kid was a quiet fella who was only 16 and had come over to do a months english course from the United Arab Emirates. I was about the same age at the time so we got on and chatted about this and that. He lived in a different world though.. I fantasised about getting enough cash together to afford a crappy car, insurance and fuel once I'd passed my driving test. You know what he told me? - "If I pass english course my dad buy me a Lexus!" - Smug little B'stard!
(Mon 13th Oct 2008, 22:20, More)

» The nicest thing someone's ever done for me

Surprise birthday party!
Nothing earth shattering, but it was much needed at the time. I'd just lost my job in Sheffield and moved down to stay with my parents while I looked for a new house near my new job. (Incidentally don't ever work in the computer games industry.. crappy pay, mad hours and frick all job stability!) Having just spent the best part of 9 years in Sheffield after university I basically had to abandon all my good friends and social life and was feeling a bit low. (Getting cups of tea from my folks to get me out of bed in the morning was ace, but it isn't quite the same as being around all you uni mates)

Thankfully a few of my old school friends got together and threw me a surprise birthday party! :-) Yay.. proper presents to rip wrappings off and everything! I felt a lot better about life after that and stopped being so morose about life. If you know someone is down in the dumps, throw them a massive party and make them feel loved!
(Sun 5th Oct 2008, 14:05, More)

» Will you go out with me?

Carpe Diem
Festivals are great. I'd never been to one before and had a top time at Glastonbury with some mates this year. After three days of booze, dancing badly to bands, camping, aquiring a mexican poncho stylee thing & glowsticks plus several different hats I thought I had it all figured out. We had a great time wandering about the little cafe places, eating over priced but delicious take away food and seeing some awesome acts. Of course in the evening you have to unwind and for those of you who have yet to enjoy the chaotic goodness that is Glasto, the stone circle is basically the place to go in the evenings. Its a big stretch of hillside you can head for where you can sit around bonfires, meet other merry inebriated revelers and basically talk shite till the early hours. You can also laugh while various plebs do not-quite-so-professional fire breathing & dancing and the old pros launch chinese lanterns into the night which always gets everyone going wooo! as the next one sails off into the night sky..

Anyway, I was out there on the last night and left the gang and general hubbub in search of the loos down at the bottom of the hill.. I was "really quite surprised" when out of the blue a very warm, very fit and very drunk girl ran over, threw her arms around and pressed herself against me. Maybe it was the glowsticks in my ten gallon hat, maybe she was a sucker for guys in crap mexican poncho getup, or maybe she'd just had way too much stella.. regardless she seemed warm, curvy and well up for getting to know me better. Well hello..! (thinks the part of my brain that speaks in the voice of Leslie Philips) as she goes straight for the in depth snog and my hands start tracking down her waist and onto the top of her toned rump. Out of nowhere I had suddenly gained every drunken man's dream girl and if anything she seemed to view me in the same way!?! (Definitely too much stella) This is sadly where is all goes a bit wrong.. despite having had at least a couple of shandys the annoying part of my brain that is always right (and tends to ruin my life) had been "doing the math". The short term benefits were immense, being a hot chick who seemed up for going back to my tent for a night of athletic rumpy pumpy. The slightly longer term outlook was quite bad.. she was clearly quite wasted and the likelihood of her chundering everywhere seemed scarily high. - Plus if she was happy enough to jump on me out of nowhere she'd probably already shagged her way around most of Glastonbury!? Hmm, it didn't really seem right so I brought up the fact that I had a (quite fictional) girlfriend. "That's alright, I've got a boyfriend! (hic)" she slurs and tries for another snog. Eventually I convince her in a friendly way that I'm not the one for her and that I am deeply in love with and dedicated to my imaginary girlfriend. - So that was that, I'd blown a definite shag, and our relationship had lasted all of five minutes.. she staggered off and no doubt found a new best friend and I finally got to go for a pee. Ahhh..

~~~ Epilogue ~~~

When I woke up the next day I was hungover, dehydrated, had got only a couple of hours sleep and the fresh memory of how I'd turned down a fit enthusiastic lass despite having been single for ages. To top it all I'd suddenly developed a KILLER sore throat. Speaking was hard, coughing agony and eating solid food near impossible. - Regrets? I've had a few. - Looking back in mild agony I was somewhat bitter that I didn't make the most of the extreme good fortune that had been bestowed on me. It would have made feeling utterly shite somewhat easier to live with. *sighs*

Length..? bah, the glasto-flu lasted at least three weeks in which time I infected most of my work place. meh heh heh.. (though not through direct transmission.)
(Sun 31st Aug 2008, 20:29, More)