» School Days

Poetry
...Or 'Po-yetry' as they pronounce it in my home town was the order of the day in Higher English, which I was resitting, along with a couple of mates who also paid little attention the first time.
The teacher was taking us through the 'imagery' in this poem and a particular line about the picking of wild flowers - 'Sleekloon - you like picking wild flowers,' she says, quite without provocation in an attempt to get someone in the class to answer a question.
'Yes!', I say, then stand, singing '...I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars!'
My mate sat next to me then stands up immediately and helps me with the chorus, before we both sit back down and grin at the teacher who was quite lost for words, as I recall. The chap sat opposite us had gone beetroot red and tried to make it quite plain that he was not associated with either of these mentals at his table.
(Tue 3rd Feb 2009, 5:34, More)

» Celebrities part II

Doctor Heckle
I used to volunteer at a theatre near where I lived in Salford, taking the tickets on the door and showing people to seats, for which I got to see the performance for free, so I saw loads of difficult to get in to performances.
One night there was a guy called Richard Hawley playing his songs. He finishes his first and starts talking to the audience;
Hawley: You havin' a good time? You're all a bit quiet. Normally I've had a bit of abuse by this point..
Voice In Audience: Gerrof! Ye're rubbish! Play us summut we know!
Hawley: Sometimes people think I've got a plant in the audience when someone does that - Mate, with you, I've got a vegetable.
I thought I recognised the voice of the heckler and a little while later someone came to get out for some drinks. It was Christopher Eccleston.
Me (pointing an accusing finger): That was YOU earlier, wasn't it?
Eccleston (looking hunted): Me? What? Er...
That whole incident kept me amused for a good while. I'm easily pleased.
(Sat 10th Oct 2009, 4:45, More)

» Will you go out with me?

How I met My Wife
I was in a samba band (several, actually) and was returning from a gig at three in the morning, trying to decide whether I felt like going to a party the next night. My fellow band members badgered me into going, so I went.
There I was, glass in hand, just milling around when I spotted this rather tall lady chatting to some of my friends so i walked over, looked straight at her shoes and uttered the immortal phrase, "My God, what size are your feet?" (She is a tall lady) We spent much of the rest of the party talking in to the small hours until my lift had to drag me away. We're still together and married. Yay for my smooth-talking ways!
(Fri 29th Aug 2008, 3:09, More)

» Kids say the shittiest things

It's pronounced 'TRuck'!
One of my wife's workmates has a three year old boy who is obsessed by trucks and will call-out and point if one passes. Unfortunately, he has trouble correctly pronouncing the 'tr' and instead says 'f'.
To try to help his dad had the brilliant idea of calling them 'Tip Trucks', which for some reason worked and for a while the little boy could say things without any embarrassment to his parents. Then his pronunciation of 'tip' faltered, replacing the 'P' with another 'T'.
Yep - now every time a truck passes he squeals and points and shouts "TIT FUCK, MUMMY! TIT FUCK!"
(Sat 25th May 2013, 2:12, More)

» Bad Smells


When I worked in my first job back in Cambridge someone in the QC lab dropped and smashed a 200ml bottle of a substance called TEMED . This is a foul-smelling, oily substance used prepare biological samples for later analysis and is usually handled in microlitre quantities inside a working fume hood with tonnes of ventilation.
As Senior Technician I was alerted to this incident and proceeded at pace to the site of the spill. I got no further than halfway along the first corridor, though, before my eyes began to water and I felt the urge to wretch. Imagine that you had taken the rancid waste from a fishmonger's and left it in the Melbourne heat for a few days until nice and ripe, then doused it in bleach and left it for another day. That is perhaps a tenth of the vile stench that wafted through the workplace on that day.
(Tue 21st Jan 2014, 8:17, More)