» Lies that went on too long

A Derailed train...
It was Faliraki twelve years ago and six lads, including me, went to that delightful place for the same reasons everybody else does. We found the small wally-trolley train that ferried families to the front immensely funny and would make the 'pull-down' gesture to get the train driver - think convoy truck driver - to ring his bell. We then would point at all the families and shout 'saddo'. It became the habit of the holiday and whenever something fortuitous or funny happened we would all make the 'train' gesture and shout 'Toot toot'.

Two of my friends, (who I shall call Steve and Durham and both with long-term partners, I might add) spent the night with two Polish ladies and slinked off with them in a taxi. Yours truly, had a fallow night and staggered home for sleep.

The next morning, after the microhangover that only the young have, wore off and the rest of us watching Steve and Durham do the walk of triumph. I will not dwell on Durham falling down a cliff as it is not pertinent to the story. Instead, I will talk of their night with the ladies in question.

While Durham was bumping ugly with the one young lady. The other young lady seemed less than interested and the reason why became apparent when Steve went for a wee. It was likely they did not sell tampons in Poland as she had bought Greece's entire stock in her bathroom and this most likely explained her reluctance to have sex with young Steve. He was disappointed but philosophical and did the gentlemanly thing and held her while she slept. Two hours later, he awoke Durham so they could escape while the ladies slept but before he left, he point at the young lady's knickers, where the string of her tampon was visible and poking out. Steve then pulled the string softly and started whispering 'toot toot' and they both laughed. Childish, yes. Funny, a little bit, but the 'toot toot' and gesture gained a whole new meaning to us.

Two weeks later, and we are back in England and I am in the back of a black taxi with Steve, Durham and their girlfriends. Steve's partner then announces to everyone that she had secured a promotion. Cue a massive load of congratulations and me, unthinkingly shouting 'Toot toot' and doing the train gesture. Time stopped. Both Steve and Durham stopped laughing and stared at me. Meanwhile, Durham's partner Helen found this gesture funny and started doing it too. She asked where it came from and Durham then regaled her with the story of the trains in Faliraki and how it was from an R Kelly song - heaven knows where he came up with the second part. But for Helen, it stuck. She would do it to anyone when something good happened, so much so that we accepted it and I did not receive the customary glare from Durham any more.

Five years later, Durham and Helen got wed on a beautiful beach in the Caribbean - I was lucky to be one of twenty guests at the wedding. We were all a bit older and wiser and our days of philandering were long behind us. Steve had met his now wife and was spending his weekends at garden centres, the saddo, and was sat beside me while they gave their vows in the glorious sunshine. The registrar pronounced them husband and wife and she turned to everyone beaming with love and happiness and looked me in the eye and went 'Toot toot'. Durham's baleful glare returned that day, I can testify to that. It was even worse when we returned to a marriage party where she had printed 'Toot toot' on all the napkins.

They divorced some years later. Nothing to do with events in Faliraki, or tampons, or train drivers she said. They'd just grown apart. I nearly told her the entire story then, she was and is a lovely woman but I thought why spoil a happy memory?
(Mon 12th Mar 2012, 14:14, More)

» Shit Stories: Part Number Two

It was a cold Sunday in January Several years ago
Myself and my two brothers decided to go out on a sunday session around Birmingham's balti belt. The pubs are admittedly a little rough, but this is where we grew up.

We started after the Sunday league match and continued on all day and by about 9pm, we were just leaving a Sikh-run pub after dancing to Bhangra music for the last hour. We were extremely drunk.

Halfway up the road, my brother declares loudly that he 'needs an Eartha Kitt' and then sneaks off into a carpark. We then wait for him and a few minutes later he returns with his hands caked in shit. When asked what happened, he tells us he forgot to take his underpants off and had filled them up like a nappy. He then panicked and had to tear them off either side at the seams.

We then burst into laughter and called him all the stupid names imaginable. He took umbrage at this and then started to chase us up the Ladypool Road swinging his pants around his head slingshot-style like a feacal version of the Palestinian intifada.

My eldest brother, then and now, was a man of considerable weight -a fat bastard in modern parlance- ran like someone half his weight and proved the principle that you run faster when someone is chasing you. The only thing slowing us was the laughter. The chasing brother then released the bolas of turds which flew over our heads and slapped right onto the window of one of the more popular balti-houses in birmingham.

The shit-infested pants then stuck to the window...and then slowly crawled down the window leaving a turd trail. My brother swears to this day that he saw someone vomiting in the restaurant.

Cue two Kashmiri gentleman chasing my brother with large kebab skewers swearing in Urdu (having grown up here I could swear fluently) who in turn is chasing us with shitty fingers.

We hid in a local park till they went away and made our brother hose himself down in the garden of our mother's when we got back. My mother made him throw all his clothes away.

Happy days.
(Tue 1st Apr 2008, 15:29, More)

» Pet Stories

My Cat Stanley
Stanley was my kitten, he was energetic, stubborn and a little mad.

He also like to sleep on my forehead when I was in bed. It annoyed the hell out of me so I'd shoo him away. He'd eventually jump back on the bed and again sleep on my forehead - he was that indifferent.

Anyway, after one particular heavy session in a pub in Muesli village (in Brum), I flaked out on my bed clothes-and-all. Stanley, as usual tried to sleep on his usual spot.
What was different was that I was half asleep and drunk and instead of shooing her, I sort of threw him off - and out of an open window. What then followed was that moment of realisation when I understood what I'd done and sat bolt upright shouting 'shit!!!!'

I can still remember the confused mewing that he made when he flew through the air.

He'd flew down two storeys and landed (unsurprisingly) on his paws and ran off. Ten minutes later, he miaowed to get let back in again.

He then had some milk and eventually settled down to sleep again...on my forehead.

Lovely cat. Pity the foxes got him. Oh sorry, was this supposed to cheer you up?
(Tue 12th Jun 2007, 11:54, More)

» Personal Hygiene

pissy mary
right....we were kids and there used to be this family whose surname I shan't mention.

They had a daughter who went to secondary with my brother...her name was mary and always used to smell of wee. One time she wet herself at the bus-stop and forever was known as pissy mary.

Not an amazing story that....but the rest is.

She used to have a brother called John. Now he was a strange lad, he played with toys way beyond the age that children should do. He talked to himself a lot and did not have many (well, any) friends. But he constantly talked about his scalectrix set. He said it was the biggest ever and took up two rooms in his house.

Now, I am a thirteen year old lad, that sort of thing would pique my interest. If I was to be honest, it still does (hypocrisy alert!). So one time, myself and two others decided to go see it. He was ecstatic with glee - and proceeded to take us to his house, a normal terrace house.

Now his parent's were in the salvation army and while I have always appreciated the role that they play in being a help for the homeless and destitute, wearing their uniforms at all times bordered on the creepy. They had an older sister, whose name escapes me, who was also in the sallies and when we entered the house they were all in backroom in full dress practicing on their brass instruments. Nothing wrong with that at all.

The problem was that the front room had essentially been given over to their dogs and in one corner was dog food piled high (no dish) and in the other, the stench of faeces was overpowering...I gagged while John basically jumped on the pets that he adored. There was no furniture in this room.

He eventually showed us this scalextrix....it ran indeed from two rooms...his and his two sisters. It truly was amazing...he'd used extra power (transformers??) and the cars worked a treat. The problem here was that it appeared to be a permanent fitting in the house, so the carpet around it was littered with dog hair, old food and dirty clothes. I think the used tampons was the worst (although I didnt know what they were at the time).

Anyway, after playing for twenty minutes, and feeling itchy and unclean for most of it, I felt a compelling need to leave. This was when John said 'awww but mommy has made you food.' This escalated the need to leave at least tenfold, especially as the food - a bacon buttie - was served on a stainless stell pot-lid. This was when him having dogs paid off hehehe.

We left that house and I told my mother about it, she never let me go there again.
(Tue 27th Mar 2007, 12:58, More)