good job I was only 9 stone at the time
When I was 18, I, along with other mates, was visiting another friend who lived in a tiny hamlet in a house that was tacked onto the side of a farmyard. In this yard was a barn packed to the rafters with straw bales. We climbed about on them and generally pissed about. However, the way they were stacked meant that there was a small triangle of barn floor surrounded by walls of bales 10 metres high. The bales had been stacked this way because sticking out of the barn floor was a 4ft length of iron girder, the sort that has an 'I' cross section and is used to make Irn-Bru. The only purpose I can think that this girder would possibly serve, would be as a contrived plot-device in an episode of Casualty.

Other people left the barn for food and drink and so I attempted to reach the floor in this hole. As the walls seemed pretty sheer, I thought I'd try a different approach. I tried to abseil down into the crevasse of straw using that thin hairy blue twine they use to hold the straw together. I wrapped the twine around my hand and lowered myself over the edge. Just as I went over the edge, my foot slipped and I was left dangling by one arm with just the cord which had pulled tight around my palm, preventing me from plummeting the 30ft to the concrete floor of the barn. Had I coiled the string around my hand the other way, it wouldn't have pulled tight and I would have slid down, burning my hand in the process before bouncing off the iron girder and then hitting the concrete floor of the barn at 30mph.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 12:49, Reply)