» Stupid Dares

My father was a policeman
And *he* had a friend who worked in Maintenance on the Tube. As is well known, every so often some businessman or other will snap under the pressure of owning all those Jags and houses and jump under a train. The little-heard aspect of the story is that someone has to clean up the resulting mess. It is the 1970s and my father's mate is one of these people.

After shutting down the Tube station, he and his team are merrily cleaning away, picking up arms and legs, bits of torso etc. There were a few mops and buckets and stuff.

They couldn't find the guy's head. Anywhere.

"Somebody's going to have to go up the dark, echoey, badly lit tunnel with all the trains rumbling through it creating a suitably hellish environment in order to find a grisly, bload-soaked, disembodied head, probably frozen in a grim rictus of pain and terror," were one man's paraphrased words (well, it was Halloween yesterday, bugger off).

My father's mate drew the short straw. Off he wanders with a torch. An hour goes past. His mates start to worry and wonder if they're going have to do another clean-up operation somewhere in the tunnel network. They are just about to send somebody to a phone to shut down the tunnel when they see the bobbing light of a torch and the sound of whistling.

My dad's mate comes strolling out of the tunnel with the head held carelessly by the hair. He then flicks it up and drops it, bringing his foot up in a wonderfully executed drop kick. Aimed straight at the guy who suggested drawing straws. Who screamed and threw up.

Not quite a dare really, but a suitable story for the time of year. Dad told me that his mate's foot hurt for two days after that. Heads are heavy.
(Fri 2nd Nov 2007, 11:03, More)

» In the Army Now - The joy of the Armed Forces

Sort of on topic in that it involves someone in the Army, which isn't me nor is it strictly an Army-related story or, indeed, at all.
My grandad was a Sapper in the war. He built the Basra pipeline that we're fighting over all over again, he was responsible at the age of seventeen for keeping the entire South East's contingent of Bristol Blenheims in the air, was a part time rally driver and mates with an agent of the SOE (not Sony Online :P). He is also very much a product of Empire. He's not racist, as such, but he can't quite wrap his head around modern attitudes to race. He is a dinosaur. An example:

He recently went into hospital for a triple heart bypass, he wasn't, as I'm sure you can imagine, in the finest fettle and was somewhat disconcerted to have a black male nurse looking after him. His concerned conversation with my mum went along these lines.

"Jude, I'm not sure whether I should say anything, but I really think I should have a qualified nurse, not an orderly"

"Er, Dad, he is a proper nurse."

"Oh really? They're allowed now are they? Well, that's jolly good, isn't it?"

Now, he considers himself to be a pretty progressive sort of a chap and decided he'd strike up a conversation with his nurse. In the interests of racial relations, you see.

The poor nurse was somewhat disconcerted the next morning to find his patient jabbering away at him in tongues. My grandad was trying to talk to a lad born and raised in South London in fluent Swahili.
(Fri 24th Mar 2006, 10:08, More)

» Personal Hygiene

haha, I'm going to make you all boke
I've just realised that I have the perfect story for this QOTW.

I took one summer whilst at uni and fucked off to Florida with it. Six weeks of sun, sand, booze and the most successful period of pulling I have ever experienced. Ever.

My friend and I started off in New Orleans (this was in 2001, so I didn't need to bring any wellies) and then decided to travel to Clearwater in Florida on a Greyhound bus. I'd say the trip was about 8 hours long, all in. Which wasn't too bad, really. Until we got to Mobile, Louisiana.

Then a big fat man got on. With a tshirt that he'd cut off above his gut so it wobbled about in plain view. The rest of his shirt was already dark with rancid sweat. As soon as he got on, the smell was overpowering. But that wasn't the worst thing about him, oh dearie me, no.

The worst thing was the clear plastic bag perched on top of his gut. It was half full of a greeny-brown, viscous substance. It was a colostomy bag. A half-full colostomy bag.

We were a little revolted by it, but at that point it was night, the air conditioning was on and we were far more concerned about the BO. Then, as we approached Jacksonville, at about the halfway point of our trip, the sun came up.

An interesting thing about colostomy bags is that unless changed regularly, they don't really deal with heat particularly well. All the urine and excrement and whatever else inside it starts to pong a touch. This was August. In Florida.

An interesting thing about the human nose is that it will filter out its own body smell, no matter how repellant, if it is a constant.

An interesting thing about Greyhound buses is that they make rest stops pretty frequently. They also stop to pick up more passengers.

An interesting thing about air conditioning in vehicles is that when the engine stops, so does the A/C.

The heat climbed and climbed with the sun. The stench got worse and worse. The air conditioning started to struggle to keep the temperature down. My face was starting to turn green. Everybody had gone quiet, clearly trying to control their breathing. The man got up and started to walk down the coach towards us. We realised with horror that we were sat just forward of the toilets.

He walked past and the smell was...unreal. I may have fainted. It stuck in my throat, it got in my eyes, I was retching openly along with everybody else within a two row range. It stuck to my clothes, it was in my mouth.

He didn't change the bag. He came back out with it still on him. We had to put up with it for a further three hours as the clock slowly moved towards noon. It was awful. Utterly awful.
(Tue 27th Mar 2007, 10:23, More)

» Desperate Times

At the age of 21
Still awkward, gangly, ugly, extremely virginal and with 7 or 8 years worth of suppressed sexual frustration bottled up inside me, I plastered the entirety of the upstairs landing of my student house with Page 3 stunnas. Ceiling, walls, even a laminated carpet.

I called it the Boob Tube.
(Thu 15th Nov 2007, 11:19, More)

» Amazing displays of ignorance

Summer 2001 (may be a roast, I can't remember)
And a young Kroney is in the States on a six week jaunt through the South. As a trip it was something of an eye-opener to a middle-class boy from Surrey. It was the first time I truly appreciated just how safe and comfortable my life was.

I had left the trip until I was 21 for obvious reasons. There's no point going to a different country if you're not going to be old enough to do everything you might want to do, after all.

On this occasion, I was sitting in Miami airport having caught a Greyhound from Fort Lauderdale. I was heading back up to Tampa and, having done the journey down on a Greyhound, I had no intention of repeating the experience on the way back up. I elected instead to fly all of 45 minutes. There was a bit of a wait before my flight, so I decided that I'd like a nice beer. Thus began one of the biggest episodes of fuck-wittery I have experienced to date.

"Hi there, I'd like a bottle of Budweiser, please." I said, to the big, fat, thick-looking mouthbreather behind the bar. She looked at me with obvious contempt.

"ID," she said.

I sighed and produced my passport. I was four weeks into the trip at this point and the novelty of having to produce my passport every time was wearing thin. She all but snatched it off me and stared at it with knitted brows.

"I can't serve you, you're underage," she said, hanging onto the passport.

"Yes you can, I'm 21, it says so right there!" I said, pointing at the relevant section.

"You're not 21, it's the law here."

"Yes, I am. I was 21 this year, in May. I've been 21 for several months now." I was getting a little annoyed at this point and it may have come out in my tone.

"I'll get my manager."

So the manager comes out, looks at my passport and says:

"You're underage, we can't serve you."

"For God's sake. It says my date of birth right here," I take my passport back and point to the bit that says 'Date of Birth: 31-May/Mai-1980'. I hold it there for a bit. "See? Can I have my beer now, please?"

I get my beer. I pay and go to sit down. Whilst I'm passing the time, I try to figure out what the hell just happened. The date of my birth is clear and bold next to my photo. After staring at it for a bit, I start to laugh. At the top of the page is the passport number, followed by the only other date on the passport, the date of issue.

My passport was issued on 31st-Oct-1997.

That would have made me three.
(Tue 23rd Mar 2010, 12:37, More)