» 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, 9:23, 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)

» Tales of the Unexplained

In the summer of ’96
I went on holiday to the West Country with my parents. We were staying in an old farmhouse that backed onto a river. It was a nice spot, although terribly dull to a 16 year old mind. One afternoon, I was so bored that I decided to go and doss about in the room I was sleeping in. I sat on my bed and started to read a book, with my CD player on the bed next to me.

I am a cynic. What happened next I have tried to explain and failed. It is coincidentally corroborated by other members of my family.

You will all know the feeling that you’re being watched. It’s a survival hangover from our days of being hunted by wild animals. I was getting that feeling. I looked around, but of course there was no-one in the room. I figured I was being stupid and went back to reading.

And then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Again, there was nothing there. I was getting very nervous. My mind and body were telling me that there was something in the room with me, but my senses were saying I was alone.

This is where things got a bit weird. Up until now you could claim paranoia, or somesuch mental thingy. Something sat on my bed.

I am dead certain of this. It sat on my bed. It was right next to me. I looked up and there was still nothing there. No indentation in the bed. Maybe a slight distortion in the air, but nothing I could swear to. I could see and touch nothing but my whole body was screaming at me that something threatening was right there. I began to get goosebumps on my left arm and I seriously started getting scared.

And then an intense feeling of curiousity came over me. It wasn’t my feeling, it wasn’t coming from me, but I could sense the curiousity in the air. And I understood. It was puzzled about my CD Walkman. Now, I don’t claim to be psychic or in any way supernaturally inclined but I got the distinct impression that it was a girl. Maybe about 12 years old or so. I got a picture in my head of a blonde girl wearing a sort of smock thing with an apron. It seemed to be aware that I was scared, too.

I left the room. I spent the rest of the holiday sleeping in my brother’s room. My parents didn’t even question the decision. As it turns out, they’d got the feeling that something wasn’t right in that house, too. The previous night they had slept with the lights on because something about the house was making them nervous. My mum said that she had actually checked on me, the first time she had done so since I was little.

We stayed there for about a week or so and when we left, we went to check the guest book. Yup, practically every message mentioned a ghost.

Great.
(Thu 3rd Jul 2008, 11:43, More)