» PE Lessons

First day
at a Second Division Public School somewhere in the East Midlands. I was 10, just.

The timetable said: 2pm-4pm: Games.

Whoopee, think I and several other innocent 10-year olds, we get to spend two hours playing on the swings/roundabout/seesaw. So we do; and the next day, and the day after that.

After about two weeks of this the housemaster informed us we were meant to have reported to the rugby pitch on day 1 and they were starting to wonder where we'd got to.
(Fri 20th Nov 2009, 23:45, More)

» What was I thinking?

Don't crap in your own nest
was the stupid, stupid, stupid policy I took up at university.

I'd always been a shy retiring kid at school, but in sixth form I started to find my feet a little and by university I was a whole load more confident - still a little gawky and awkward, sure, but then I was going to a fairly spoddy university so I shouldn't be too out of place. And, hey, I might meet some equally gawky but gorgeous sensitive poetic etc etc GURLS.

And I did; plenty. Unfortunately for some reason I had decided "don't shit in your own nest". In other words, friends are friends. No matter how lovely and/or fuckable they might be, just don't. Things will go wrong, because they always do; and your friends will think the worse of you.

So how was I going to meet the poetic sensitive girl of my dreams, then, if she couldn't be a friend first? Hm. Never quite worked that one out. In the meantime I somehow valiantly contrived to shrug off the attentions of Cath, who made it perfectly clear she wanted me and reputedly went like a rabbit in a sack; of lithe little Sarah Jane who deposited herself on my knee at one Christmas party much to the envy (and subsequent disbelief when I did precisely nothing) of the male half of our department; of Karen, who was a little unhinged but nonetheless had some fairly obvious attractions and rather unnervingly appeared to consider me the sensitive poetic soul of her own dreams. After all, we were all friends, weren't we? What would our other friends think when it all went wrong?

My most excruciating face-palming hour ('hour' would have been better: this one played out over the best part of a year) was Mary. Mary was a canny little thing with a wicked sense of humour and an acerbic view on life, and I fancied her immensely. Clearly being nice, complimentary and flattering wouldn't get me anywhere with the most amusingly cynical thing ever to wear a skirt. So I wasn't. In fact, I was somewhere between dismissive and rude, purposefully taking against all the things she liked, and taking the piss at every opportunity. Somehow I thought this might endear me to her. Right? It was a few months after it had all imploded messily that a friend told me she'd said at the time "I used to fancy Guy quite a bit, you know. But suddenly he went all weird on me." Gah.

And then there was Clare. Thoughtful, beautiful, kind, stunningly talented (a cellist - I've always had a thing for cellists), the most alluringly filthy laugh, and she drank like a fish. Anyone in our department who wanted a poetic pre-Raphaelite girlfriend fancied her, and given that we were a fairly pretentious bunch that was most of us. Obviously this meant I couldn't even think of it: not only would I be an idiot in front of our friends, I'd earn their undying enmity if I did ever get anywhere.

A shame, really, given that we were best friends for a couple of years. She'd occasionally gently joke about how she was offended that I'd said I didn't fancy her. Of course I didn't fancy her. The fact she was the only girl I'd ever cried over was irrelevant, right? We were just really good friends.

Oh, Guy, you silly arse.

It all came right in the end, somehow. A couple of years later I met the future Mme Debord, quite by chance, far from any of my friends. I didn't have to worry about making an idiot of myself. So I didn't.

But when I think of the three years I spent with an entirely unnecessary self-imposed emotional chastity belt - yes, I was a complete idiot. Ha.
(Mon 27th Sep 2010, 22:39, More)

» Hoarding

Computers
aka "This thing cost £5000 (once), there is no way I can skip it." Especially because, as anyone who reads Slashdot (kill me now) will know, you can justify keeping any random piece of old hardware on the grounds it'll be useful in a Beowulf cluster.

So. Employer throwing out computers? I'll look after them. Local school throwing out computers? I can do something with that. Is that a computer in the skip over there? Shame if it were to go to waste.

That worked as a justification right up to the point I worked out exactly how powerful a Beowulf cluster of 20 Mac Classics/SEs, two Sinclair Spectrums, a Viglen 286 and a BBC Micro Model A would be. Not very.

It was the announcement of the $25 Raspberry Pi that was the final straw. Even I had to admit that this one tiny computer was (a) more powerful and (b) took up less space in the loft. So they're now all in the local tip. But I have a secret hope that someone came along half an hour later and thought "hey, I could build a really good Beowulf cluster out of those"...
(Thu 3rd May 2012, 14:06, More)

» I don't understand the attraction

Footless tights
Ok, so I'm slightly cheating here. The question says "turns everyone else on". I don't think footless tights turn anyone on. This is kind of the mystery... why the hell so many otherwise beautiful women wear them.

You can imagine the product meeting. Hey, our sales at Tights R Us are good, but, you know, we've still got that image problem. Apparently some blokes don't find tights sexy. Can't see it myself. But, hm, maybe we should do some market research.

*time passes*

So this market research we did? Apparently blokes quite like the leg bit. It's just the end of the tights they don't like.

So - hey - I've got a great idea. Let's produce tights without the ugly bit at the end.

*facepalm*

Catherine Townsend is the Independent's sex columnist. A couple of years ago she wrote this column in which "I was rocking a gold minidress, worn with footless tights".

Oddly enough, in the next paragraph, "I could sense that I wasn't going to be getting lucky the minute he ran his eyes up and down my outfit".

No kidding. You turn up looking like a cross between Metal Mickey and an extra from Fame and funnily enough, footless has turned into fuckless. Footless and fancy-free? You're dead right.
(Tue 20th Oct 2009, 22:11, More)

» Famous people I hate

Is it bad...
...that I'm clicking through every page of answers, doing a Ctrl-F to find every single mention of Russell Brand, then clicking "I like this"?

Ooh, look, another one. I like this.
(Fri 5th Feb 2010, 14:41, More)