Barnaby Wilde (Pt. 2)

First, an apology

Well, yesterday's Blog was a bit of a bust wasn't it? Certainly not one of my best - But hey, if they were all brilliant, you wouldn't be able to recognise the real gems.

For those of you new to the Blog, the top five pages (as chosen by you, the readers) are:

Thermodynamics, it's the law! - My pigeon shattering Father.

Barnaby Wilde (Pt. 1) - Stories of three-wheeled motorcycle mayhem.

Second contact closing fast, bearing 076 - When I upset almost everyone on the M40 at once.

Boobs, Melons and Jumper-Lumps - About shopping at Asda, not about breasts (Well, not a lot anyway).

An eye for an eye - Where my Mother tries to scar me for life, and probably succeeds.

You might want to give them a look if you missed them... Hell, read 'em all, there's only fifty or so posts, you'll be done by tea-time.

-oOo-

So, onto today's gibberings. As you probably figured out by the title (because you're all fabulously intelligent and tremendously physically attractive in your own, special ways) - This group of badly chosen words are yet more tales about three-wheeled motorcycles and the idiot that rides them... i.e. Me.

Remember the Reliant trike that tried to electrocute me into a premature Bisto* in part 1? Well, both of today's stories are about that very machine.

The young lady who owned the vehicle in question, once worked at (and then owned I think) a trailer manufacturing business, their workshops were based in an old yard, about fifty yards long with about a 15 degree slope from the sheds, past the office, to the road. I used to help out there occasionally, wiring things up and making trailer covers etc to earn a bit of beer money (Which was all reported to Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs of course). On this particular day, clocking off time came around and I decided to be efficient and move the trike from the yard next door and park it outside the office.

I won't go into all the dicking about with opening huge wooden gates and getting out onto the main road, then shutting and locking gates - But it took a good ten minutes to get the trike into the main yard. I then thought that I'd turn her around so that she was facing the right way for a quick getaway. The yard was shaped like a backwards 'P', with a wider area at the top where you could just about turn a car around, so I rode up the slope, slowly turned around and started to head back down.

I had to stop halfway, as a customer had pulled into the yard and left his car outside the office, exactly where I was going to park. So I did what you would normally do on a bike, I knocked it into neutral, held it on the front brake, and put both my feet down (Remember that last bit, it's important) assuming that he wouldn't be very long, as it was closing time.

I was right, less than a minute later, he came out of the office, saw me, gave that embarrased grin and wave so beloved of people who've realised they parked like an idiot, and reversed out of the yard. I put the trike in gear, released the front brake and lifted my feet about an inch off the ground. They floated backwards slightly, as they sometimes do before you get 'em back on the footpegs. Unfortunately, my left foot hit the rear, left hand wheel and got dragged under - there was a loud and interesting crunchy-snappy noise.

So, if you'd just like to take a deep breath and let me describe the scene. I'm sat, almost upright on the trike, with my left foot, upside down, under the wheel - I was wearing para-boots (which probably stopped me having to have a shiney new foot fitted) and shouting for help. Luckily, there were no other bikers in the immediate area, so no-one was too busy laughing to respond. Long story short, the trike was moved off my foot and I was helped off and layed on the ground, my foot kind of 'sprung' back into place - which hurt probably about as much as when it had first snapped and caused one of the assembled workers to comment 'For a big bloke, 'e screams like a girl dunt 'e?'

One small X-Ray later the doctor comfirmed that I hadn't actually broken my ankle, what had happened was that it had completely dislocated, but one of my tendons had refused to snap and had pulled a 'plug' of bone out of the top of my foot. Once the ankle bones had been re-located, they had to 'manipulate' that plug back in before they could put it in a cast.

And yes, that bloody hurt too - But this time they gave me something to bite on, so I couldn't scream like a girl.

-oOo-

And finally (Cyril) a story about not concentrating and how pure, dumb, luck has been a major contributor to me continuing to breathe.

I used to work in Nuneaton, at the head office of large childrens' clothing store. Every morning I would ride through all the little villages between Derby and there, past Twycross Zoo, past Bosworth Battlefield, past all the little birdies cheeping happily in the trees. It was great, a wonderful ride - You should try it.

Just as I entered Nuneaton, I'd pull up at a garage just before the town centre and take off my helmet and replace it with a pair of wraparound shades. What with being a rufty-tufty biker and needing to look cooler than a polar bear's podules and everything.

Anyone who knows Nuneaton and has come in from the A5 side will know that there's a twiddly-bit where you need to turn left in the right-hand lane, then turn right, almost back on yourself and then go over the railway bridge (Well, there was about fifteen years ago, it's probably got a flyover or a Tesco's Knackers Yard there now.) Just after all this jiggery-pokery there was a little road on the left that took you past the sixth-form college... (what? There's nothing wrong with riding past a sixth-form college on your way to work every morning).

On this particular morning, I decided not to stop at the garage, but to carry on wearing my lid as I went to work. I did the twiddly bits and then turned left down the lane - Although, that makes it sound easier than it actually was, the road dropped away to the left and it was a fairly tight bend, especially if you're going slightly faster than is recommended for the prevailing road conditions. So, I suddenly found myself on two wheels, unfortunately, one of them was the front one.

I sped down the road, under minimal control if I'm being honest, until i clipped a car and took a small, unplanned excursion over the handlebars. I ended up in the front garden belonging to the guy whose car I'd hit, up against the wall, with my face on the ground and my legs in the air.

The guy came out and asked me if I was alright, and we made arrangements for me to sort out the damage to his car. Then I went to check the damage to the trike, it was about as beat up as you'd expect, but the oddest thing was the handlebars, it seems that I was so reluctant to let go, that I'd bent them virtually double as I'd gone over the top.

Seems I didn't know my own strength.


* Premature Bisto - Early Grave-y

Opinionated isn't even a word

We've covered bigotry in most of its forms before, in my second ever Blog entry in fact (See November 2012's post - I'm a Bigot, You're a Bigot, We're ALL Bigots). But there's one type that I left out. If I were trying to sound clever, I'd say 'I left it out on purpose so that I could cover it now, when I had a bigger fanbase,' but actually - I've only just thought about it.

It's not a recent invention, people have suffered this particular ailment for at least the past hundred years, if not more.

I'm talking about the bigotry that masquerades as 'Brand Loyalty', this is most prevalent in whatever the current emergent technology market is of course - In recent times for example hordes of fan-bois throw insults at each other about their choice of mobile phone operating system -

Android being for the Geeks,

IOS is for the hipsters,

BlackBerry is for the pay-as-you go Jeremy Kyle watchers,

Windows Mobile is for the hard of thinking.

I mean it can get pretty brutal at times, well, as brutal as people who fixate on electronics and their firmware can get, I mean - You might get a Chinese burn from one of them maybe, if they'd known you for a long time, and as long as your Dad wasn't bigger than their Dad. No-one's going to stab you for having an iPhone, well actually, there is a chance that you might get stabbed if you have an iPhone - But it won't be because of your choice of operating system, it's more likely that the stabbist will be chemically imbalaced and he'd like to sell your phone to his mate, Honest Brian (Unlock any phone for a fiver - No questions asked, Very clean Sister, you like her?), down the market, for £15.

Psychologists, or at least people who are currently doing the first year of their Sociology Degree will say that this is all to do with the Homo-Sapien tribal urge, strength in numbers, social stratification etc. And will point you at the collected works of Max Horkheimer (Mainly to get rid of you for a while, as his stuff's a bit off the wall).

I say that it's a lot more simple than that, and that most first year Sociology students are only doing that subject because Media Studies or Sports Marketing was over-subscribed. I reckon it's because everyone thinks that their own, personal opinion is worth about a bajillion times more than anyone else's. I don't mean their professional opinion, I wouldn't take my car to the garage and ask the opinion of the oily chap who'd been fixing cars for the past twenty years, wait for him to look it over for an hour and when he says,

'Your head gasket's gone, it needs replacing,'

Reply, 'No, I think you'll find that the oil and water in the engine have had a bit of a chat and decided to co-exist in a shared living space, embracing their cultural differences and going halves on the shopping.'

I mean that'd be nuts, people are called professionals because they do something as a profession, they get paid for it - The clue's in the name.

But your Brand Loyalist only has a personal opinion, it's subjective and often completely wrong - But that doesn't mean that he (because it's invariably a man) won't defend this opinion up until the point where he foams at the mouth, jumps up and down, grabs hold of his feet and tears himself asunder, leaving only a smoking beanie-hat with a post-it note on it that says 'HTC's are the best phone to buy because I've got one.'

I'm exactly the same, not with phones as such, because I've got an ancient 'Candy-bar' phone that does me just fine when I remember to charge it. I have a work-provided BlackBerry that mostly gets used for playing Texas Hold'em during my 'alone time' at work and an iPad, also work-provided that I use to... erm... well, get my email when I'm not at work.

It's the iPad that causes me the problems, the only reason that every single person in the free world doesn't have one is because they're guinea pig meltingly expensive. Mine was free, and therefore has become (In My Humble Opinion) the single greatest piece of tech the world has ever seen - It has bad points, don't get me wrong, but I don't talk about them, so for all intents and purposes they don't exist. The interface is a bit clunky, even hit and miss sometimes, but that's because I've got old, fat fingers, not because it's a thrown together triumph of form over function. It's sleek, blank visage evokes mystery and familiarity at the same time, it's not just a magnified iPhone at all (You can tell by the way that the iPhone charger fits into it, but it won't charge it very well - that's a feature to remind you how different it is, and how different YOU are for owning one).

The first thing I think when I see people with a tablet that isn't an iPad is:

'Oh, poor you, couldn't you afford a real one?'

Which is odd, because the first thing I think when I see someone with an iPhone is:

'Dude, you seriously have more money than sense, they're not even that good, functionality wise, compared to other SmartPhones'

And I will react in exactly the same way, right up until I get my new iPhone when work replaces my BlackBerry.

And then, I shot myself

OK, here we go... I have yet again had the subject of today's Blog chosen for me. This time by my dear daughter, who told everyone on her Blog that I had once shot myself - And said that I would probably tell you all about it, as you seem to enjoy stories of my misfortunes.

Firstly, I'd like to take a few moments to look at the whole 'accidentally shooting yourself' issue.

Weaponry is a lot more widespread and more easily available over the pond, and as a large proportion (over 25%) of the visitors to this site hail from the Grande Olde US of A, I am expecting all kinds of safety advice is going through their heads right about now, and they're just itching to post it. I'll save some of them the trouble:

1. Never play with a loaded weapon.
2. Always make sure the weapon is unable to fire if you're cleaning it.
3. Never point a weapon at yourself, loaded or not (You wouldn't believe the flak I got for my choice of Facebook Timeline image - Especially when they found out it was The Mini Dandy's hand, and the gun was actually pointed at my head - And when they saw that the safety was off... Well, it took them weeks to wind down)
4. Never point a weapon at anything that you don't want to make go away. (And by 'Go Away' I mean, to shuffle off this mortal coil and join the choir invisibule)

People shoot themselves a lot more than you think, there's no end of stories of people shooting themselves in the foot, and losing fingers or being hit in the ass by a ricochet *cough* Mrs Dandy *cough* but you don't get many stories that pan out the way that mine did.

I'm hoping that this paticular story will act as a cautionary tale, but I'm also pretty sure it will make you laugh - I mean, who doesn't like to see over-confident idiots getting it really, really wrong and hurting themselves quite badly?

I know I do.

So, just sit back, relax, turn your schadenfreude dial up to eleven, and listen to the tale of:

The Day The Chimping Dandy shot himself.

It was only a few weeks after the events of Friday's Blog, still summer, still hot, still lazing around the house drinking beer and being irresponsible. These were the times that I refer to, in conversation, as 'The Good Old Days'. SMick and myself were sat, as was our custom at the time, in the front garden of my house enjoying the sunshine. We were drinking beer and thinking of things to do that were a) possible and b) within our somewhat limited budget. The list wasn't particularly extensive if I'm honest and it often contained the words beer, sun, nothing and more beer. And we were in grave danger of spiralling into another day, which whilst not exactly wasted, certainly wasn't turning out to be particularly productive.

Suddenly, the day took a turn for the... ah... well, not exactly better... More sort of... erm... odder, as Gullible Steve pulled up, got out of his car and asked us what we were up to. Steve's presence seemed to act as a catalyst and I decided, that rather than just lying in the sun all day, I'd do a bit of target practice.

Now, I wasn't drunk, as such... I mean I'd never, well not very often at least, I'd say it would be quite unlikely that I'd choose to handle a weapon of any kind whilst drunk - I'd at least think about it for a second or to before doing it anyway... Probably.

So, I suddenly found myself lying in front of my open garage door, on the bonnet of (somebody's) car, with my head on the windscreen, taking aim at the door into the house from the garage (which was a firedoor - I'd assumed that it was in some way 'toughened'). The first shot flew between my outstretched feet and took a decent sized chunk out of the back of the door - The noise was considerably louder than I thought it would be, the garage walls acting as an amplifier, to the point where I thought it might attract the attention of the neighbours. I decided that I'd take one more shot and then call it a day, before the Five-oh turned up.

I looked down the sight, lined up the centre of the door and sent the signal to my fingers to fire. Now, a number of things happened at the same time:

SMick shouted 'Steve!'

Steve, who had wandered into the garage to look at the damage I'd done to the door, moved into my field of view and started to bend down and pick up the chunk of wood that had detached itself.

I pulled my arm up and to the right to try and not shoot Steve in the head.

I fired.

Luckily, the shot went wide, but I still only missed Steve's head by about three inches. It took a fair chunk out of the brickwork around the doorframe and came straight back at me.

It hit me in the left forearm, and it bloody hurt - I've still got the scar, it's about three inches long and pretty feint, you have to bear in mind this was twenty-five years ago. Another thing to bear in mind was that my left arm was tight up against my chest, due to me lying on the bonnet of the car, so if I'd got hit four inches to the right, you wouldn't be reading this...

And then there's the other thing... Most of you reading this will have assumed that I was firing some sort of gun, possibly the .50AE in my timeline picture - This is not, however the case. I was using a 5' Flatbow and I had three feet of wood sticking out of my arm, Oh, yes, and I was holding the bow with my feet.

The arrow was removed in the traditional style, i.e. with uproarious laughter from everyone but Steve. And bandages were amateurishly applied.

Steve stayed frozen to the spot, bent almost double, for a good few minutes, and the garage floor stood silent testament to the fact that he'd been really, really scared.

So, now you know, you have a new story to tell your friends in the pub - about a guy who shot himself - With a bow and arrow (That he'd been holding with his feet).

(Feel free to pass any of the Blog stories on - If you think to credit me then that's be great, even if it's just 'There's this weird guy on the Internet called the Chunking Monkey or something and he did this really stupid thing')

But will it fly SMick?

Firstly can I congratulate my Daughter on starting her own Blog - Gods bless it and all who sail in it. Hopefully it will give you a somewhat skewed teenagers eye view of the Dandy Universe.

Important word of caution, whilst I am usually a good natured, happy go lucky kinda guy with an infinite amount of patience and startlingly good cheekbones, any sniff of abuse or unwarranted* unkindness towards her and I will, most definately, reach down the perpetrator's epiglottis and show them things that would normally only be available via x-ray.

-oOo-

Right, onto the job in hand.

We've all heard stories about people who've found wonderful things in the most unlikely of places. Antiques Roadshow is full of people who have found original Picasso sketches in their Aunt Mabel's loft or there are those despicable people who find an original, fully working, 1920's Brough Superior in a neighbour's garage which they buy for a fiver as 'It was our Derek's and he never used it, even when he was still alive'.

So, imagine my excitement, when everyone's favourite Chilli cook and professional Scotsman, my good friend SMick, arrived at my front door with news of a 'vehicle' that he'd found out about, just lying in the mud in a farmer's field just around the corner. It was, quite literally, just around the corner, as in those days you could spit the distance from my house to the wonderful British countryside - You had to check no-one was in the way of course, things like that didn't go down well with the residents' association, but a well-hawked loogey would land on grass, or in a tree, or on a sheep.

So, dutifully, I clamboured into his Peugeot and drove the 100 yards to the farm. I walked around to the outbuildings, through knee deep mud, in my white Status Quo style white hi-tops (It was around this time that I changed my footwear of choice to second-hand army boots) and said to SMick.

'OK, where is it?'

'There,' pointed SMick, proudly

'Where, is it behind that scabby P.O.S. Mk1 Transit Luton?'

The slow grin that swept across SMick's face told me all I really needed to know.

'You've got to be.. erm... flipping joking, I'll be in the car...' I said, and started to squidge away as fast as I could.

He convinced me that it would be a good idea, a nice little project, something to do during the day when the pubs were shut. And if we couldn't get it going, then the box on the back was aluminium (Not Al-OO-min-um) and we could weigh it in and get some money out of it.

I honestly cannot remember how we got it out of the field, I think I blocked it from my memory the same way that victims of alien abduction do, I'm fairly sure it involved lots of sheets of wood, many, many bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale and an almost Olympic quantity of swearing.

Eventually, it found itself on my drive. It didn't actually look all that bad with a large proportion of the mud washed off. It also turned out to have a V6 engine which was a bonus, which on it's own started a selection of trike/go-kart fantasies. After the battery was left on charge for about six weeks, the engine would succesfully turn over but not 'catch', dutifully we did what any men confronted with a failing engine would do, we stood staring at the engine and scratched our heads.

'I think the carb needs priming,' SMick suggested, sagely.

'Right you are, how do we do that?' I replied - I wasn't then the mechanical whiz that I'm still not now.

'Well, we just take the air filter off, put something flammable down the carbs and see if it will start then.'

'Flammable?' I asked, nervously, not quite liking where this was going, 'Like what?'

'Like... petrol!'

'Like petrol, or actually petrol?'

'Actually petrol, we've got petrol, and it's what you'd expect to find in the carb anyway, should be fine.'

I bowed to his greater knowledge and we poured, what turned out to be significantly too much, petrol into the top of the carburetor and turned the engine over.

Now, I've never seen a real giant lightsaber, but I can imagine it looking something like what came out of the top of the carb - a nine foot high column of flame and noise which existed just long enough to drive my eardrums into my rectum and blow my eyebrows over to the other side of the road - It's a good job, in hindsight that we'd taken the bonnet off else it would have bounced off it and cut a neat porthole in the garage door.

'I think we might scrap it,' Said Smick, batting at his still smouldering sweatshirt.

'What?' I shoulted as I was still mostly deaf and over the other side of the road looking for my left eyebrow.

Over the next few weeks we set about stripping down the van to its component parts. Many interesting and fun times were had during the project.

Do you remember when I talked about our friend 'Gullible' Steve? The gentleman who ate of the baby-carrot and rottweiler chilli? Well, a couple of incidents involved him:

1) He was stumbling about in the back of the van, seeing if there was anything of any worth amongst the rotting hay and mud. When there was a cry, a protracted coughing fit, a torrent of expletives directed at myself, SMick, life in general and birds in particular. I turned to SMick, who was sat next to me in a deck-chair and said,

'Didn't think to tell him about the nest full of rotten blackbird eggs we found yesterday then?'

'Nope,' replied SMick, taking another gulp of his beer. 'But I did put it right near the side door so we wouldnea forget to throw it in the bin.'

2) The roof of the Luton box was made of fibreglass, which is not as weigh-innable as aluminium sheet, so we asked Steve to have a go at taking it off. We assumed (Which taught me that you should never assume) that he would get a ladder, and maybe a saw and cut the roof off. But no, he clamboured up onto the roof with an axe and a hammer.

'Is that a good idea?' I asked SMick, knowing full well that it wasn't

'Idea? No... Opportunity to laugh? Yes.' He replied, reaching down into the crate for another beer.

It took him a good fifteen minutes to fall the eight feet or so into the back of the van as he smashed the roof our from under himself. Thinking about it now, we really should have thrown that blackbird nest in the bin.

I didn't remain completely unscathed through the project, I had countless fibreglass splinters pulled out of my arms with pliers, cuts, bruises and boo-boos of various kinds.

And I understand that SMick still bears the scar of his particular mishap. We had got to the stage of trying to flatten the aluminium enough to get it in the back of the car and take it to the scrapyard and SMick was belting away with a lump hammer at a piece of metal that he was stood on.

Well, he missed... And hit his shin... He went completely silent, looked at the group of grubby schoolchildren that were hanging around watching us, looked at me, said, very quietly,

'Excuse me.'

And went inside the house.

The flow of profanity lasted a good half an hour and featured words that I didn't think could be used in that particular context. It left seven local dogs paralysed down one side and a further three pregnant. He'll show you the scar now if you ask him nicely, it's quite impressive.

I'll never forget that summer - And neither will the person whose drive we dumped the burning remains of the van on.

Anywho, I've been informed that my Daughter has mentioned about the time I shot myself, maybe I'll tell you about that on Monday. Have a good weekend, and if you see me around, feel free to buy me a pint - I think I deserve it, I've had a hard life!


*There are times when my Daughter's Blog will warrant abuse, feel free to fill your boots in situations such as these.

Have you tried turning it off, then leaving it?

OK, so you've all had time to formulate your own theories on whether deviant parenting made me the man I am today. I'd like to add more evidence, this time it's not my parents I blame, but my workmates and customers. I have more stories about these people than I have about anyone else.

Except, possibly, myself.

In the dim and distant past, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and everything was in black and white, I used to work in IT Support - But you still work in IT Support I hear you remark; Ahah!, but no, a common misconception is that everyone who works in IT does what Roy and Moss do in Graham Linehan's excellent program 'The IT Crowd'.

Most of us don't (But it doesn't stop people asking you to give them Facebook hints or asking for your professional advice on what they should buy and then buying something else because it was shinier - You know who you are!) - But at the time, I did. *cough*. You all must have heard those 'Hilarious' stories about people thinking that their CD-ROM drives were cup-holders and wondering why their computers didn't work during a power cut and thought, 'People can't really be that stupid' - Well, let me tell you, they are...

One of my first jobs, nearly thirty years ago, was in a small computer shop, I was one of the people who they hid in the back room and wouldn't let talk to the customers, ever. Which made it an unusual day when the phone in my cage rang and the girl on the other end said,

'Dandy, it's the Po-leese - They want to talk to you,' and then she put the phone down.

'H-Hello,' I said, 'Can I help?'

'Yes, this is Inspector Momanna Banana Peeyanah from The Derbyshire Constabulary, there seems to be a problem with the printer we brought from you last week.'

'Oh... I'm sorry to hear that, what model of printer is it?'

'How am I supposed to know? You're the computer person, is it not in your records?'

'Well Sir, if you look on the front of the printer, it will say something like - Epson FX something or other, the something or other will be the model number'

He put the phone down and, I assume, wandered over to the printer, read the label and gave me the model number. I had a look around and found we had one over the other side of the workshop. It was just too far away for me to look at it whilst I was on the phone, bearing in mind that telephones had wires in those days and if you had suggested mobile or even cordless phones, you would have been burned as a witch.

'What is the printer doing?'

'Nothing, it's broken'

'Ah, no, I mean are there any flashing lights, or is it beeping?'

'Yes.'

'Which?'

'Both.'

'Fine, which lights are flashing?'

He put the phone down again, walked over to the printer, checked the lights and came back.

'Paper,' He said, as cool as a cucumber. I took this opportunity to repeatedly bang the phone handset off the desk.

'Oh, Sorry, I dropped the phone. Does the printer have any paper in it?'

'Paper?'

'Yes, paper, there should be a box of paper under the printer.'

'There's an empty box that says 2-part, fan-fold, music ruled on it.'

I put him on speakerphone, gestured wildly to my friend Paul, who was busy soldering something and said, loudly,

'Can I confirm that the problem you seem to be having is that your printer has stopped working, it is now making a beeping noise, a light marked 'paper' is flashing and there is an empty box marked 2-part, fan-fold, music ruled underneath it?'

'Yes, that's correct, do you have any idea what it might be?'

'Erm... Yes, I - I do have an idea,' I had to mute the phone at this point, as I was finding it difficult not to laugh, 'I think you might have run out of paper... But that's only a guess - Would you like us to send an engineer out?'

'Yes, that would be great, thank you.'

We did send an engineer, with a couple of boxes of paper, which seemed to cure the problem... For a while at least.

-oOo-

Another time, we had a similar call, but this time it wasn't from Da Five-Oh, it was from a small phamaceutical company that you probably wouldn't have heard of. We had a deal with the chap who was the IT Buyer whereby he would come to us for everything as long as we occasionally slipped him a free PC game. His latest aquisition was Microsoft Flight Sim V1.0, which at the time, came on and ran from a 5 1/4" floppy disc (which was actually floppy) and was in black & white (Well, black & green). We used to put new labels on the discs for him and everything, so no-one would know. The call went something like this:

'Hi this is Steve from Fisons!'

'OK, how can I help you Steve?'

'Ah.. Erm.. Remember how you guys sent me a copy of the Flight Simulator?'

'Yeah, is everything OK?'

'Not really, no - It's stopped working - I think I might have spilled something on it.'

'Right, not a problem - You know how we suggest you take backup copies of the discs when you get them, and put them somewhere safe?'

'Yes?'

'Did you do that for this disc?'

'Yes, I did, it's in my safe'

'Brilliant, just use that, it should work exactly the same, but I suggest you make a backup copy of your backup and keep that safe just in case.'

'How would I use the copies?'

'Well, you'd just put it in the drive as you would with the originals, just treat it the same as the one we originally sent you.'

'So, should I cut it or fold it up?'

'No... You shouldn't need to do either of those things. Just put it in. close the door and start the software as you normally would.'

'Ah.. No, I don't think that'll work, the copy is bigger.'

'Bigger?'

'Yes, it's A4.'

'A... 4... ?'

'Yes, I photocopied it, just like you guys suggested.'

I slowly put down the phone, went over to the emergency toolkit, took out the revolver and shot myself six times, in the face.

-oOo-

I quite literally have bucketloads of similar stories, and I will trot them out over the life of this blog, some are priceless, some you will not believe.

But the one thing they all have in common is that they are all, completely true - Only the names have been changed, but only because I can't remember them in most cases.

An eye for an eye

Yesterday, I spoke of the awesome bird mutilation skills of my Father. It seems only fair that I now tell you tales of the occular disassociational episodes that my Mother peppered my younger days with.

If you're a regular reader, you'll be au-fait with my Mother's sense of humour - She definately mellowed after she died, but whilst she was still alive - Seriously, she'd do stuff even that I'd think twice about - And I can throw fruit at myself.

In the mid 70's, she lost her right eye - I mean, she didn't come home from the shops one afternoon and say 'Oh Bugger! - I must have left it on the bus', there was some serious medical reason for it. I have vague memories of visiting her in hospital and stuff - In fact, one story that she used to tell (she really spun this one out, it could take her hours to tell if someone else was providing tea and/or biscuits) - But it boils down to my Dad redecorating the kitchen, then accidentally setting fire to it, and me running down the ward screeching 'Dad's set the kitchen on fire! Dad's set the kitchen on fire!'

Anywho, after a time of walking around with an eyepatch on, she was fitted with a 'Glass Eye'. For those of you whose total experience of false eyes is Mr Ragetti from Pirates of the Caribbean - I'll let you in on a secret, They're not spherical, they're kind of, well... scutiform (If nothing else happens today, you've learned a new word, it means 'Shield-shaped').

If I go into too much medical detail in the next paragraph, please feel free to skip It - But I feel that it gives some important background info.

For the first few months after the patch came off, she was fitted with a 'training' eye - Much like the oversized bar that they put in when you first have your tongue pierced, only the other way around, in that it's smaller than standard, to make up for the swelling etc. It seems that the way you can tell when you're ready for your 'real' false eye is when your training eye starts to fall out. I poop you not, (Remember this was the '70's, there are probably all kinds of clever scientific ways that they do it now - Anyone with impending eye surgery probably shouldn't worry... Well, not about this... I mean, you should probably still worry, it's your eye, and they'll be poking at it with sharp things... Like, totally, Ewww!)

The first time this happened, I think it was February / March - It was definately Shrove Tuesday, because we were all sat around eating pancakes. All I heard was a quiet *Tink* noise and my Mother said,

'Oh!'

There, resting on her plate, was her eye... Staring back at her. The rest of us sat there in stunned silence as she calmly picked it up, brushed the sugar off, and put it back in.

Young Dandy Trauma Level: 2.3

The second time I remember was when she called me into the kitchen and asked her to take stuff out of the washing bowl and pass it to her to dry - You know where this is going, right? I think that I'd given her a few cups, the odd plate and a knife, when I felt something at the bottom of the bowl. I thought it was a piece of broken mug or something as my Mum was famous for washing the crockery overarm - We got through a tea service at least every few weeks - But it wasn't, imagine being a five year old boy holding, what for all intents and purposed was a real, human eye. I just stood there going 'Eye... Eye... Eye... Eye...' Whilst she wept uncontrollable tears of mirth (out of one eye)

Young Dandy Trauma Level: 5.1

The third and final time, apart from when it came out into a package of butter as she was getting out of the 'fridge, was when she dropped it into the old upright washing machine and we had to go through all the pockets of the clothes that were being washed before we found it. That's an experience that brings a family together, I can tell you.

After she had been fitted for her new eye, you'd have thought that she'd have grown up a bit, but no... they let her keep her old eye (old false one that is, not old real one) which meant she had a spare. Over the next couple of years, I cannot count how many times this 'spare' ended up in my school lunchbox, on friends plates when they came over after school for tea and on the fireplace when she left the room - She would palm it and then pretend to take her eye out, close her eyelid and say something like,

'I'm watching you two,' As she left the room.

When I was maybe eight, I plucked up the courage to ask her what it actually looked like when she took it out... There was no 'Are you sure' or 'No, I don't think you'll like it', she just flipped it out, I was transfixed... If she had held her false eye to her forehead, she would have been the living embodiment of Davros.

Young Dandy Trauma Level: 9.4

She had another couple made over the years, in fact, I seem to remember that her consultant, Mr Farquhar, even made her a 'bloodshot' one as a Christmas present. This just increased the level of tricks she could play on people. One of her favourties wes secreting one in her mouth and then slowly opening her eyes and her mouth at the same time - It was like living on the set of The Reanimator at times - Although, in fairness, I did use them in the occasional modelling clay project for school.

I have one at home now, in a little box - I always toyed with the idea of having it made into a signet ring - I think that would probably go with my Super-Villain persona pretty well.

　

Thermodynamics, it's the law!

Today's story isn't about me... It's about my dear old Dad - If anything, I like to think it goes to prove that whatever I have wrong with me, I probably got from him.

He's a young 84 year old - He's done a huge number of jobs in his long and happy life, from being in the RAF to working as an electrician on the railways and is blessed with a permanently sunny disposition (apart from the times when he's opinionated, rude and kranky)

This particular tale takes place in the (I think) 1960's and shows the healthy disregard for Health and Safety that made this country great.

-oOo-

It was summer, and hot. Hot enought that you could forget the whole frying eggs on the pavement scenario, and jump straight to the 'nylon trousers melting to your body and your conkers exploding' kind of deal.

At the time, my dear old Dad worked for British Oxygen (BOC), a company that makes and bottles all sorts of interesting gasses for industrial and medical uses. As the company name suggests, one of their biggest sellers was oxygen, liquid oxygen. This was stored in large, white tanks, you might have seen one - They're characterised by the fact that the pipes around their base tend to have a thick layer of frost on them.

One lunchtime, he and his cronies decided to go out into the yard to eat their 'snap' as was the colloquial word for a packed lunch at the time. Finding the sun to be a little warm and direct for their tender, British hides, they found respite in the shade of the big liquid oxygen tank. Halfway through their lunch, one of his friends spotted a pigeon, who had obviously landed on one of the pipes and had frozen, quite solid.

My father, who still has a love of physical humour, went and found some welding gloves and broke the bird free (unfortunately leaving its feet behind) and proceeded to marvel at this wonder of accidental science, it's perfect preservation, how peaceful it looked etc. One of his gang thought that a game of football would be the order of the day until it was pointed out that this might be, in some way, disrespectful.

At that very moment, a young and pretty secretary came around the corner and started to walk across the yard. Thinking on his feet, he grabbed the bird from the aspiring Bobby Moore and cradled it in his hands.

'Awww,' He said, 'Did the little birdie fly into the big nasty tank?'

As he said this, three things happened; He stroked the bird gently, as if it were the most precious thing in the world, his friends looked at him as if he had just had a debilitating brain aneurysm, and the secretary's interest was piqued. She started to walk over, all high heels, miniskirt and bouffanted hair and said,

'What's that?'

'It's a pigeon, we think he flew into the tank and knocked himself out... Didn't you little man?'

'Awwww.' Said the girl, leaning closer.

'In fact, we've been looking after him for a while, he's about ready to be released.'

'Really? can I watch?'

'Of course, Off you go little chap, be safe!'

With that, my Dad pitched the frozed pigeon up into the air, whereupon it arced about fifteen feet then crashed down onto the concrete yard and shattered into a million shards.

It's said, that on warm nights, if you're walking past the old BOC works in Derby... You can still hear her screaming.