» Fancy Dress Failures Pt 2

Years ago...
My mate and I were on our way to a fancy dress party, both of us dressed as coppers. We decided it would be a laugh to see if we could actually pull someone over, and when some random cretin screamed past us at 140mph then pulled up at the lights about 100 yards down the road, well, we had our man.

Thing was, when we got to the car, there was a nervous and slightly teary 10 yr old girl in the passenger seat. The driver must have been in a slightly panicked state, because he immediately blurted out that this wasn't his daughter, and he was "babysitting".

Starting to feel like we may have accidentally stumbled upon something quite sinister and our 'joke' may well be about to turn extremely sour, we tentatively asked about the nature of their relationship, and before you can say "entirely fictional", the guy's lost it. The red mist descended and he tore out of the car and pummeled straight into me. I ended up with a black eye, a split lip, a bloody nose and, if I'm honest, a bit of a semi.

Then he reached into his pocket and retrieved his phone, which was apparently recording. No idea why. He switched it off, got back in his car and drove away.

Still don't fully understand what happened, but the incident haunts me to this day.
(Fri 1st Nov 2013, 12:53, More)

» Festivals II

Years ago...
...a mate and I got caught climbing the fence at Glastonbury.

They made us go back inside and watch the rest of Coldplay.
(Fri 26th Jun 2015, 10:41, More)

» One Night Stands

Years ago...
...I had to travel to the North East for work. I was due to be there for a couple of days, so my company had booked me into a reasonably priced hotel, however the client I was visiting was based a little way out of Newcastle city centre. And so it was that I found myself, on a wet Tuesday night, alone in the delightful surrounds of North Shields.

The hotel was a real Travel Tavern sort of place, and on this particular night was almost completely deserted. Bored out of my mind, I had little option but to trudge disconsolately up the A193 in search of a semi-decent pub. I wandered into the first one I found, and luckily it wasn't the kind of boozer where you get stabbed for looking at the pool table. In fact it was quite nice - they had a fire going and a range of local guest ales. I picked one at random and settled down in a quiet corner. Unfortunately I'd failed to check the strength of my chosen beverage (about 7.6% ABV, I later learned), so after about six pints, instead of being nicely fuzzy I was really quite hammered.

Long story short, I accidentally got pissed on my own in Tynemouth.
(Thu 13th Mar 2014, 23:43, More)

» Unreasonable Cruelty

Late nineties, backpacking through Nepal.
We spent 9 days trekking in the hills outside Bharatpur. If you’ve never visited Nepal, it’s a stunningly beautiful country, but extremely poor – the rural areas especially so. And take it from me, genuine Nepalese cuisine (as opposed to the Westernised version) is nothing to sing about . So hiking all day with only the local delicacies to look forward to can be a fairly dispiriting experience.

One particular favourite is ‘bhat’, a kind of stewed rice and grain porridge flavoured with locally foraged herbs, moss, yak’s milk and whatever the fuck else they can find to put in it. Worse, to make it go a bit further they massively overcook it to allow the herbs to ‘brew’, then water it down to a thin consistency and drink it out of mugs or bowls. Pretty soul-crushing when there’s nothing else on offer.

Another common myth about Nepal is that it’s bollock fucking freezing the whole time. When you think of the place you imagine snow, sherpas and toes lost to frostbite but parts of it are actually fairly warm all year round, and pretty fucking hot in the summertime (we were there in July, and it was 30+). Despite this, they insist on serving steaming hot mugs of delicious bhat all year round, regardless of the weather.

Long story short, after a long day’s hiking I’d have chewed off my own arm for a cold beer, but all we could get was unseasonable gruel tea.
(Sun 21st Jul 2013, 14:27, More)

» Silly Achievements

Just recently...
...two strange men have started hanging round my local shopping centre. One's a chubby Australian with a goatee, and the other one's a tall, skinny middle-aged guy in a turd-coloured corduroy jacket. They never speak to each other, even though they seem to be acquainted, and they both have a sad, haunted look in their eyes, like they're struggling with some great loss. They also seem to have a lot of spare time on their hands.

I'm sure they're harmless even though most people tend to avoid them, but if anyone knows who's responsible for them, please can you arrange to have them collected? They're really depressing everyone.

Thanks.
(Sun 19th Oct 2014, 21:37, More)