» Ignoring Instructions

the tube #2
"Dogs must be carried on the escalator"

Where the hell am I supposed to find a dog in Walthamstow Central underground at half seven in the morning?
(Tue 9th May 2006, 17:51, More)

» Messing with the Dark Side

Don't piss my mum off. Ever.
My mum's always been a bit on the demonic side. This is her story:

Forty years ago, when she was first married, she had a vile boss (gropey, sleazy, verbally abusive old shitter). One night, after a horrible day at work, she stood crying over the sink peeling spuds for my dad's dinner. In a fit of impotent rage, she stabbed one of the potatoes right through with the knife, shrieking "Die, you BASTARD!".

Feeling slightly better (and a bit embarrassed), she straightened her apron, checked the kitchen clock to see how long she had before my dad got in (it was 5.34pm), and resumed making the dinner.

The following day she got into work to find that her boss had been killed outright in a head-on car crash with a tractor on a country road that previous evening. It later transpired that his watch was broken in the impact and thus pinpointed the exact time of death: 5.34pm.

OK, it would be more sensational/ relevant if, instead of a tractor, a vast potato had rolled out Raiders of the Lost Ark-stylee and dispensed with him... but it's still a BIT spooky.
(Tue 25th Apr 2006, 13:35, More)

» Ignoring Instructions

"Don't go near swans, they'll break your arm."
Will they bollocks. In years of proximity with swans, neither I nor anyone else I know has ever sustained a fracture off one. Not even a black swan, and everyone knows they're the highest level.

Mind you, I did get savagely mugged once in the Norfolk Broads by a mallard duck. Cunt flew off with my Marmite sandwich.
(Thu 4th May 2006, 16:28, More)

» Ignoring Instructions

Fuckwit
When having my eyebrows shaped 5 days before my wedding:

"Now, I've just applied the wax. Whatever you do, DON'T open your eyes"

God love her, the beautician managed to individually pick each of my eyelashes out of the cooling wax, resisting the urge to stab me in the eyeballs with her tweezers. For two weeks after, if I opened my eyes too wide they glued open. Which looked lovely in the photos.

Luckily I got married in Las Vegas so at least everyone else there was fatter than me.
(Thu 4th May 2006, 16:16, More)

» Road Rage

Red (mist) Driving School
This year, at the grand old age of thirty-two, I decided it was high time I learned to drive. So there I was this summer, pootling around in a gaily emblazoned Red driving school Vauxhall Corsa with one of those big spacky "L" triangles on the top. I used to get a bit confused at crossroads as to who had right of way and had started trundling right when I should have been waiting for a gap in the traffic approaching from the left. Driving instructor calmly applies the dual-control brake, leaving me sitting harmlessly yet stupidly in the middle of the crossroads.

Large estate car passes and blasts its horn unnecessarily. Its windows are down, and there is a twentysomething woman in the back, shaking her head pityingly at me. "Bloody learners," she sneers.

Before I knew what I was doing, my right arm shot out of the driver's window with middle finger proudly extended and I bellowed, "Fuck you - you CUNT". Her face was satisfyingly aghast.

"Please don't do that on your test," my instructor said quietly.

I might as well have done. I still haven't frigging passed it.
(Fri 13th Oct 2006, 17:02, More)