» Toilets

Impromptu Toilet
Anyone that's been to Reading Festival (or pretty much any festival for that matter) will know how bad the toilets can get. There's not enough of them, and they're being used by thousands of dirty, smelly and often drunk or stoned music fans. As a result they can be quite unpleasant.

Reading 2004, and a mate of mine attempted to go all weekend without using them. After two days of furtively pissing in bushes, Sunday afternoon rolls around and he's absolutely bursting for a shit. It's just me and him at the campsite, and I'm trying to each lunch whilst he complains to me about just how desperate he is for a crap. I have a good laugh at him and eventually he shuts up and disappears for a while. I assume this means he's bitten the bullet and made his way over to the portaloos.

Suddenly, however, he reappears and darts into his tent. It's all rather quiet and as I'm begginning to wonder what he's up to, out he comes, clutching a plastic bag and muttering to himself.

"That was fucking awful," he opines.

"Did you just fucking do what I think you did?" I ask, but he promptly disappeares again, only to return, sans bag. After some grilling, I eventually get him to own up to the fact that, yes, he had taken a shit. In a plastic bag. In his tent.

I still refuse to let him live that down.
(Sat 3rd Sep 2005, 17:10, More)

» I hurt my rude bits

Ouch.
A few months back, I got a phone call from an old friend of mine. As I'd not heard from him in quite a while, I was quite pleased to hear him, but he didn't seem quite as enthusiastic. After the typical catching-up chat, I found out why.

He told me that he'd snapped his banjo string whilst having sex with someone that most definitely was not his girlfriend.

I was suitably sympathetic, although I had to apply considerable effort not to burst out laughing as he described how he'd passed out from the pain in a pool of blood and semen.

Anyway, about a month passed, and I got a call from him again. I inquired as to whether his tackle had healed up okay and he told me that it had, but there was now a new problem.

He'd done it again. With the same girl.

I couldn't hold the laughter in this time. Once I'd calmed down I told him that it probably wasn't normal for this to happen twice in the space of a month, and that he should pack himself off to a doctor, but he insisted that that wasn't necessary and that he'd be fine. I guess he was right though, because as far as I know it's not happened again.

Karmic retribution for cheating? Possibly.
(Thu 20th Jul 2006, 20:16, More)

» Your Weirdest Teacher

English "Teacher"
Around the time I was in year 10, a new English teacher arrived (the old one had probably had a nervous breakdown; that happened a lot at our school). Whilst I was never taught by him, many of my friends were. He was a very large, jocular-looking man who insisted that his classes call him by his first name, Dennis, rather than "sir".

He was also a rather bad teacher. There was a reason for it, as we found out the day the police came to the school, and, as quietly as possible, arrested him.

It turned out that his name was not, in fact, Dennis, and he was not, in fact, a teacher. He was, I believe, charged and convicted with fraud. My old form tutor (a top bloke) says that he was actually impersonating a real teacher named Dennis, which is how he got in in the first place. Of course, he managed to throw a decent spanner in the works of about a quarter of the years' English GCSE's (he was there for about a year before he got busted). I don't think anyone was entirely sure what his motives were for impersonating a teacher specifically. My friend and I always assumed the worst when we made jokes about him.
(Wed 16th Nov 2005, 0:52, More)

» Look! It's me in the Local Paper

Not Really the Paper...
...but ages ago I was on TV once (sort of).

Channel 4 (I think) decided to interview our pompous arse of a Headmaster in the Library about something or other, and I'm in the background apparently quietly reading a magazine.

What the camera didn't pick up was the fact that I was angrily cursing the lot of them for pitching their cameras and stuff RIGHT ON TOP of my bag AND setting it up so that there was no way I could get out of there, which I had wanted to do about 20 minutes previous to the footage that they actually used.

God dammit, all I wanted to do was return a book.
(Thu 10th Feb 2005, 18:54, More)

» Claims to Fame

Some stuff.
A few that are a bit crap.

My old band supported The Candyheads. I don't know how siginificant that is because I'm not sure how famous they are, but they seem relatively established (if now nonexistent). That was a good night though.

A good friend of mine is mates with Gemma from Babyshambles (though she's not in them now or whatever), and I met her once or twice.

Also, one of the Bee-Gees (I forget which one, the beardy one I think) once tripped over my younger brother. We were out for a walk and he fell over his pram. That is clearly the most awesome of the three. Rock on.

s
(Wed 2nd Mar 2005, 15:43, More)