» Real-life slapstick

some mothers do 'ave 'em
Living in Cornwall as a yoot, your life really is pretty limited unless you've got access to wheels. Hence my mum was always fairly mellow about trusting me to drive round in her Peugeot 306. One day when I was about 19 I decided to go for a little drive - a couple of miles from our place there was a load of disused china clay quarries, some of which were now filled with water and formed a weird acquatic moon-scape when the setting sun reflected off them. A nice spot to get some photos.

One night I drove down to check it out, pulling off the busy main road to park up on a private dirt track that cut across it at right angles. I got out, slammed the door behind me and hiked off up the bank with my camera.

The only problem was I'd left the handbrake off.

The dirt track happened to be on an inperceptible slope - the car didn't roll back at all when I'd pulled up, but the slamming of the door was just powerful enough to start it off on the gentlest backward crawl.

I skipped away whistling, oblivious to the massive Frank Spencerism unfolding behind me: the wheels slowly starting to roll against the gravel, the car gradually picking up speed and eventually caning it full pelt in reverse right across the main road.

I came back from taking the shots to one of those moments of complete mind-bending miscomprehension - the car had gone. I'd parked it there, and now it was gone. My car had been replaced by a Peugeot-sized empty space. Ooh Betty, the twat has done a whoopsie. In his pants.

Then, just as the confusion began turning to shock, it shot right back to confusion again when I happened to glance a hundred metres to my right and see my car on the far side of the main road, two wheels off the ground, backed up on a load of boulders that'd been put there to stop things falling in to... the enormous quarry that happened to be lying in wait just behind it.

Then the shock kicked back in, up a few notches. Someone's probably died here.

I ran down the track, blood rushing to my head with the rising panic, fearing the devastation that my ineptitude had caused. Whereupon I was met by an extremely puzzled old Cornish couple in a little white Mini Metro. 'Is that your car?' asked the old boy in this incredulous high-pitched yokel brogue. 'I was drivin' along, and I saw this car comin' out, an' I thought "ee int bleddy stoppin'!"'.

Apparently the sight of my unmanned runaway 306 had somewhat unsettled him as it reversed right across in front him. But he'd managed to brake in time, and somehow there'd been no other cars around. Thankfully. Slapstick is ever-so-slightly less amusing when it's killed people.

Never did tell mother.
(Fri 22nd Jan 2010, 19:30, More)

» Vomit Pt2

Vomit: a religious experience
When I was 19 I was living in a shed in Israel. One night after working my regular shift at a beach cafe I went out and, like the highly cultured traveller I was, had a couple of pints of Guinness.

There must have been something wrong with it, as a mere two pints had me feeling queasy, and when I made my hasty retreat back to the shed I instantly began throwing up. In fact I couldn't keep anything down, even a sip of water, and it wasn't long till I was performing eye-popping, sphincter-wrenching heaves, which continued even as I was dragging up a mere pipette's worth of evil green stomach fluid.

When it finally passed I was totally spent, and I threw myself on the floor of the shed and sank into a hallucinatory fug of waking nightmares - where my boss in my old job at Asda was stuck in an endless loop shouting at me to shift a load of boxes of produce across the warehouse.

Writhing around looking for a way out, I glanced at a sheet draped over the wall to my right, and in its folds I discerned the face of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. 'Holy crap,' I thought. Could this be a sign? My redemption? Had the Lord our Saviour returned to carry me away to a better place?

My puke-addled mind soon performed a beautifully illogical leap: the next person to walk through the door to the shed would be Jesus.

Five seconds later the door opened.

'Holy crap'.

In walked Warren, my shed-mate.

What did it mean? This was too much to be a coincidence. Surely Warren couldn't possibly be Jesus...

I don't think so. He was a short, weird South African who rode a skateboard, and we used to shower together.
(Thu 14th Jan 2010, 9:49, More)