» "Needless to say, I had the last laugh"

Beating on the Booming Drum of Self Congratulation
It was a warm, liquid afternoon in summer, showing Bournemouth off at its best. Happy people wandered the beach-front shops, bikini-pretty and giggly - and that was just the guys. I, however, lurched along the pavement like a zombie with one of those nasty little rattling Boots carrier bags: bed-hair, bleary, snotty and a doubtless smelly young man. And in front of me was one of Those Blokes.

You know, one of Those Blokes. Stocky, short type with gorilla-hairy arms. Always over-tanned. Dark hair combed back so hard its got furrows and you can see the scalp, which always glints hair-gel green. And, of course, a thick gold chain around the neck. Yeah, thats right, one of Those Blokes.

I don't think I'm that judgemental as a person, but if you are one of Those Blokes the 1st thing I think on seeing is ‘You knob. Bet you teach PE’ and I haven’t been proven wrong yet.

Our particular bloke was leant proprietorially against the boot of a grey Ferrari, chatting up two bikini-clad damsels who were at least a decade too young for him. I had to lurch past, so I couldn't help but over-hear him holding court on the merits of this particular make of Ferrari. Normally I'd have said nothing, but as he expounded fulsome details of all that 0-60 crap, I couldn't help but mutter sourly:

'Yeah, but the seats are too low and clutch is an utter bitch.'

Bloke shot me a look of smug contempt, gave the Ferrari's boot a little fatherly pat and said:

'Well I think I know more about this kind of car than you do 'mate'.'

The inverted commas clanged with sarcasm. Right up to the point when I haughtily unlocked the car, threw in the Boots bag and pulled away.

Even better, he kind of froze up in cringe, so he stayed leant on the boot until it turned into empty air. One of Those Blokes, arse first to the tarmac. Lovely.
(Tue 8th Feb 2011, 13:11, More)

» Stupid Colleagues

That Office Moron? I am He.
From the dark dingy depths of IT support, a young wax chewer had moved into a new, shiny department. A high profile area, in a high profile bank. Surrounded by intimidating keen-eyed people, corporate and thrusting. People who never left the office, even when they hand gone home. Investment bankers were wont to stalk through the gleaming open plan office, doubtless looking for their missing 'W'.

It would be easy to fade into the background in such an arena, and I'm a chronic fader. I decided I needed a shtick, just like all those Succeed in Business books suggest - a banner to proclaim that I was not just a suit - dedicated, but still possessing humour.

A prior colleague had had two little wooden manikins that he would put into different karate poses each week - even people who didn't know his name would call him The Karate Guy. I would shamelessly copy this idea - my mother had bought me a stress ball thingy as a little gift - a googly-eyed rubber ball that could be moulded into different face shapes. I would make this my 'thing'. I'd have a different face each week.

I also didn't read the packet my stress ball came in.

A few weeks, I was reading some dull report, and idly stretching my stress ball out wide, to give it two huge cheeks. And it broke. Or maybe I should say 'erupted'. It was not filled with gel; it was filled with flour. FLOUR.

I sat rigid in shock as a mushroom cloud of flour enveloped me at my desk, the broken rubber flinging some non- aerial clods of flour as dusty doodlebugs, spinning spectacularly across the office.

A packed, open plan office.

I had to stand there, red-faced, and be hoovered clean by the sniggering Puerto-Rican cleaners. I emitted clouds of dust whenever I sat down. My training partner still wets himself whenever he hears the word 'flour'.

I am known as 'the flour guy'.

Yes, of course there were photos. Damn camera phones. No, you can fuck right off.

To compound it all, when I had escaped the scene of my humiliation, I dumped my clothes on the bathroom floor and jumped straight in the shower. You know what you get when you mix flour and water? Oh, you do? Well, thats probably why your clothes weren't glued to the floor with cheap gooey paste, you smart-alec.
(Mon 7th Mar 2011, 16:05, More)

» Greed

Greeeeed
'So what should we get your daddy, eh?' said Mummy, a small snotty child dangling off her like an over-excited tumour.

'I wants to buy him a weeeally big bar of chocolate!' I said, in the painfully over-excited, cute way that attracted random grannies going 'Ahh, the little love'.

You know, I'd quite like to hop in a time machine, go back, and give my nauseating little face a good hard slap. I'd so have had it coming; the little obsequious, toadying con-artist rat-bastard that I was. But anyway:

The slab of chocolate was duly purchased, resplendent in wonderful sparkling violet-purple foils. And duly hidden away for a good father's day surprise.

In the cupboard, in my room. Within arms reach.



Well, of *course* I bloody did!

I was a bratling, greedy, and - lets face it - the subject of this QoTW would make it rather strange if I had done anything else, no? I swear that chocolate bar got bigger every time my saucer-like eyes looked at it, and I looked at it a lot, let me tell you. I polished it with my eyeballs every spare second. A week of torture followed as I tried to resist:

Just one more look. So shiny. So chocolatey. So big. So NAUGHTY. I'm just going to... sniff it for a bit. Thats ok, right? And maybe lick the foil. Oh no, I've bitten down! I've left teeth marks! I didn't mean to. Oh no, oh no, I've pierced the foil, oh no, I can taste.... Oh gods.

Well, its a very BIG bar of chocolate - daddy won't miss a bit off the corner. Just a little nibble. I'll bite it all neat and fold up the foil again - he'll never notice its a bit shorter. Because its so big.

Oh god I CAN'T STOP EATING! There's foil everywhere! Its tangled in my hair! My little fists are sticky with chocolate. Nooo!

I writhe in shame and guilt. I feel really quite sick. What can I do? I'm too young to get out on my own so I can't replace it - and I can't bring myself to confess to mummy. But wait! My sister bought daddy chocolate too, and she's a big meanie and I know where she hid it and she's outside and she won't notice and I'm sure its her fault somehow anyway and no-one will know if I just- steal it.

Wow! If anything, my sister's gift is even bigger than the one I had! A triumphant brick of a bar. So heavy. Really big!

...I wonder what it smells like?

If I died tomorrow, my family would have my gravestone read: "Here lies WaxChewer. He ate all the father's day chocolate. The whole lot. On the eve of the day itself, even though it made him feel sick and half of it was his sister's gift to his dad."

Sadly, the filial taunting has not strengthened my will-power with regard to chocolate. I'm still a rampant chocy thief, but even worse - and I daren't confess it to them - no chocolate has EVER tasted as nice as those two bars. Gods I'd so fucking steal them again, you bet your arsehole, oh hell yes!
(Fri 15th Apr 2011, 13:03, More)

» Cunning Plans

A Whole 10 Pounds!
At the age of 7 it was like god had pissed liquid gold into my cupped hands, being given that 10 pound note - and possibly as sticky. Not having reached an age of any form of fiscal responsibility, I was like Paris Hilton - as soon as I had any money, I spent it on tacky crap; preferably in bright, primary colours. I had no notion of saving or reticence - just like Hilton again - so £10 of my very own 'to spend as I wanted' seemed like an unbelievable sum. A vast pot of gold; unbridled riches! I've no doubt I squealed and shrieked in an appalling high-pitched, ear-burning manner when I was given my prize.

Depressingly, I've just realised that I was probably being just like her again, but my bollocks to her ugly face, I'm not saying another word about that screeching ferret in a bimbo-blond wig. On with the story!

My sister had - I was convinced - eyed up my £10 pound prize with covetous eyes. I was immediately carried away by paranoia (look, I was that type of kid, ok? An emotional yo-yo) so resolved to hide my vast monies in the most devious and cunning place I could find.

First, I scouted out a superb hiding place - the garage crawl space! The deepest, darkest pit of terror a 7 year old was allowed to go near, the endless plunge into its inky black depths (it was 6ft deep) was the stuff of nightmares. It was covered up with planks of wood so oil stained that the RSPB would try to rescue them, but my tiny hands could still lever them up with some effort.

Next, I secreted my £10 in an old After Eight tin. After, of course, folding it lovingly in an envelope marked 'Bog Off, Poo-Face!'.

Then, even if the thieves were successful, at least I'd get the last word in. Hah!

After that, I encased the tin in a box of Lego; prospective thieves would have to smash their way through it! A somewhat arduous undertaking, this - but enjoyable for a Lego-minded boy. And, my god, did it make the finished product one mother of a heavy box! The Legos of elder days was made of sturdier stuff, I swear.

An elaborate cats-cradle of string was then engineered - the hefty box containing the world-shattering sum of ten whole pounds – my gods, ten whole pounds! - would nestle within, anchored over the void of the crawl space by ingenious string mechanisms. Success! A hiding place fit to fox Lara Croft!

Sadly, I had not factored in the role 'vibration' would play in my scheme - my dad reversed the car into the garage that night, and the thrumming engine dislodging the delicate ‘key’ string of my edifice, plunging the hefty box of Lego and tin down onto the concrete below.

Failure: ignominious.

I got a thick ear for having thrown more than £10 worth of Lego down a hole, just to try and protect a tenner. Furthermore, I'd engineered a god-awful racket in the middle of the night, and made my dad sweep up a pile of Lego in a pitch-black hole at silly o'clock in the morning.

But I still don't believe anything was wrong with the idea in principle.

Other cunning plans of my childhood days involve:

1. Trying to sleep in my school-clothes all night, in order to 'save time in the morning'. Plan rudely dashed by being discovered asleep fully dressed by my mum (she ran nightly ‘isn’t the brat dead yet?' checks). In a no-nonsense voice I was command not to be so damn silly, and the plan was rendered to naught. Failure: brisk and uncompromising.

2. Attempting to get a late-night drink of juice at the age of 5 without having to go through the strain of getting out of bed, I instead elected to head-butt the wall and make myself cry. Mother would then come, and could be made to get me a drink. Failure: painful - the crying part worked, but then my desire for liquid mysteriously vanished in subsequent flood of tears. Go figure.

3. Attempting to get my bed moved abutting the sink, so I could be even lazier about cleaning my teeth. Failure: 100% and comprising of a simple and decisive 'no'. I tried to move the bed myself in exploratory fashion, but it was a heavy wooden object without wheels: I only succeeded in giving my unshod, bare feet a healthy dose of carpet-burn; a memory that still burns bright and painful even today.

4. Trying a new novel way of breathing - I'd breathe in, hold it for a split second, and then let the breath rush out. It was strangely, incredibly addictive - go on, give it a try! ……. Trying it? Realise you sound like you are indulging in some undisclosed, dubious sexual activity? I didn't - was too young. Failure: humiliating. My parents didn't tell me until years later what my young self had sounded like -thanks folks.

5. Spinning around really, really hard on the shed roof, then jumping off with my arms outstretched. Naturally, I’d be spinning so fast that I turn into a human helicopter – an alluring theory, I think we’d all agree. Failure: Newtonian. That bastard and his theories; it’s a far less enchanting world for a child when you learn that gravity cannot be persuaded to look the other way. I actually landed on my feet, which was a bit of a fluke, but I was so dizzy from the spinning that I fell over and hit my head anyway.

Ah, the memories of what a brainless, crazed little shit I was... And my parents wonder why I loathe kids and point-blank refuse to spawn.
(Fri 6th Jul 2012, 13:20, More)

» Guilty Laughs

I feel that I am safely surrounded by a bunch of pervs...
...so I don't mind sharing this one.

'Want to try something different?', said my ex slyly.

Yes, he was to be the coach, and I was to be his wayward footballer. He would then teach me a good hard lesson. With his penis.

Handcuffs were located, a make-shift blindfold was connocted and I rapidly jumped into any kit that looked footballerish. 'Yay, I'm getting some rough kinky sex' I said to myself, and prepared to roleplay a baaad footballer about to get a Deserving Lesson:

'And I'm going to make you my bitch!' he growled, throwing my writhing, helpless body across the bed. So far, so porntastic. In furious animalistic passion he tore off my shirt...

...tried to tear of my shirt...

They make those things pretty damn sturdy, don't they? I expect there is a special company somewhere that makes apparel specifically designed to be torn off people for porn.

Fighting giggles, I was treated to a impromptu bed-bounce as he yanked ineffectually at my shirt. Frustrated and muttering, he stood up to get a different grip...

But instead, he slipped up on the discarded shiny shorts, went straight over sideways, and landed face-first in the tropical fish tank.

I was still blindfolded, so all I got was:

'Damn this bloody thinwhoawaaaAHHRG GLUB GLUB GLUB'

One way or another, that's me doomed to hell...
(Fri 23rd Jul 2010, 14:17, More)