There is one thing I secretly cherish the most.
I'll need to go back quite a few years here.

I was once a racetrack groom, as I have mentioned before. What I haven't mentioned was how I got there.

Let me set the stage. I was in college at a small school out in the middle of nowhere, away from home for the first time. Young, innocent, had led a sheltered life, and ready to be plucked by the first girl to want me. I'll call her Marina.

She was five years older than I was and had led a rather full life already, working as a groom. moving with the horses from track to track before deciding she needed an education. So when she took a shine to me, I was instantly smitten.

She taught me much. I had had very little experience with girls at that point- I wasn't a virgin anymore, but really didn't know much about what I was doing. So she took great delight in teaching me about how to get a girl off, and also demonstrated her oral abilities on me. She taught me all kinds of things about sex- and being young and full of energy, I threw myself into my tasks with great gusto.

When it came time for summer break, she took me with her to the track and got me hired by a stable, and again I started learning a lot. Unfortunately once she got back into that environment she changed. No longer was she the caring and vigorous lover I had known- she took to drinking a lot and smoking a lot of weed, her language became thoroughly saturated with obscenities and profanities, and in general she became as rough as a badger's arse.

She ended up dumping me for a guy with a 70s pornstar mustache and a pickup, leaving only some soiled bedding and a lingering stench to remind me of our times together.. I was devastated.

That is, until I met Lori.

Up until that point I still really didn't know much about women, it turned out. I had no idea that a woman's nether regions weren't supposed to smell so strongly that the room would have a lingering aroma for days. Suddenly oral took on a whole new dimension for me, and I found that it was far easier if I wasn't holding my breath for three minutes at a time.

But even now, I have to admit, the smell of fresh horse manure mixed with swamps and old seafood causes a certain stir...


(may not be 100% fact)
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 8 May 2008, 19:45, 2 replies)

Without a doubt....
The watch my maternal grandad left me, it was always destined to be mine since I was the first boy to be born from that side of the family and as such, was named after him. He represented everything I aspire to be as a person and the night I realised he was dying was the saddest of my life.

That watch means more to me than any other object ever could, and all I'm getting out of my nazi-worshipping, peadophile of a paternal grandad is £300 from the sale of his house after he topped himself that is buying the good Doktor a tree siddy.

The twunt.
(Dok Zombie Cash, gash, pie and mash., Thu 8 May 2008, 19:31, 2 replies)

b3ta...
That's why i just donated..

Look at my cool icon hehehe
( Axai is in Montréal, Canada O.o, Thu 8 May 2008, 19:16, Reply)

The Drinking Jacket
1 M&S suit jacket, second-hand from charity shop: £7
20 second-hand beer towels, bought on Ebay for an average of 80p (inc p&p) each: £16
1 very patient Mrs Ousgg, who's good at sewing things in funny shapes and doesn't mind stabbing herself in the thumb with a heavy-duty needle a few dozen times: Shagwanking Priceless!

The end result is by far the only 'cool' item of clothing I own. Given that the rest of my wardrobe consists of suit-and-boot work clothes, beer-promotion T-shirts, jeans from Matalan and generic Burton's underwear, this is hardly a surprise.

I would post a photo, but frankly I can't be bothered to drag out the camera and upload it, so you'll have to imagine what I look like.

This modern-day harlequin's coat is warm in winter and features a range of beer-towels, chosen for colour rather than brand (as is evidenced by a purple Abbot Ale on the right breast, and a rather embarrassing green Carlsberg Special Brew on the left shoulder). There is no visible black jacket left - the only uncovered area is underneath my armpits, for reasons that involve me not having to walk around like a cyberman.

The reason it is my most treasured possession is the instant credibility it seems to bring me in any sort of drinking establishment....

"Nice jacket mate!"

"Bet you don't worry about spillage!" (I don't - it's fully machine washable)

"Er...this is a bit embarrassing - would you mind if I took your photo?"

....Put on the jacket and I'm a smegging celebrity all of a sudden!

On the strength of one £23 home-made bit of kit, I have achieved the following over the past two years:

- At least twenty pints bought for me by complete random strangers. Probably more when you consider I occasionally suffer from ethanolic amnesia.

- Instant (and often free when applicable) access to any drinking establishment in my home town. I got sniffy looks at a club in Cheltenham; I'm not going back there.

- Preferential service at several locals who are packed three-deep on Friday and Saturday nights. It's also quite easy to order ales over their deafening metal music, by pointing to the relevant part of my jacket.

- A pat on the shoulder from the bobbies for breaking up a fight in the town centre, by the simple expedient of walking in between the two protagonists, who both drunkenly "Woah"ed and did a reasonable 'rats of Hameln' impression.

- An impromptu invitation to join three different stag nights.

- Three genuine offers of a blow-job, which I felt sadly obligated (due to the aforementioned Mrs Ousgg, who was only my fiancee at the time) to turn down. Although, having now been married for a few months, I'm more open to persuasion.

I think making a pair of matching trousers would be a good continuation of the project, although I'm worried that might make me look like Ian Poulter, the golfing prat, rather than the cool chap in the slightly wacky jacket.

Seriously, guys, if you've got a good sewing hand and a few quid in your PayPal account, you could do far worse than make one of these little babies. But don't come around my patch please, otherwise we'll both look like idiots.
( ousgg is not seeking approval, Thu 8 May 2008, 19:16, 6 replies)

Sentimental
My mum's old matriculation card from Aberdeen Uni-in the photo she's the same age as me, it was in the 60's. She's got a fabulous beehive and is wearing a shiny, flowery pvc mac that was her prized possesion in fact. Apparently she spent hours picking the outfit and doing her hair.
I love it and would go back for it because she died when I was 12, committed suicide in fact, and never got to see me go to uni. It's sad (as in lame of me), but it's so I can kind of share the experience with her. I don't have the stories she could have told me, but that one photo speaks volumes about who she was and the potential that the academic year 67-68 held for her.




Sorry, neither funny nor witty, but there you go.
(sarcasticgirl, Thu 8 May 2008, 19:14, 3 replies)

Photographs of a naked ex-girlfriend.
She was 17, I was 25 and very randy. We'd spent a sultry evening in each others clasp sweating profusely and exchanging bodily fluids, (to such an extent that an on-looker could've been forgiven for thinking they were in fact observing an animated butchers shop window), and she was lying prostrate on the bed comatose with a sticky chin and chest.

I snapped a couple of polariods for posterity, and so I could have some material for nights when she wasnt visiting.

I still have them, I'm sure she'd be mortified to know I've been beating my meat furiously to the vista of her naked torso.
(Vic Flange, Thu 8 May 2008, 19:02, 4 replies)

A treasure that isn't mine.
First of all, I should tell you about my grandma on my Dad's side. If my Mum is to be believed, she was a pathetic alcoholic without a care for anyone but herself. She died when I was little, but not before I got to know her for a few years. Another thing you should know about her is that she had a very odd fashion sense, and wore an old houndstooth wool jacket (I can't see the patterning without remembering her), and various large rings, which I was constantly told, I used to bite when I was little. I even remember biting into a particular large ring. It had a large brown tiger's eye/garnet stone, and tiny chips from teeth.

Both my grandma and my mum told me that when she'd passed on, I would get that ring. I didn't. My aunt did. You know, fair enough, she was her daughter, I was a granddaughter, and I suppose in terms of inheritance, she gets priority.

But I want that ring. Even at my grandma's funeral, bless her soul, I was sort of hoping to get the ring, so I could have some sort of memento. I saw the tacky piece of costume jewellery whilst trying on earrings with my aunt only a few years ago. I picked it up, and made some off-hand comment about how lovely it was. No, I couldn't have it, it was her mum's. She may as well have told me to fuck off. I asked my mum, and she denied all knowledge. It might have been her mum's, but equally, it was my grandma's.

I know this must sound terribly selfish, but to be honest, I'm not sure I care. I don't have anything at all of Grandma Katie's now, not even the Polly Pocket she gave me. It wouldn't be such a kick in the teeth after this long if I actually liked my aunt.

I'm going to stop now before I actually get angry.
( Bats, Thu 8 May 2008, 19:01, Reply)

In the event of fire...
I'd grab my grandmother's microscope - it's a 1930 brass Charles Hearson model, with a Leitz-Wetzlar Makam microscope camera and I love it.

The cat knows where the catflap is. He can make his own escape from the flames.
( finnbar has officially retired, Thu 8 May 2008, 19:01, Reply)

Um...there's a few actually.
I have a little herd of wooden elephants that have been in my family since my gran was wee. I got them when she died, and they always remind me of being little, sitting in my gran's house, pretending to warm my hands on the fake coals on the fire and playing with the elephants. They're probably worth about 50p since they're all broken and chipped.

There's my old teddy bear (yes, I know. Feel free to laugh) that I've had since I was born. Again she's a link to my granny - my granny bought her for me.

And there's a little box of things that I keep that are special. Photos of people I love, ticket stubs, letters from friends. Worthless tat to anyone else. Priceless to me.

(Luckily Mr. Oncoming Storm has agreed to make his own way in the event of a fire or such. Unless he's unconscious or something. Then, like the huge giant sap that I am, he's top of the list.)

Apologies for lack of length (I'm a girl) and sappiness (again, I'm...actually there's no excuse for that).
(The Oncoming Storm, Thu 8 May 2008, 18:51, 2 replies)

I was going to say...
...my cat. But he is not my possession - I am his. I accept this.

I think it's a little odd that we invest emotion in things that we own but...

My most precious and treasured possession - which is irreplaceable and I would be bereft without - is one of my cars. Not because of the usual attachment that people have to motors, but because I inherited it from someone who I respected very greatly.
(Guizmeaux, Thu 8 May 2008, 18:20, Reply)

If I could take anything out of my burning house, it would be:
All the oxygen!

(The fire couldn't burn anymore, see? Because fires need fuel, and oxygen, and heat. And if you take away the oxygen...forget it, let's go get ice cream. Mmm...ice cream.)
(chase, Thu 8 May 2008, 18:19, 1 reply)

Wallet
My Stepdad died of a heartattack one morning a year or so after I'd left home and joined the Air Force, I never got to say goodbye and it still hurts today. Anyway he left me his Rolex, a car and his leather wallet. He always carried his wallet werever he went, it rarely had a great deal of money it it but it was leather and smelled of him. I cherished it more than my own offspring and carried it everywhere I went. Fast forward 20 years.

I've lost it, gone, no idea - not a clue where it is...until the wife finds it......in my jeans, which had been through the wash. The wallet had shrunk in the wash, not a lot but enough to make it difficult to close. For the first time in a long long time I cried, I cried because apart from memories I had destroyed the only link I had to a man who had the guts to take on a wife with three small boys and bring them up as his own. I cried becuase I never said goodbye properly the last time I saw him and most of all I cried becuase my most cherised possesion, my stepdads smell, had gone.

oh fucksocks
(polar69, Thu 8 May 2008, 18:17, 1 reply)

not really rescuable from any conflagration*
but when i was 14, i really treasured the fact that i had never kissed a boy (or girl) with tongues and that - 'virgin lips' as it was called at school

then when I was 15, I treasured my 'oral' virginity.

when i was 16 i treasured my general virginity.

At 17 i treasured my 'bottom' virginity.

At 20 i treasured my 'girl on girl' virginity.

at 23 i treasured my b3ta virginity.

now, at 26, i don't know what to treasure anymore, as i've lost it all, all my morals and my dignity.

*or possibly true...
( ascorbate, Thu 8 May 2008, 18:08, 4 replies)

Memories
I've cunningly stashed all my birthdays cards, the only Valentine's card I've ever received in 25 years of living and various bits and bobs into a bag. That way, should my house burn down, I'll have them all with me in one convenient package.
(ToysForBigBoys would spread her legs for Nick Clegg., Thu 8 May 2008, 18:07, Reply)

Flight cards
I used to have a stack of them safety cards you get on planes. An absolute stack I tell you; I'd only nick it off the plane if I didn't have it before, and I could remember exactly where I was going and why for each and every one.

I had one from my first ever flight; Gatwick to Croatia; I remember the odd feeling of lifting off the ground in the A320 and being pushed back in the chair thinking "Fuck me, the guy's aiming it 90 degrees up!" (yeah I was new to it then - now I rarely even bat an eyelid on take-off).

I remember one of my first business flight ever; Heathrow to Aberdeen (fucking miserable place that was).

There the card I stole on the way back from my mum's 50th; the only plane i've ever barfed on due to turbulence + a mighty mighty hangover.

There's the card from the plane that first took me to the USA...There were fuck loads, each one with it's own memory of where I was going, what I did there, and why.


They were my pride and joy; I'd go through the collection with friends and family alike; proudly explaining why I was on the plane shown in the card, etc (even women I was trying to get inside, which oddly enough actually worked once).

Then, one day my mum lobbed the lot in the bin while clearing up my room. She said "You shouldn't have stolen them anyway!" in that 'told you so' voice mum's are great at.

You could practically hear me screaming "Myyy prrreciooouussssssss!" in a golumn type fashion 10 streets away.

A whole stack of memories lost forever.

edit: I love my mum really. She's great most of the time
( slippery doctore, Thu 8 May 2008, 17:58, Reply)

Petrol. matches
and the wife's life assurance policy
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Thu 8 May 2008, 17:36, 1 reply)

kleenex
It might not seem like much, but one's passage into manhood is a powerful and significant event. I remember my first masturbatory event as if it were last night looking at Keely Hazell with a pen torch while my wife slept instead of 20 years ago with an illicit poster of Samantha Fox.

The other boys at school were al talking about it and I was a late starter. What did those curious hand movements mean, and what was 'spunk'? It took a tutorial of sorts from Richard Gummer (a funny-smelling boy who lived with his grandma in a caravan next to the sewage farm) for me to get the gist.

That portentous night, I readied myself with a boner, Sam Fox and some tissues. I whacked away at my virgin meat for what seemed like ages until a tiny drop of translucent liquid jumped forth - just a tiny amount and no doubt bereft of sperm from my hairless and still dormant testes. But I mopped that drop up and I have kept the tissue ever since, sealed in a glass box to remember my first sexual act.

I still look at that box sometimes and I plan to give it to my future son as a symbol of my fertility. "Here, son - here is the first squirt of jis I ever expelled. It could have been you, but Sam Fox needed it more." Since then, I must have squirted enough to repopulate Europe after WWII, but I'll never forget that first tentative tug.
(frankspencer, Thu 8 May 2008, 17:30, 6 replies)

The most sentimental...or not.
If only allowed to run back for one item, I would take the framed picture of my one love, taken on the day after we first met. It's a photo of her posing with a tree next to West Lake in Hangzhou, wearing this saucy orange and black dress which she no longer has. The memories are still strong after the years, but it's nice to have a memento too.

Sentimental yes, but also inside the frame is another photo which is a bit too risqué for public display. Those black silk panties also no longer exist...well if the flame of my house burning down don't keep me warm, this photo is guaranteed to do the trick instead.
(Brigadier Arthur Charles, Mrs, Thu 8 May 2008, 17:13, 1 reply)

Actually come too think of it
When there was a fire, I ran in to save the hamster.

Weird.
(teasus likes tea, Thu 8 May 2008, 17:05, Reply)

As God is my witness
I was ejected from Sunday school for telling the truth. We were all asked to thank God for our most treasured possession.

One by one, the children said "thank you God, for mummy and daddy", "thank you God, for my pet cat" etc. When it came to me I said "thank you God for my big black organ".

It was a few years before I understood why they thought i was taking the piss.

Edit: It was a Yamaha ME15A

img244.imageshack.us/img244/2551/organif9.jpg
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 8 May 2008, 17:04, 3 replies)

It would be the watch my Granny left
Only I didn't realise I wanted it until it had already been chucked away by my uncle.

It was given to her by Saddam Hussein, and had his face on it. Awesomeness....
(teasus likes tea, Thu 8 May 2008, 17:03, Reply)

Your Mother.
What?
(littlenipple hate's bad grammar, Thu 8 May 2008, 16:58, Reply)

Well, since we're doing that
Guess what my guilty pleasure is? That's right, answering the QOTW 8 weeks late! Who would have thought it.
(Bazongaloid, Thu 8 May 2008, 16:56, Reply)

Pet Peeves
Thinking of the wittiest response *ever* to a QOTW too late.
(beatpig understands subliminalesbianmessagaying., Thu 8 May 2008, 16:54, Reply)

Almost embarassingly simple
My son. In a heartbeat.
(ubergeekian, Thu 8 May 2008, 16:49, Reply)

Similarly
Madeleine McCann
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Thu 8 May 2008, 16:46, Reply)

The secret family
in my cellar
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Thu 8 May 2008, 16:45, 3 replies)

I don't need anything to remember my grandfather.
All I have to do is stand in the house he lived in for 50 years, and smell that particular 'grandad smell'.

Really I suppose we should bury him.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 8 May 2008, 16:45, 1 reply)

Shit! How could I forget Eric?
Eric is my rubber plant.

I have co-habited with Eric for over 20 years now (he even survived the Uni years when my Mother, the Pol Pot of the houseplant world, was in charge of watering duties). He is huge, has a worrying 45 degree angle that he refuses to change no matter how many canes/sticks/steel girders are used, and has ambitions to grow up to be a forest.

Other houseplants come, get chewed by cats, drowned by my wife, and snuff it, but not Eric.

He's sulking a bit at the moment as I have moved him from the window and haven't dusted his leaves for a while, but he'll cheer up when I slip him some Baby Bio and hint about a new pot sometime so he can continue his journey to tree-dom. If I'm feeling generous, I'll even stick an incense stick in there so he can chill out with a smoke.

Eric for President.
(osok Rebel without a clue, Thu 8 May 2008, 16:39, 4 replies)

my testicles....
...i literally dont know what i would do without them
(Foulkesy123 The one and only..., Thu 8 May 2008, 16:34, 5 replies)