My ex saw David Blunkett on telly and thought he was reading an autocue.

( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Sun 14 Feb 2016, 21:50, 11 replies)

Trees
Whilst on the road in Malaysia our driver regaled us with this pea-roasted story. According to him, he was driving through similar countryside once with an American couple when the wife commented on how neatly arranged the forest was.

"No maám", he told her "those are rubber trees"

"Rubber trees?" she replied "They look real to me!"
(lurkylurklurk swings more, Sat 13 Feb 2016, 18:21, Reply)

I bumped into a girl who was the receptionist...
...for a company I used to work for. I asked about a few of my old friends and colleagues and she said she was rather shocked to have been told they had all left and apparently gone to work for the same company. She also mentioned she was considering seeing if they had any vacancies as they appear to be very popular.
"What is the name of the company?" I asked.
"Pastures New."
(Tugnut I got them all..., Mon 8 Feb 2016, 12:48, 2 replies)

Ignorance plus power
On a family holiday a few years back we'd stopped into a supermarket in Somerset to pick up some provisions for the week so along with enough food for six people, we'd also got a crate of beer and a few bottles of wine on the checkout. The operator insisted on seeing ID for everyone present despite the fact that none of us were under 30 and some were over 60. So with some grumbling, driving licences were produced for her to scrutinise and she seemed satisfied with them until she got to my partner's, which appeared to cause her some confusion. She looked up at us both and asked, in all seriousness, "Is Canada in Europe?"

I was about to answer sarcastically, but she went on to say "...because I can only accept European driving licences as valid ID."

"Yes," I said with a straight face. "Canada is in Europe."
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 9:08, 3 replies)

Skincare
My wife thinks that exfoliate and defoliate are the same thing.
I don't think she'll ever get through that Army-surplus barrel of Agent Orange.
( MyFrontFellOff ; his mouth full of teddies, urinating defiantly, Wed 10 Feb 2016, 12:35, Reply)

What time is midday?
I invited a friend over for lunch, and he said he'd be there at midday.

He turned up at 1pm on the dot, and I commented on the fact that he was late.

"No, I'm not!" he countered, "I'm right on time! It's midday! 1pm"

I then spent the next ten minutes explaining that midday was 12pm, while he insisted that I was mistaken, and only conceded that I might be right when I pointed out that midnight was 12am, not 1am, and similarly for midday.

He was 42 at the time.
( biscuitbiscuit is in ur garden, watering ur plantz, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 18:35, Reply)

When I was about 8
My eldest brother (who was a bit of a science nerd) told me that gravity works because the Earth is really big, and when they went to the Moon they weighed less because the Moon is not as big as the Earth.

So far, so Newtonian.

A few days later playing in a mate's garden, I was trying to explain this to him when his dad overheard us.
"That's not right" he interjected.
"My brother said it.." I said but was interrupted.
"No, it's because of the weight of all the air pushing down on us." he said, somewhat posturing with his apparently superior knowledge.
"But my brother.."
"No, it's the air. That's why bigger things are heavier because there's more air pushing on it, and why do people float about in space? Because there's no air in space". He was adamant.
"Is that right?" said a neighbour over the fence.
"Yeah, if it wasn't for the air, we'd all float up high into the sky" and he looked straight upwards in case we didn't where the sky was.

I didn't have the wherewithal to point out his claims had more holes than the plot of Gremlins, such as why is a cricket ball heavier than a balloon, or why things don't change weight if you turn them on their side, or how astronauts managed to walk about on the Moon even though there's no air, or how you don't float about when you go indoors because there's only about 2ft of air above your head pushing down instead of 60 miles or so. Notwithstanding that Gremlins wouldn't be released for at least another 5 years.

He dropped dead of an brain aneurysm 10 years later, so every cloud.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 14:15, 4 replies)

He’s spent 26 years living on the UK’s best-known street – but this father and lifeboat station volunteer is as much about water as he is soap ...

You’ve been on Coronation Street since you were about 15 – what’s it been like to grow up in the spotlight?
It’s got some amazing elements but I don’t think I can explain exactly how odd it is too. Now I’m a dad, I’d probably caution my own children about some aspects of being in show business.
When I started, I had no acting experience. I’d snuck into school assembly late one day, just in time to hear about this unusual chance to be on a TV show. These days there are so many chances to have a brush with fame, but back then it was a big deal for a kid.
Some of the other actors took me under their wings a bit, but mostly the advice was: ‘Learn your lines and say them like you mean them – go!’ So I learned on the job. I certainly didn’t think I’d still be on the show 26 years later.

What’s your connection with Trearddur Bay – it’s pretty far from the fictional town of Weatherfield near Manchester, isn’t it?
As a kid, I used to go on family holidays to Salcombe in Devon with our little pram dinghy and later our 19ft yacht, which dad kitted out himself. After my first pay cheques started coming in from Coronation Street, I bought a little speedboat, and eventually a motor yacht.
In fact, when I was a teenager, I used to spend all Summer in the Lake District on a sports boat, then pop off an hour down the road to film the show, and come right back to the lake.
I’ve always loved boats, water and speed and when I went to stay with friends in Anglesey as an adult, I just fell in love with it. It’s unbelievably beautiful – almost like the Mediterranean when the weather’s right.

You’re a member of the Trearddur Bay lifeboat shore crew. How did that happen?
I’m good friends with a crew member on Trearddur Bay lifeboat, and he showed me round the station.
They asked me to be a sort of ambassador or patron, but I wanted to do more than that and it escalated. I’m not there to help as often as I’d like, but when I am, my role is to help get the lifeboat in and out of the water, wash it down and help keep it in good nick.
Of course I’d love to be actual lifeboat crew but I’m mostly based in Manchester, so that important role needs to go to somebody much closer to the station.

Why do you support the lifeboats?
I see the RNLI crews as comparable to the emergency services – even the military – in terms of their courage and their selflessness. Except the lifeboat crews are almost all volunteers.
I’ve been to the Holyhead Maritime Museum a few times now, and it’s just unbelievable: the conditions those guys used to row out in in these little, fragile looking boats!
It’s a genuine honour to be a part of the shore crew, and I have so much respect for the supporters, fundraisers, lifeboat crew and all the other volunteers who are involved in any way with such a valuable organisation.
Particularly around Anglesey where I’ve spent so many happy holidays, the seas can be really dangerous – we’re so much better off knowing that the RNLI’s lifesaving service is there.

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Tue 1 Mar 2016, 22:14, Reply)

( Two Hats I saw someone eating M&M's with a spoon, Mon 8 Feb 2016, 16:28, 1 reply)

Oh, and the same guy I mentioned below
thought that in a combustion engine, the cylinders fill up with fuel on each stroke. When I told him that this would empty the tank so quickly it would implode, he then conjectured that a small amount of fuel is ignited, then topped up.
"So it more or less acts like a reservoir, holding the fuel before it is ignited"
"Yeah"
"Makes you wonder why they bothered, there's a perfectly good reservoir in there already in the form of the fuel tank. Besides, how would the piston go up and down? Liquids aren't compressible"
"Well they must be, otherwise it wouldn't work"
"If liquids could be compressed, then hydraulics wouldn't work"

And so on, with him coming up with ever more ridiculous ideas to explain away the colossal chasms in his arguments.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 18:50, Reply)

( $$ ✅, Wed 2 Mar 2016, 21:32, 2 replies)

Lock-in vegan 8-bit chipjewn gig at the local coffee shop

( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 26 Feb 2016, 7:21, 3 replies)

When I was a young child I called it a "window still"
No-one ever corrected me and I thought nothing of it. It was only when I got to university and said it several times during a presentation on a scene that we had filmed of a woman woman sitting reading on a windowsill and people kept giggling. When I got the the Q&A I was asked "What the hell is a window still"

When I asked my mother why no-one ever corrected me her response was "We thought it was cute"
( Peej, Fri 12 Feb 2016, 12:34, 3 replies)

Dandruff!
When I was a kid, for reasons I cannot fathom, I believed Dandruff was a brand of shampoo. I suppose I'd heard adults talking about it in connection with hair and assumed the rest.
I can remember being shocked at Shampoo adverts with slogans like "removes all traces of dandruff" etc and when kids at school cruelly pointed out that they could see dandruff in my hair I would tell them "you can't because my mum buys Vosene not Dandruff"!
Stupid me.
(Frankiepigeon, Thu 11 Feb 2016, 12:21, Reply)

I'm not going to fucking Woodbee
When I was a kid I use to hear about this place called Woodbee on TV.

It sounded terrible, full of robbers, rapists, killers, murderers etc.

Pretty much all crime in the UK centered around this place.

I wondered why the police didn't just go there & sort it out.

I wasn't till my early teens that I read an article in the paper about a would-be criminal, that I finally twigged.
(HandmadeLurkage it smells of farts in here, Sun 7 Feb 2016, 17:54, 5 replies)

Rockets
I once had a long, protracted argument with my father in law and (it pains me to admit it) my father about rockets.

Neither could be moved from their collective assertion that rockets worked because the exhaust gases exert pressure on the ground which forces them up.

So what if you launched a rocket from a tower a mile high?
So what about launching a rocket horizontally, in the sky?

After getting them to reluctantly accept that (using their theory) as a rocket climbs higher, the force it exerts upon the ground should diminish, my final gambit of suggesting that a climbing rocket, in their universe, will find a state of equilibrium where the rocket would just hover was just met with blank faces and me being asked 'why would you want a rocket to hover'?

My FIL is a bit of a div, but quite frankly I expected better from my dad. And no, they weren't winding me up.
(mersault, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 17:20, 3 replies)

My wife was for a while a vegetarian.
She ate fish though. Haddock, plaice, mackerel, cod... salami.

For a depressingly long time in the eighties I thought David Bowie and Iggy Pop were the same person. I was pretty sure they were Mott out of Mott the Hoople, too.
(SonofRojBlake, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 9:32, 6 replies)

The
But
(A small damp ball of cotton, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 19:41, 2 replies)

Until half an hour ago I was ignorant of the fact that I FUCKING WON LAST WEEK YOU WORTHLESS CUNTS

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 19:28, 1 reply)

When I watch Saturday night takeaway, I'm a celebrity get me out of here, Britains got talent etc....
I only ever pay attention to Dec.
( Muns, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 16:27, 2 replies)

Up until my mid-twenties, I thought goats were just male version of sheep.

( Slippery Mick ‏, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 12:40, 1 reply)

For the first couple of years on b3ta
I genuinely believed rachelswipe was just pretending to be thick.
( Peej, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 12:25, 5 replies)

I refuse to acknowledge the existence of eusocial insects of the family Formicidae.

( broadsword w⚓, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 10:23, Reply)