“Glands”

Regular readers of this column will remember that I spent my late teens as a member of the Air Cadets. This was a youth group run by the British Royal Air Force, along the lines of the Scouts. Only without that dyb-dyb-dob nonsense or tying things to your woggle. Oh no! This was the real McCoy. They even gave us guns when they thought they could trust us. The fools.

We were stationed in Henley-on-Thames, a beautiful riverside town best known for its annual Regatta and the huge brawls between toffs, tourists and anarchists on Henley Bridge which marked the start of the boat racing. The drill hall was actually the old police station, along with genuine cells you could lock gullible visitors inside, a cafeteria, and a firing range for when the fools trusted us with guns.

Winter times, we would be literally confined to barracks for drill nights. We’d make and fly model planes (you’d be amazed what you can manage indoors), use the radios, march up and down the drill hall, and fire the guns that the fools trusted us with.

On the long summer evenings, things were different. We had the town at our mercy, and we’d get out to play football or build rafts up by the river. We’d march around the back streets and generally had a Good Time. We’d always finish with a big parade outside the front of the building as the Union Flag was solemnly lowered at the end of the day.

This particularly balmy July evening saw us in formation on the parade ground at the front of the building. Neatly lined up in our flights, boots gleaming and trousers neatly pressed, the Commanding Officer inspected his troops. Some forty years previously he’d seen off the Bosch with my grandfather in the deserts of Africa, now he was in charge of the pride of Henley’s youth. He exchanged a few words, read out a few notices and then turned to salute the flag.


A huge pair of jugs

It was then that a couple of the lads noticed we had a specator in one of the old houses opposite the parade ground, just twenty yards away over the road.

It was the lady of the house, standing at the window, towelling herself down after a bath, completely oblivious to the testosterone fuelled turmoil she was about to cause down below. Being a spotty teenager, you only notice two things in these circumstances, and neither of these were her face if you get my meaning. Brought up of a diet of Page Three Stunnas (Busty Dusty gets ‘em out for our Falkands Heroes was one I remember from the time) and furtive school yard porn, we weren’t disappointed.

Let me, dear reader, piece together my scant memories of our spectator’s appearance. She was around forty, certainly no older, slim build that suggested that she worked out, definately a bottle blonde and the biggest pair of top bollocks that any of us had seen on any woman, ever. And that included Darren who was a trainee fireman, and knew about stuff like this.

One by one, squadron members realised what was going on, and the parade became a sea of stupid grins and muffled laughter. From my position at the back, it appeared that the CO was saluting not the flag of our nation, so recently glorious in South Atlantic conflict against the Argie foe, rather a magnificent pair of 40-DD bazongas in an upstairs window. I, for one, on the edge, and it wouldn’t take much to send me over.

It was at that moment she took her towel and gave both mammaries a vigorous, circular rub, ending with her giving both nips a little tweak. They wobbled like blancmanges in an earthquake, and from the looks of things, she seemed to find this most satisfying. That was it - even Mr Tipping, his salute already wavering was now bent double with laughter, and we all followed suit. The entire squadron broke ranks, laughing, clapping and cheering.

Approximately 0.00027 seconds later, the accidental exhibitionist realised that she’d been rumbled by half of Henley-on-Thames. She screamed. She dropped her towel, to reveal a bush that resembled a large, black fluffy poodle nestling in her lap and whipped the curtains shut. See? I told you she wasn’t a natural blonde.

The applause was deafening, and lasted for several minutes, with several passers-by and Greasy Joe from the Chip Shop down the road forming a small crowd for good measure. After we had all calmed down, Mr Simmonds, our erstwhile Warrant Officer, made us all go back and do the parade again to “give the flag the respect it deserves”, and we stood there while we went through a tits-free repeat of the flag-lowering.

Poor old Jez, who’d been on flag duty had missed everything, and had thought that we were laughing at him. He was even more upset when we filled him in with every single sordid detail of the episode at Greasy Joe’s later, with a few extra details “she even winked at me” thrown in for good measure. Every re-telling got more and more lurid, and several weeks later I’m sure I heard a version that involved at least three lesbians, various sex aids illegal in the free world and the Kids from Fame.

The following week we turned up at the Drill Hall to find a “For Sale” sign on the house opposite. Can’t think why. Mystery naked woman, we never knew your name. But thanks for the mammaries.

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"Wobbl"

Woo! Yay! Houpla! Perennial Scaryduck favourites Weebl and Bob finally make their premier on MTV UK and Ireland this coming Monday at 9.58pm, just before The Osbournes.

If I was you, I'd start saying "When come back bring pie" to confused colleagues and family members now, before the rest of the herd does.

Now excuse me, I've got a forthcoming blog entry about enormous naked breasts to finish off. This page doesn't write itself, you know.

Edit: Woo! Yay! Etc! For a new Weebl and Bob story. Sort of.

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“Drunk”

Many people have a happy first memory from childhood. Perhaps playing in the garden with friends, or a particularly happy time with mother or father. Not me.

All I can remember is sitting in a huge pram with my brother and sister in the pouring rain outside The Greyhound Pub on the Fulham Palace Road as mum talked to a friend from work at Charing Cross Hospital; going into the outside toilet to find it inexplicably full of junk; a ghostly head-on-the-door experience that kept me howling in my bedroom for days. But the one that sticks in my mind the most is seeing my dad off from the living room window. It explains an awful lot about my life. Start, they say, as you mean to go on.

My father was an officer in the Territorial Army - that’s the British Army reserve forces to the uninitiated. He’s a doctor, so he got a Major’s rank and a job as an army surgeon. It had its priveleges, the cheap bar at Chelsea Barracks being one of them. He’d have to spend every other weekend at the mercy of the armed forces, and every year there was a two-week exercise, usually somewhere glamorous, up to their necks in mud in Aldershot.

As a recently self-aware three year old, dad disappearing for two weeks was a Big Thing. The lads turned up on the day in a great big Army ambulance, and half a dozen or so came in for “farewell drinkies”, before going out in the garden to talk loudly and postpone the inevitable moment of departure as long as possible.

I was left alone in the front room. The drinks cabinet, that great locked mystery to little people, had been left open revealing a fascinating array of multicoloured bottles. If it was good enough for the Big People, it was good enough for me, so I got stuck in.

There were a number of failures. A big green bottle turned out to be Gordon’s Gin. It tasted like rat’s piss, an opinion that is still valid three decades later. Similarly, the great big bottle of Tonic Water had my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and left me barely able to spit the rest out into a pot plant.

Third time lucky. Martini. A sweet bottle of yummy stuff that was oh-so-easy to drink. Before I knew it, I was as pissed as a little beetle, rolling around on the floor giggling, clutching the bottle to my chest. Given half the chance I’d have called everyone “You’re me best mate *hic*”, but I was alone with my bevvy, and dad was just getting set to leave.


Hic! It'sh a pink wellyphant! HIC!

I staggered up to the living room window, hoisted myself up onto the sill via the sofa and waved frantically to him as he got into the big green army ambulance. He waved back as he started off up the street, and I opened the window and shouted “Bye Bye Daddy!” as he went. The further up the road he went, the further out I had to lean to see him, and drunkenly waving with one hand, it made my position all the more precarious.

Headfirst I fell, landing on my three-year-old booze-addled noggin right in the middle of the flowerbed. I don’t know how long I lay there amid the roses, but by the time I came to it had started to rain and I was covered in a mass of mud and scratches. I had not been missed.

I staggered to my feet, and yowling, I banged on the front door until mum opened up to see me, wet, bleeding, muddy and crying.

“Oh!” she said with surprise “I thought you were upstairs.”

I puked neat Martini all over her foot. The truth was out.

Start as you mean to go on, baby.

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"Court"

If I ever find myself up in front of the beak (presumably on a charge of teenage arson) I'd like this guy to defend me. And if that's not enough, there's more of this genius here. Arnold Chrysler - for let us assume that that is your name - we salute you.

Thanks to Ben for the spot.

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”Bang”

It’s coming up to that time of year again – Guy Fawkes Night - with the skies over Scary Mansion rent with flying ordinance. So let me be the first to remind you: KIDS! Don’t play with fireworks!

You must never – and let me be absolutely clear about this - NEVER fit your bikes up with launcher tubes, all kinds of rockets and airbombs and re-enact the Battle of el-Alamein down your local kids’ playground until the park-keeper calls the police. That would be a bad thing.

And I cannot stress how much of a Bad Thing it would be to carefully insert a demonic French banger underneath a huge pile of dog shit and then light the fuse and scarper just as a little old lady walks past. Especially if, unknown to you, said little old lady happens to be a very good friend of your parents.

That is all.

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"Race"

In America they’re called Soapbox Racers. They have organised leagues, TV rights and world famous professionals. In the real world, they’re called Go-Karts, and the only autographs you get are the ones on your plaster cast after you’ve broken both arms and legs.


A bloody lunatic

Our road was on a hill, and it being in an age where everybody didn’t have three cars on their drive, relatively quiet. John’s dead cool dad had been to America and had brought back the latest craze - skateboards, which we roared down the hill with our lives in our hands with not a hint of a helmet or kneepad to protect us. It was ace, but we wanted more.

“More” came in school assembly one morning. To celebrate the Queen’s silver jubilee, there would be a Go Kart Grand Prix. And an Easter Bonnet competition for the girls, I kid you not. Matt, John, Nige and I were up for that and set out building our karts for the big day. Hedging our bets we built two, and in a solemn ceremony, they were given names by Matt’s five-year-old sister.

The Bee Buggy Bum was nothing but the bottom half of an old 1930’s style pram with a plank of wood screwed on for a seat. The wheels were huge, and superbly put together with quality bearings that would run and run. There was a hefty hand-brake which could stop you on a sixpence, and we found that pulling on the front suspension rods it would warp the frame enough to turn you in with a decent turning circle. It didn’t need no fancy decorations, go faster stripes or anything. If you wanted a push, the rear suspension rods were great handles and you could get up to some quite terrifying speeds. It rocked.

The Bum Tiddly Um, on the other hand, was small, slow and made of some old wheels we found on a scrapheap. It sucked.

Our main rivals were to be “Tiger”, owned by Luke and Jonesy, two kids from the next street. It was a beautiful, beautiful cart, built in Luke’s garage by his way-too-enthusiastic and over-competitive dad. It had a proper steering wheel, a sleek, streamlined body with the wheels hidden underneath so it looked like it was flying along; and a magnificent tiger-skin paint job. It was the clear favourite to win by looks alone. The flash bastards were even seen practicing in matching overalls and racing helmets. We hated them.

The die was cast. It was us against them. David against Goliath. Good against Evil. Arsenal against Spurs.

The day before the big race, we went out for one final practice session. We pulled the carts to the top of the road and shoved off, gliding downhill, the Bee Buggy Bum leaving the Bum Tiddly Um in its wake. That was all fine and dandy on a nice, gentle slope, but we were pre-teen speed demons. We wanted more. Again.

This time, we found “more” at number thirty-two, the house opposite Matt’s. Number thirty-two had lain empty for over a year, and its unlocked garage acted as our unofficial gang headquarters for dirty deeds and general hiding from parents. It was also right on the steepest part of the hill and had a driveway that was like the north face of the Eiger.

This was it. The big test. If our carts were good enough for the Big Hill, they were good enough for anything. We set up. Nige on the Bum Tiddly Um with John pushing, Matty on Bee Buggy Bum with me ready to shove.

“Three! Two! One! Go!”

John and I gave a huge run-up and shoved the carts into the abyss. With a blood-curdling scream the lads disappeared over the edge and down the driveway, Bee Buggy Bum leading the way, closely followed by its sonic boom.

Down the drive they roared and out into the road, me and John bounding after them with giant steps to see the action. Nige hadn’t been able to turn the Bum Tiddly Um fast enough and had instead pulled on the brake (OK, he slammed both feet down on the road, burning through his best school shoes), while Matt was still hammering on down the road, picking up speed as he went.

Now here comes the tricky bit. After turning out of the driveway, he had to pull another turn to avoid running out of road and slamming straight into his house. Not particularly difficult in the Super Souped-up Bee Buggy Bum, but even to our untrained eyes, he was leaving it remarkably late...

The three of us watched in awe as Matt yanked on the brake handle. There was a cry of “Muuuum!” as it snapped off cartoon-style in his hand. The front wheels smacked against the kerb, showering broken spokes and pieces of wheel rim in all directions, and Matt and the Bee Buggy Bum literally took off.

It was a short flight. The width of the pavement plus about six inches, as Matt and the cart hit the fence about halfway up with a sickening, bone-crunching thud. The entire fence panel, a lovely piece of delicately woven lattice panelling that probably cost a bomb, shattered all over the place before finally collapsing in on itself; revealing a touching domestic scene of Matt’s mum and dad pulling weeds in the garden and his little sister playing dolly with a friend. All of them had “What the f...” looks on their faces. It was beautiful.

We fully expected Matt’s dad to go ballistic, but instead he was on his knees crying with laughter. Matt, like any other idiot in a brush with death, was completely unscathed, and staggered from the shattered wreck of the Bee Buggy Bum, still clutching the severed brake handle. It was completely mangled, and a complete non-starter for the big race. We were down to one cart. The rubbish one. We were doomed.

So we turned up the next day with the Bum Tiddly Um. It was awful. We had to sit through the unending hell of the Easter bonnet parade before we could even think about avoiding coming last. Everybody came to gloat at our pathetic little machine, especially Jonesy, Luke and Over-Competitive Dad. And our worst fears were confirmed in the Big Race. Everybody roared past us as we huffed and puffed to get even the slightest semblence of speed. Even the kid in the year below us who only had one foot was faster than us.

All except Tiger. They’d been found out, and found out big-time. It turned out that Over-Competitive Dad had sold out for glamourous good looks over speed and had based the thing on wheels smaller and rather less predictable than a supermarket trolley. No one had bothered to tell him that the race was over grass either, and he watched in horror from the sidelines as his pride and joy sunk in and stuck there like a dog turd to the bottom of your shoe.

So, who won? I had absolutely no idea then and still don’t know to this day. Luke and Jonesy didn’t show their faces round our street for weeks, and Tiger was never seen again. As far as I know, it sunk into the mire of the school field, and is still there twenty-five years later, an interesting divot on the outfield of the cricket pitch for future archaeologists to find. And I still remember that on that dark, dark day, at least three boys had Easter bonnets. For shame, for shame.

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"Dear Friend and Future Millionaire"

Spamradio is ace. You too can listen to a Professor Stephen Hawking soundalike read genuine spam e-mails over a bazzin' musical background. He's a filthy, dirty slut into the bargain.

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"Great"

The BBC has finally unveiled its list of "Great Britons", the great and good who have made this country the shambles (surely "triumph"? - ed) that it is today. So how come Robbie Williams is in the Top 100 and placed rather higher than Sir Walter Raleigh? Perhaps Raleigh shouldn't have spent all his time exploring, soldiering and putting his cape over puddles for the queen, and knuckled down to write poptastic hit songs like "Rock DJ".

The rather worthy top nine plus Princess Di is here, and according to the Daily Torygraph, my own personal hero Sir Ernest Shackleton came in eleventh, miles ahead of his great rival Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

To cap the whole thing off, it's a little known fact that ITV, to the sound of scraping barrels, have been planning their own "spoiler" programme with its own list of Great Britons, and I can exclusively reveal their top ten choices here:

* Delboy Trotter
* Michael Barrymore
* Jade from Big Brother
* Ant and Dec (who are joined at the hip and count as one person)
* Des Lynam
* Gareth Gates
* Victoria Beckham
* Carol Vorderman
* Sir Les Battersby
* Cilla Black

Vote for your favourite at any participating Argos or Matalan store, or send in the coupon in this week's edition of TV Quick!

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“Cat”


Cat: Rabbits made her mental

This is Molly. She is my pet cat, and you couldn’t ask for a lovlier, fluffier little companion. Sweet, isn’t she? But look again. Look at her face. She has a dark, dark secret. She has issues. If Sigmund Freud was alive today and could talk to cats, he’d have a field day. OK, so she never knew her father and her mother's an alley cat, but give a kitty an even break, eh? But the truth is simple: LESBIAN RABBITS TURNED MY CAT MENTAL.

Molly is two years old. When we got her as an ickle fluffy little kitten we also had an ickle fluffy little rabbit. Called Wiggles. Thanks to a misprint by the Rabbit Insurance office, she became known as Wigless. Wigless was a girl rabbit. We knew this because a) she hasn't got a Johnson, and b) she's since had ickle fluffy baby rabbits. She was cute and had one floppy ear. And come to think of it, big brown "get it here, you fluffy ball of rabbity sex" eyes. Which should have been a warning. Evil lurked inside that ickle fluffy rabbit mind.

Wigs lived in a rabbit run. It was lovely when I built it, but after repeated escape attempts and Keystone Cops chases up the road, it resembled a cross between Stalag Luft 17 and the Battle of the Somme, complete with wire buried to a depth of three feet and a watchtower. She craved company, so it was only natural that we should put ickle fluffy Molly in with her to play.

It was so cute. They sniffed around each other. "Meow" said Molly. "Honk honk honk" when Wigs in the time-honoured fashion of rabbits the world over.

"Meow"

"Honk honk"

"Meow" "Honk" "Meow" "Honk"

It was so cute. We watched for a while as the new playmates gamboled playfully in the rabbit run. Words cannot describe the sheer fluffy beauty of the scene. But evil was to rear its ugly head. Evil with long, floppy ears and a bushy tail.

Seconds after we retired from this peaceful vista we heard a "meow". Then "Meow". And a louder "MEOW". Followed by a pained "MEOW". Surely these two fluffy playmates hadn't fallen out? Surely they weren't fighting over the little sparkly rubber ball with the bell in it? Far from it. It was far, far worse than we imagined. Wigs was on top. And there is no other way of putting it. She was humping the hell out of Molly, and with every demented rabbity thrust came a pained "MEOW!" as Moll was lunged deeper into the muddy quagmire.

It was no good. I was paralysed with laughter. Not even Mrs Scary's cries of "Don't just stand there, hit her with the yard broom" could save me. In the end, I managed to crawl up to the run and pull her off, tears running down my face. Whereupon she tried to hump my arm, the filthy little thing. She was at it like...err... rabbits and nothing was going to stop her.

In the days that followed she tried to hump anything, including her own hutch. We blamed the phases of the moon, those long lonely nights, her all-rabbit food diet, and nothing we did could stop her. So, in the end, we gave her an old soccer ball, and she soon grew to love it like a special friend. Morning, noon and night.

"Daddy, what's Wigs doing to that football?" the Scaryducklings would ask.

She had to go.

Molly, on the other hand looked like a tiny lion skin rug. We peeled her up out of the mud, and she slunk off to the shed and hid under a bucket, and has lived there ever since. We take her food and keep her warm, but she's not the same cat and is scared of anything bigger than a bug. She's a mental case, and I blame filthy, filthy lesbian rabbits. They must be stopped. The War on Sex-case Bunnies starts here.

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"Aerosol"

Let us begin with The Swedish Chemist Shop Joke:

A man walks into a chemist shop in Stockholm, goes up to the assistant and asks, “Good morning, I wish to buy some deodorant”
“Ball or aerosol?”
“Neither. I want it for my armpits.”


Achtung! Flammenwerfer!

The street where we lived always seemed to be in a state of flux. Some of the houses were owned by British Airways, and they rented them out to staff to keep them local. Most of the time, however, there were always a few left empty, and this gave us the chance to do what thirteen year old kids loved to do: doss around on someone else’s property.

We were a bit of a terrible foursome. Me, my bruv, neighbours John and Matt. We’d all been told by our parents to a) stay away from those empty houses. They belong to somebody and they’ll be cross; and b) never play with fire. Slready this tale has an air of inevitability to it.

Matt’s garage was a bit of a treasure trove. He’d been the last to move into the estate, and his parents had filled the garage with boxes of stuff from their previous place in London. Matt’s dad was a do-it-yourself freak years before it became fashionable to knock your house about until it screamed for mercy, and one of these boxes was filled with aerosol cans of paint stripper and all kinds of dodgy chemicals with great big red warning signs on the side. Naturally, we’d got to them before he did.

One of us had seen a James Bond film where Sean Connery kills a deadly snake with a blast from an aerosol can sprayed over a lit cigar. It produced a flame several feet long and looked dead cool. We had the goods. We had to try it.

The garden at number twenty-seven was ideal. It was a corner plot in a dead end, so none of the other houses overlooked it. And it had been empty for months. We didn’t have cigars, but we had a cigarette lighter “liberated” from an ashtray at the village hall. But first things first - it was dark and getting cold, so we lit a nice big bonfire from scrap wood and warmed our bones.

Then it was time. Matt flipped the lighter on, and John hit the button on the first can.There was a loud “PHWOOOOOUM!” and a sheet of flame shot out a good five feet, singing Matt’s hair and eyebrows. Wow. We all had a go, and with expert manipulation of the flame and using a roled up nerwspaper instead of the fag lighter, we found we could have four flames on the go at once.

It wasn’t before the first cries of “Achtung Flammenwerfer English Pig Dog!” were heard and attempts were made to set fire to each others arses. Thankfully, noone was turned into a human torch, more by luck than judgement.

Equally impressive was finding that one of the tins contained some kind of foam. We could spray a message on the wall and set fire to it before it evaporated. Three of us were rolling on the ground in hysterics, watching through tears of laughter as Matt set fire to the word “FUCK” in six foot high letters.

By this time, we were getting through aerosol cans at an alarming rate, and our stash of a dozen cans of highly flammable paint stripper was running out fast. What I didn’t know was then as each one ran out, Matt was chucking them onto the roaring bonfire to be devoured by the flames.

The label on each and every one of these cans reads: “WARNING! Pressurised contents. Do not puncture or burn, even when empty”. And we were about to find out why.

BOOOOOOMPH!!!!!!!! The first can exploded in a ball of flame and shot out of the fire like a rocket, missing my head by inches and clattering onto the nearby garage roof.

BLAM! WOOOMPH!!!! BOOOOOOMPHA!!!! One by one the cans went off, and we were literally running for our lives. Smouldering metal and plastic was raining down around us as we hit the street, meeting our neighbours running the other way to find out what the bloody hell was going on. The two elderly lesbians at number forty were convinced it was the Blitz all over again, while the ex-copper three doors down from me was convinced it was the IRA.

Our parents, however, knew the long-and-the-short of it, as we were betrayed by our guilty faces and the unused aerosols still in our hands. My dad dragged us home with the classic “small boy side-hair tweak” (extremely painful), and once again we were sent to our rooms, grounded and banned from doing anything exciting or interesting, ever.

Two weeks later, buoyed with the joys of throwing dangerous things onto bonfires, we threw a half-full five litre oil can onto a raging conflagration on some local wasteground and didn’t hang around for the end result. That one made the local paper.

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"Horror-scopes"

Mystic Scary has spoken. Today's lucky word is fishcakes. Use this knowledge wisely.

Aries: You are doomed to a life of supporting Charlton Athletic Football Club.
Taurus: Today you will be constantly mistaken for Su Pollard. Stay at home.
Gemini: You will wake up tomorrow morning covered in tattoos, in the arms of a Russian sailor on a tramp steamer to Vladivostok.

Cancer: You will die from ebola after kissing your granny. Serves you right, she's been dead since 1985.
Leo: Funny that you're a Leo, as you'll be savaged to death by escaped circus lions. Next Tuesday. See if I'm right.
Virgo: Mars is rising in Venus. Which means you'll pot the black ball in the corner pocket and win a prize. The downside is that Mad Mickah will lose a fortune in side bets and he'll cut your legs off.

Libra: You are part of the Axis of Evil and deserve everything that's coming to you. No, hang on, that's Libya. Sorry.
Scorpio: Your firm belief in the powers of Feng Shui will result in a horrible, slow, painful death in a bizarre wind-chime accident.
Sagytar... Stagitaru... Sagittarius: Good news. You have a secret admirer who wants to have mind-blowing sex with you RIGHT NOW. Bad News. It's the massed pipes and drums of the Coldstream Guards

Capricorn: Your family will show their deep and abiding love for you by buying you a butt plug.
Aquarius: You will lose both your legs in a bizarre spacehopper accident. On the bright side, you will never have to go shopping for shoes ever again.
Pisces: Your inability to tell shampoo from battery acid will be your downfall.

If it's your birthday: Happy birthday. You're the only one celebrating. Everybody else has forgotten, even your mum.

More of this lunacy here.

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"Kitty"



We heart Nohands Kitten.

"Manky Old Spunker"

My referrer logs show that at least one punter found their way here by keying the word "beasteality" into Google tonight. I hope you found what you were looking for, my semi-literate aol-abusing friend. At least it's comforting to know that we're the number two site on google for whatever in the world "beasteality" is. Better still, despite Google changing their search algorithms recently, I remain the number one site for Woo, Yay and Houpla. You never know when you might need it.

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"Window"

By the time I was sixteen, my parents had decided I was old enough to be trusted with the keys to the house. It made life easier for me, and it also meant there was no longer any need to hide the front door key in the one place that a thief would never, ever think of looking: under the flowerpot right next to the door. All well and dandy if you remembered to trouser your keys in the morning. Which, for both me and my brother, was not very often.


Our house was hardly an impregnable fortress at the best of times, and it was easy enough to get in if you’d forgotten your keys. The downstairs toilet window - a gap about two feet by one foot - was as loose as hell, and with a little difficulty you could squeeze yourself inside. Just stick a small slither of metal up through the window seal and flip up the handle and it was open. A quick struggle and you were in, making sure the neighbours didn’t notice your bit of amateur house-breaking.

However, as we got older, we also got bigger and it became increasingly difficult to get through the tiny opening. The last time I tried resulted in a huge bruise on my thigh as I got stuck on the window latch, followed by falling headfirst onto the bog floor in a painful, crumpled heap. I’d rather go round a mate’s house or sit in the shed than try that again, thank you very much.

Nigel, on the other hand, was still regularly key-less and pushing his luck with the window. So it came to pass that I arrived home after photographic club one summer evening at about five o’clock to see a pair of legs poking out of the window, waving around frantically. It was my brother. He’d come home over an hour earlier, forgotten his keys and had climbed through head first in the time honoured fashion. He’d got stuck fast halfway through, his belt loop was jammed on the window latch, and there was no way of moving up, down, in or out to free himself.

There was no point in hurrying to rescue him. For starters, I was in fits of laughter at the sight of him, and his swearing and shouting just made me worse. And I HAD to see the front end first, yet with tears running down my face, and my hands shaking with laughter, I couldn’t get the key in the door to get in.

About five minutes later, with the cries of the trapped reaching a crescendo I finally turned the key in the lock and staggered down the hall into the downstairs loo. What I saw just finished me off. Nige was propping himself up on the sink, bright red with all the blood rushing to his head and covered in dog slobber from Snoop’s usual over-enthusiastic welcome home to the young master. We was livid.

“Well, don’t just stand there laughing you bastard - get me out!”

I will forever curse the fact that I didn’t have any film in my camera.

He was stuck fast. I tried to drag him through, but the ripping sound of his school trousers giving way told us this was a non-starter. I had to go back outside and literally drag him back out of the window by his legs, while a small crowd of interested passers-by shouted encouragement and clapped heartily when he shot out, like a cork out of a champagne bottle. Worse for him, the entire groin area of his trousers was ripped away, revealing a lovely pair of crusty Y-Fronts for the entire world to see.

Of course the folks found out, and we caught hell (as usual) and the bog window was placed permanently out of bounds. Anyway, by climbing up the cherry tree, swinging across to the balcony and jemmying the window, we soon found that getting in through the bathroom was a doddle. But It had to come to an end sooner or later. We did one of those careers tests at school. It said my ideal job was “housebreaker”. A fair cop.

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"Making it Happen"

Greetings to my highly esteemed colleagues, many of whom may be reading these pages for the first time thanks to an article in the staff magazine detailing my outrageous fortune. If any of you are in a position to offer me an incredibly highly paid writing gig (where, of course, I wouldn't have to leave this wonderful department I already work in), this duck ain't too proud to beg. God bless ya, guv.

"Scam"

I love getting those dreadful Nigerian scam e-mails, and frankly I won't get out of bed for anything less than $50,000,000 (FIFTY MILLION US DOLLARS). They let you into a world of crime so brazen, you'd have to be thicker than Jade Big Brother to get sucked in. So, I was totally disgusted and a little insulted to receive this:

"RE : ASSISTANCE FOR THE IMMEEDIATEE TRANFER OF US$18"

Eighteen dollars? EIGHTEEN DOLLARS?!?!?! The creep's only going to give me 15% of that, so I'd be left with a massive $2.70, or just less than two quid in real money. It's hardly worth my running down to Lagos and giving him a piece of my mind. Besides, he could be new to the game. He's probably been told to start off with loose change before being allowed to work on the big money scams. In which case, it's good to see sound training advice and solid career progression employed in the field of international crime. They could have seminars and everything. Make it happen, criminal dudes!

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"Wales"

When you’re a student, only one thing matters in life. Drink. Lots of it, and prefarably as cheap as possible. So it was a throwaway remark by Clive that started it all off.

“Do you know how cheap beer is in Wales?”

We didn’t. He told us. We decided to go to Wales on holiday.

The whole affair was planned like a military operation. We were to take the train to Merthyr, and walk through Wales, climbing over three of the biggest mountains we could find. It would be a healthy two weeks of hiking and camping, set off with the desire to get rip-roaringly drunk whenever the opportunity presented. We bought piles of military-style dehydrated meals, and meticulously planned our route down to the last footstep. It was going to be hard work, but fun. You heard me: FUN!

It was late July when the six of us took off. Two hippies Steve and Martin, two slobs myself and Clive, and the brothers Pat and John. It was a blazing hot day when we finally got to Merthyr in the late morning, real T-shirt weather. It was just a shame we’d dressed for a crossing of the Antarctic. Our packs were so heavy with food, clothes and tents you’d have thought we’d have packed anvils. Then there was the small matter of the route march to the youth hostel near Brecon, about fifteen miles away. After about thirty minutes, we had reached the cemetary on the outskirts of Merthyr, half dead with exhaustion, we were more than willing to join the inhabitants.

Words cannot express the hell of that day. But I’ll give it a damn good try with “Bloody fucking awful”. We arrived about seven hours later, having taken a pointless “short cut” that had got us hopelessly lost 400 yards from our goal, sweating like pigs and about ten pounds lighter.

You think THAT was bad. You should have seen dinner. It came out of a vacuum sealed bag marked “risotto, just add water”. We did. We got cement. Cement that would block up your arsehole for weeks to come. We had bags and bags of the stuff too. They looked like torn up cardboard and became known as “Ratpacks”, on the assumption that only a rat would eat them. Or worse still, that was what they were made out of.


Dinner is served

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed and hopped around on blistered feet. We had a mountain to climb. The idea was that we’d climb Pen y Fan, go over the top and arrive in Brecon in the late afternoon, happy wanderers singing the joys of summer. Bollocks to that. Up the mountain with minimal gear and back down again, and stuff the those plans we’d spent weeks putting together.

With the sun still pelting down, it was a hard old slog up the mountain, I can tell you for nothing. And what did we do when we got there? Admire the view? Slap each other’s backs on a job well done? Nope. We threw stones down the side to see how far they’d roll. I had the find of the day - a large round boulder, about the size of a basketball and weighing about fifty pounds.

“Hey guys! Look at this!” I shouted, heaving my find over the edge. I fully expected it to fall about twenty yards and stop. Instead, it shot down the mountainside like shit from a goose gaining momentum as it went. About 1,000 feet below us there was a squad of soldiers on a mountain route march. Like a silent movie, we watched in horror as one of them pointed up the mountain at the guided missile approaching, and they scattered in all directions, quite literally for their lives. We hid.

For a full five minutes, the boulder of doom thundered on. At one stage it ripped through a flock of sheep, miraculously missing every one of the panicking beasts. Then it chased a horse for a full hundred yards before slamming into a dry stone wall, sending shards of shattered rock in all directions.

I was in fits of laughter. The lads weren’t. Steve the hippie, despite thinking the law was Babylon itself, was all in favour of handing me in to the police if I’d had killed anyone, and continuing the holiday without me. The others were in full agreement, and Pat and John already had me in an armlock, just in case I tried to make a break for it. Cheers, guys.

“You TWAT!” was the politest comment that the usually laid back Martin offered, though he was finally beginning to laugh by then. Back at the hostel, I was put on ratpack duty. For ever.

Clicky for part II of this epic tale of mirth and woe.

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"Allo! Et maintenant!"

I seem to have neglected the one true faith over the last couple of weeks, and have found no fewer than four new stories at Weebl and Bob. In fact, they're all about Bob's holiday in France with Weebl only appearing in X-rated flashback-o-vision, and they're up to Jonti's usual high standard. Watch out for the "My name is Kevin" line, your trousers will be soiled.

Auxerre 0-1 Arsenal: The mighty Gooner machine just rumbles on and on. Enjoy it while you can.

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"Faux Pas"

So I went to the wedding of Mrs Scary's best friend this weekend. It was a beautiful, beautiful affair. The moment when the happy couple left the church and immediately went to pay their respects at the grave of James's grandparents was perhaps the most touching thing I have ever seen, a private moment surrounded by dozens of friends. It brought a tear to the eye. In a non-girly way, I might add.

Unfortunately, at the reception we were sat with four Bridget Jones clones who spent four hours discussing their diets, their men (lack of), their aspirations to become theatrical dressers and the hope that one day they might become interesting. I nodded, I smiled, and I even managed to laugh politely in all the right places, even if Mrs Scary had long given up.

However, by the time the discussion of "What's the best film ever made?" had gone into its second hour, I too had had enough. I must admit that even after gamely sitting through complex Weightwatchers points calculations for the entire afternoon and the aesthetic merits of Robbie Williams's arse, I completely lost it.

"In the name of God! Pretty Woman is not - repeat IS NOT a modern fairy tale about true love and the American Dream. It's a sordid little movie about a man who drives around picking up prostitutes. He's a kerbcrawler! A sex pervert! He probably even had a small rodent stuffed up his arse while he was at it. And I'd better sit down now because everybody's staring at me..."

Mrs Scary let me off with a warning, because she's just about the only woman in the world who agrees with me on this one.

And the Bridget Joneses were wrong too. As we all know, the best film ever made, voted for by a respected jury of drunk party dudes was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I can't decide. Flip a coin.

"Filthy Lucre Update Update"

Many thanks for all your kind comments about the site. Apart from the spicy brains here, my mailbox is overflowing at fastmail. I WILL get back to you if you've mailed me. The hit counter is still going mental as my page is linked from the top of www.blogger.com, so loading may a bit slow and you may still have problems accessing www.scaryduck.com for a bit while I sort out the bandwidth.

I got a supportive e-mail from the guys at Portland Search and Rescue Helicopter, which is under threat of being cut by the UK Coastguard Agency, putting local lives at risk. Do us a favour while you're here: visit my campaign website and sign the petition. Cheers!

Marcelim: The picture is Chesil Beach in Dorset, UK. Scary's house is on the extreme right of the shot on the far coast, and the Portland Helicopter base is dead centre, which is why it’s an issue so close to my heart.

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"Bottle of Fire"

The Summer of ‘76 was a scorcher. The sun burned down every day. It didn’t rain for months, and water was rationed as the reservoirs ran dry. Instead of a beautiful lush green, the England was brown, withered and fit to burst into flames. Which is probably a very bad thing if you’re a ten-year-old pyromaniac.

I just couldn’t help it. I had a thing for fire. My parents didn’t help much by putting me in the cub scouts, which was rubbing two sticks together and blazing camp fires all the way. My most excellent grandfather had a bonfire almost every weekend, and we’d pile anything flammable on top and watch the flames scorch the feathers off birds for a hundred yard radius.

I had to burn things. It was ace.

So it came to pass that I found myself on the wasteland between Loddon Hall and the youth club with nothing to do and a packet of Swan Vestas rattling in my pocket. A hedge ran along one side separating it from the park, and that’s where I found an empty glass coke bottle.

It was then I had one of those lightbulb-over-your-head moments.

“Wouldn’t it be great if I could light a fire in this coke bottle and carry it around with me?”

To a ten year old this genie in a bottle stuff is pretty sound logic, but frankly, nigh on impossible as any fule kno.

I stuffed the bottle with scraps of paper and tinder-dry sticks of which there was a plentiful supply. I struck my first match and put it in. Nothing. As soon as it passed the bottle top it went out. Stupid thing. I tried it again. And again. And again with less paper and sticks in the bottle. Clearly it wasn’t going to work.

My second lightbulb moment.

“What if I lit the fire outside the bottle, and once it’s well lit, I can put it in!”

Genius. I set about building a small fire out of the materials to hand. One match, and up it went like Mount Vesuvius. In the space of approximately five seconds, my small fire had become a raging inferno. And there was no way on earth I was going to pick it up and shove it in a bottle. In fact, the fire was spreading at such an alarming rate over the grass and into the bushes that all thought of my fire-in-a-bottle were forgotten and replaced by an overwhelming urge to run away and hide under my bed.

So that’s what I did. I only lived about a quarter of a mile away, and my feet barely touched the ground. A glance over my shoulder confirmed the worst - the entire hedgerow was aflame in almost biblical proportions. I ran upstairs and dived under my bed. By the light of a blazing match (yes, I really was THAT stupid), I could see that I was alright and clearly hadn’t been followed home by the forces of law and order.

I went downstairs. My mother was standing at the kitchen window watching a column of thick black smoke rising into the sky, punctuated by the odd lick of flame. The sound of sirens could be heard.

“Ooh. I wonder what happened there then?”

I wouldn’t know, mother, I wouldn’t know. I just hoped my eyebrows would grow back before she noticed.

Postscript: I went back to the scene of the crime a few years ago (for the now infamous Wedding From Hell). It’s all grown back now, and I didn’t even have the slightest urge to strike a match. Hardly.

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