Christ,
where do i start.

6 years old and I am playing in a disused quarry near my home. A large, very steep sided quarry, with all manner of life threatening playthings within. We clambered up the 'north face' and on getting to the top i peek over the edge and spot a skip filled with bricks down in the quarry, maybe 30 ft from the side. I look at this and decide it would be easy for me to leap from the edge and 'make it' to the skip full of bricks which would obviously break my 100ft fall softly and with good grace.

I decided i couldn't be bothered climbing back up, so i didn't bother. This event has haunted me since and about 10 years ago I went back to the quarry just to see how high it was, only to find it infilled, which was a little sad.


7 years old and i was playing on the railway. YAY! Placing smallish stones on the track, running, and watching as the diesel trains smashed them to smithereens. It was right about then that i realised there was a big gap between the train and the track, a gap big enough for a wee guy like me to lie under and let the train rumble over me....

Man, wouldn't that be fun. Too much fun i thought and decided to head home instead. But not before placing a HUGE brick on the rail, and running to a nearby bush. A fast train approached and instead of crushing the brick, it pinged it right out from under the wheel. It flew faster than a missile, despite it's formidable size, right past us, missing by about 2 foot and dug itself into the earthen bank. Like a rude meteorite.


8 years old and up early on a Sunday morning with only the testacrd for company....and a lighter and a can of butane gas. I thought i would be helpful and refill the lighter. Man, would they be happy. So i sit cross legged and start filling the lighter, when wonder what it would like to light, the lighter as i am filling it.

Well, i didn't have to wonder for very long as the mini mushroom cloud of gas combusted all around me, taking my eyebrows and a portion of my epidermis along with it.


18 years old, Xmas Day, in the pub, argument with girlfriend, she goes home, i continue drinking. At 1am I think, no goddammit, i KNOW it will be a good idea to go to her house and throw a stone up to her attic bedroom window...She lived in a top conversion of a Victorian villa. Even when sober, getting a stone that's small enough not to smash the window, but big enough to have the momentum, would have been a task. I try, and, i fail.

At this point me and my pal should have turned away and went for a taxi home. WRONG, it's at this point I should look for a ladder to try and climb up and into a window.

I should mention that the folk in the lower conversion have a HUGE rottweiller, a dog that is very stealthy and terrifying.

The bottom porch light goes on, the dog barks. I take this as a good sign and monkey my way onto a wall and on to the top of their garage, which is beside the right hand side of the house. The garage isn't attached to the house because there is path running between it and the garage. So i am up on the garage roof, looking down 14 feet into the inky darkness of the gap between the house and the garage. I look up and the only window on this side is my girlfriends, double glazed and CLOSED bathroom window. It is then that i see the oldest and mossiest pair of wooden ladders in the world.

Oh yes, BINGO. The Lord himself must have placed them there, their quiet decay going unnoticed over the years. Unnoticed until NOW.

I pick them up and place them against the wall of the house, the foot of the ladders on the garage roof. They now span the inky black gap, that cloaks the cold, unforgiving flagstones that are an extra 14ft below where i currently stand.

The first rung snaps immediately as i stand on it, as does the second, but the third one seems OK, as does the 4th, 5th, 6th...fucking yes, i'm gonna make it. Make it to where though. The ladder just terminates against a blank sandstone wall, it isn't long enough to reach the closed bathroom window anyway.

7th rung, fine, 8th and i'm now in the death zone. 9th.....10.........

Then i come to...On top of the garage, which was covered in velvet like moss about 3" thick. What the fuck happened, i can hear the devil dog barking....

"please don't let it out, please don't let it out....fuck i can't even get up, it will eat me alive"

The noise of me hitting the garage also alerted my pal, who tried to see what the fuck was going on. I managed, with his help to walkabout 1km into town and get a cab back to my place.

Woke up and couldn't really remember what had happened...but it started to burst through the intense pain and the memories began filtering in like a Brita water filter trying to process bum gravy.

I go to hospital and get my head x-rayed...No fractured skull...but several broken ribs and a fractured wrist.

I go from there, back to the scene of the idiocy. This time a simple knock on the door sufficed. The girfriend appears and through the glass door i can see and sense her anger at the previous nights argument. She opens the door and has one last intake of breathe before embarking on a well justified rant...but as she does she sees my distressed condition, bandages and various badges of fuckwittery.

I explained what had happened and although absolutely fucking livid at my stupidity, particularly when we went at looked at the 'evidence'. It was then that i realised had i fallen straight down, i would have been dead. Luckily i must have fallen backwards and made the garage roof. i dont think the ladder would have even burned they were so badly rotted.

In some misguided way she thought my gesture was ridiculous, misguided, yet a bit sweet, but wholly pointless as she wasn't even at home, she had went to her grans to stay the night.

Length, about 14ft and green with moss
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:27, Reply)