Being forced to go on a day trip to Howarth with the family whilst I had some sort of kidney infection thing that had me peeing every 15 minutes. Just about made it to the bogs in the park but was horrified that it was a 20p barrier operated thing. Didn’t have 20p and didn’t have time to rush back to the missus who was playing with the kids on the swings. Tried to crawl under the turnstile neglecting to take into consideration that I was wearing a rucksack. Got pinned to the floor and had to be rescued.

A low.

Holding breath and diving below a Wayfarer to release the mast from the mud. 😉

Let me see…. no…. no…. I definitely can’t think of a low spot im my life, it’s all such a disaster.

Picking up my first pair of SPD’s in Kingston Upon Thames back in the 90’s. Fitted to the bike and off I went in my new SPD shoes. Time was around 3.30 so school kids everywhere. Got to my first set of lights and slowly and inevitably fell over sideways onto the pavement 10 meters or so from 50 kids waiting for a bus. Their laughter still haunts me.

Fell off my bike several years ago in a comedy off… Ended upside-down in a ditch (think 12 foot coastal type), still attached to my bike with just my face out of the water. Thankfully this was before camera phones. Man did I smell when the lads finally stopped laughing enough to help me out.

Thinking “Why the **** would there be a ‘no-rucksacks’ sign” on the ski lift…then having to be rescued as the lift started back down the mountain with me hanging off…in full view of a lot of pretty pissed-off people stuck on it on the way back up. 😳

Puking in the back of our Scout van while on the way back to our campsite after a day out at Alton Towers on summer camp.

It was one of those moments where I was sure I could hang on until we got back to the camp site so I didn’t say anything.
I was motion sick from the erratic driving & being sat on a side facing bench seat (those were the days), which was ironic considering I’d spent the day being thrown around on rollercoasters with no ill effects.

All of a sudden I puked, tried to keep it in my mouth but the pressure was too much so splattered quite an area and ended up with a load of it coming out of my nose from trying to hold it in, rather than just letting it out in the first place. Mmmmmmmm.
Surprisingly, there was very little piss taking & once the deluge had been cleaned up I got to sit in the front to prevent a re-occurrence.

Mega avalanche practice about 8 years ago my back brake died half way down. It took a lifetime to get to the bottom so I pulled a celebratory manual over the line infront of maybe 100 people. The front wheel got higher and higher, I grabbed the back brake to pull it down but nothing happened. After a few feet I slammed onto my back much to everyones delight.

copping a HUGE mouthful of heating oil when syphoning it out of a tank with a length of garden hose.
I swallowed quite a bit in the panic which followed.

There are no words.

In the New Forest for a cycling weekend, staying at a B&B. I was going to ride my wife’s bike back to the hire shop (she isn’t a regular and was knackered). She drove off in the car and at the last minute I opted to nip back to the room to drop the kids off at the bath.

Mid-drop the Hyacinth Bucket-esque landlady walked in to the bathroom to clean it, assuming I had left with my wife yet I was there clenching onto some loo roll and gurning.

She could barely give me eye contact the following morning over breakfast 😀

Having an IBS “moment” on a road ride, got to the nearest public toilet but it was locked, quickly went round the side of the toilet block like a baby giraffe on ice to the nearest hedge. I was wearing bibs so had to remove a waterproof, softshell, jersey just to be able to pebble dash the local flora.

On the return trip of an army cadets summer camp we were misbehaving a little. Mooning started and it got to my turn. Picked a pretty brunette in the car behind, trousers down etc etc. She smiled, flashed her lights etc..
Picture my embarrassment when the same car turned up at our house later that night to pick my sister up..turned out her best mate (who I’d known for ages) had been out for the day, got her hair dyed and bought a new car 😳

Camping holiday, on my bike trying to impress one of the girls on the site, little wheelie, little skip, highside off the bike and land on my face. I never did get her name…

Secondary School about 13yo- Christmas holidays, spent the afternoon chewing on the strap of the watch I had nicked off my big brother who was home from the Navy (it was a habit, the chewing, not the Navy) ‘cept he was the Engineer, engine management etc; thing was manky. I fell ill and went to bed my room was in the loft with hatch doors in the floor. I woke desperately needing to puke but was too weak to get the doors open, my dad comes up the ladder and opens the hatch, just too late… covered in all the chocolate and soup I’d eaten at lunch. Not sure he ever forgave me 👿

Laid up in hospital with some broken bones. Hadnt had a number 2 in a while. Dr said he would help me get to the loo after I explained I couldnt go in a pan. The number 2 drugs kicked in. I had to go.
The Dr was on lunch.

Nurse brought me a pan.

It was huge, I was mortified and the stench was quite horriffic.

After she cleaned me up and took it away, she ‘casually’ wandered round the ward with a can of Glade.

Sailing a Wayfarer….. 🙂

Or

Last game of the season for the First XV (upper 6th). Local Derby between our school and the local grammar. Being rural Devon, both sets of 6th forms knew each other well. Loads of people watching.

We were warming up with tackle bags, pads etc. I came sprinting in to do a flying tackle on one of the 3m bags. Got it wrong and smashed the top of my head against it.

I came-to a few minutes later, surrounded by people who thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I sat up and promptly puked on my crush from the other school. That was the last time I saw Chloe Brown!

in some manchester nightclub early noughties my mate decides it would be a good idea to get some Tequila shots in, this is after several pints of ale. After downing the second I realise that the contents of my stomach are going to make an appearance, I start walking & then running up the stairs to the toilets, hand clamped over mouth didn’t stem the flow and it splattered in many different directions. The stairs weren’t the solid kind and apparently the group of ladies who were stood underneath didn’t appreciate the chips, bile, beer and tequila mixture which dripped down upon them, not doubt done up for a saturday night out. 😕

My Mate (cough) setting me up with a 2ltr bottle of coke and asking me to open it whilst he got some sarnies out of his rucksack, on the beach.

Yes, oh yes he’d shaken it quite vigorously beforehand, as you do.

Git.
😛

I vomited in a chain book store. I couldn’t find the toilet and asked a member of staff. To reward him for his directions I puked at his feet. When I came out of the toilet he was still in the same place looking at my puke. I did however buy a book.

Lying on a stretcher in an ambulance with a femoral neck fracture explaining to my wife (who was at home with our 4 month old baby) that I had a really bad dead leg but would be driving home ‘once I get my breath back’.

I hadn’t even had any gas and air at that point.

One of a long list of ‘not my finest hours’ that seem to punctuate my life with increasingly less surprising regularity.

Teaching my 13 year old son how to ride the half pipe in the local skatepark. I was in my mid 30s.

Had a fall abut 5 minutes in, resulting in a compound wrist fracture. We were about 10 minutes from the local minor A&E, my wife wasn’t a driver at that time, so I had to drive us all to the hospital whilst cradling my s-shaped floppy arm, in a manual car.

It was a Sunday morning, so no Dr in the house. Had to hang around until a Dr arrived. The matron type nurse who was in charge of the small hospital had to leave the room when I showed her my arm as it was so bad it made her feel ill!

Dr did nothing other than call an ambulance to take me to the main hospital.

Spent the rest of the day there being x-rayed and manipulated under Biers Block, so I could watch and hear as two nurses and a Dr wrestled with me, trying and failing to put things back into line. After a few hours they tidied me up and sent me home, on the bus, with an appointment for the following day for an operation.

The surgeon said my wrist was like a broken biscuit in a paper bag.

I ended up with an external fixator for 6 weeks. And I now have a very mis-shapen wrist.

Oh how I look back at that time with a warm glow.

Panic attack scrambling half way up Tryfan, shorter than mates so couldn’t reach a hold.

Huge spiral of doubt and terror.
18, hangover, no rope.

Took four choruses of ‘Send in the Clowns’ from my mates before I could stop shaking and open my eyes.

Mate tied his jacket round his wrist and slapped it around the corner so I could grab hold and get round the one properly exposed bit on the route.

Never, ever wanted to be somewhere else so badly, before or since.

ooh, Jekkyl, you might win that round..

Going to an alarm call in the early hours of the morning (quite near to where I guess we’ll be riding on the MNPR tonight) at the house of a prominent QC who is now a high court judge.

Having scaled the 8 foot gate to the front I made haste down the sweeping block paved driveway and skidded on something which I assumed must have been moss on the drive. The Judges wife had already come to the door and explained that she’d found an insecurity to the rear and she allowed us straight in. As I crossed the pristine (white) carpet in the dining room, I smelled the overpowering and unmistakeable stench of dog eggs. I’d trampled my size 11 covered boots straight through the house – and the offender was long gone. It was everywhere 😳

Ran into a supermarket having timed the opening of the automatic doors to perfection. Except they weren’t automatic. A Tom and Jerry-esque sliding down the glass using my face as a break followed.

Broke my nose and lost any remaining dignity.

Reminded by ^^^

After chatting two beautiful women up at 4am in the McDonalds in Playa, Tenerife (okay, it was 4am, I was drunk, it was Playa – they probably weren’t beautiful). Agreed to meet them outside to carry on our mating plans and proceeded to joyfully run out of the door clutching mine and my mates bags of food. Straight into the plate glass window, bursting my nose wide open in a spray of blood.

Never saw the girls again.

And more recently…

Without my glasses on, I walked an exercise bike out of the exercise class room at the gym into the main gym area. Completely missed the open door and walked into the huge plate glass window to the right of it, breaking it badly.

Hospital appt aged 13. Directions from nurse are, in cubicle, clothes off, she’ll be back in a mo to take vitals etc. I did as directed. Her response on entering the cubicle “I didn’t mean all yoir clothes”. She continued anyway, height, weight, blood presure, the lot. Excrutiating.
Did Jimmy Saville have a sister?

On a first aid course, I remember feeling kind of faint as we got up to go for a tea break. Next thing I remember was waking up on a trolley in hospital – I’d fainted and apparently hit my head on the door on the way down. Everybody else on the course thought it was an exercise. Somehow I still managed to pass the course (and I don’t have a problem with real life gore, but it had been a fairly gruesome video, combined with low blood sugar because I’d not managed to eat properly after training).

A lucky escape?

Borrowing my mate’s bike at uni to try and do a rolling stoppie up to the edge of the wall everyone was sitting on. His nickname was “Porto” after the team shirts he wore being from Portugal.

Found out waaaaaay too late that Europeans put their brakes on the other side. I never knew. I do now. 😳

I reckon ALL the girls from my course were sitting on the wall I mashed my torso into.

Booked in for the snip. On the instructions was ‘shave’.

So I did.

Laid on the ‘slab’ and the Dr commented how been ‘bald’ was becoming more popular. I said, but it said to shave.

Yes he said, pointing to my sacks, just this bit…

Coming home from a poker session in a drunken melancholy. Into the chippy for sausage chippy which came on a few sheets of paper. Outside into the cold, the food warming my hands and my soul. Briefly. The paper sheets were quite smooth, off slipped the first one taking half the portion with it. Not so bad. Go to grab a chip, the remainder slipped off onto the floor leaving an empty sheet on my hand. Then the cold, Sheffield breeze picked up that sheet gently and placed it on my forlorn face, slowly dragging it over my head into the night. I actually cried while walking home.

Not mine but worth recounting. Colleague had had a part of her colon/intestines removed in an operation and had to go to the loo for a number 2 at very short intervals. One shift she was at a large posh house dealing with a garage break in when she got the sudden urge and requested use of their toilet, which was granted. She just managed to lift the loo seat and sit down before she pebble dashed the inside of the toilet. Stood up to flush, and realised the toilet was waiting to be fitted, had no pipes or running water and she had pooped onto their thick shagpile carpet.

Back in the day I used to be a Kayak instructor for the Scouts.

We were “seconded” to a Guide jamboree and because I have a friendly face I was “volunteered” to babysit the absolute novices. I was asked several times through the day “what happens if you roll over?” and I explained that I could roll myself back up with or without a paddle and not to be worry about that.

I was also asked to show off this skill each time, whereby I would answer “At the end of the day, I don’t fancy getting cold and wet”. End of the day about 60 guides and leaders all came down to the water front and asked me to show off rolling the Kayak.

Now, in my defence for the passage below I wasn’t using my K1 slalom race boat because it was Kevlar and not great for people running over it (A favourite game in the middle of lake BITD) so I had borrowed a big old Piranha plastic boat which I hadn’t really checked over but was grand for pottering around in the middle of a flat water park.

I rolled over, banged on the bottom of the boat 3x (as we had trained everyone to draw attention to themselves) re-grabbed the paddle and went to pull myself up when my right foot slipped off the folding metal peg that was masquerading as a footrest as I was about 1/3 of the way up. I’m not sure how but my foot was stuck with the peg really digging into the front my ankle, so much so I couldn’t get the boat up and over as it hurt so much and there was just no leverage, I was just rotating within the boat.

I skulled the paddle so I could breathe and had to ask one of my mates (fortunately still in his boat) to give me a T-rescue as I couldn’t get up – he thought I was taking the piss and told me to “stop showing off you **** and get up, I want to go for pints!” After about 2 mins (It felt like years and years however long it took) of me trying to get up past the ankle pain and find purchase for my foot unsuccessfully and skulling like I’d never skulled before he finally decided to put the bow of his boat just within reach.

I don’t think the guides were impressed.

Even worse, for a year or so later I’d hear comments along the lines “That’s the man that nearly drowned looking after us mummy!” when going shopping and stuff, had to be the locals day when I stuffed up didn’t it.

Had a morris marina with a sidepipe on when I was 17 , borrowed a mates roof rack , and had just fixed it to the roof.
Pulled out of a junction where there was a group of girls at the bus stop, gave it some welly, spun the wheels,feeling pretty cool.
Looked in the mirror, saw the roof rack tumbling down the road.
It was my mates dads roof rack and he was a big fecker, so had to stop the car and pick it up, and throw it in the boot.
The laughter from the girls haunts me to this day

Had a comedy SPD moment, we’ve all had one but I had to do it in front of the whole race grid.
So I get called forward to take up my position on the front row, stop go to put foot down, shit it won’t unclip! so weight already on that side I just fall sideways straight to ground in front of the whole field of about 50 riders + spectators and the reigning U23 XC world champion. On the ground bike on top of me I still can’t unclip and get up so the rider next to me is trying his best to lever me up, in the end the commissaires had to pick me up.

Went to Vegas to watch the UFC mcgregor fight… Flew 1st class so with pals drinking most of the flight, due to the time difference I got to Vegas showered and changed and went straight out on the p155!!! 2am in Vegas I lost it, never been so drunk in my life, managed to get to my room and get undressed and into bed. Then realised I had lost my phone…
Had a look if I’d dropped it outside the hotel room and yep the door locked behind me!!! Cupped my balls and walked/stumbled to the reception in the mandarin oriental 5 star hotel!!!
After “sir you cannot be naked here” they put me in a silk black genuine nikki minage monogrammed dressing gown. Escorted back to my room by two bouncers and woke up confused hung over in a woman’s dressing gown.
Mrs loves the dressing gown and saved me a few quid on a lads holiday gift.

At 17 I had a 125cc trail bike, lots of girls around the local little “jump spot” Recreation ground, so me and a few mates were trying to get the highest, furthest in the air. Really gave it some effort, great jump, perfect position on the bike, everyone seriously impressed until I landed a foot from the chainlink fence. No time to brake, OTB with a bit of a girly squeal, if I remember rightly.
Walked away with no more than bruised pride though.

I remember chatting to some girl in a local pub. Turns out she was working for the summer in a local BB, maiding I guess.
Asked he if so an so still ran it?
“Oh yes” comes the reply.
“Is he still a miserable bastard who couldn’t smile incase his face cracked” I asked?
“Thats my dad”.
Oh. Ok. Bye then.