Who lives (occasionally) in a place like this? Ans: not me, but v.relevant to RR this week!
OK, just got in and seen that there appear to be no takers for End Of The Week Questions this week. As steenbeck said, I'd reserved a place in the queue, but the number on my pull-ticket was kinda smudged, so I'm not sure if I should be standing up or not . . . which leads me into my first question:
1. At some point, we've all been snapped back to attention in a boring meeting by realising we've been called upon to contribute. But, uh-oh, you weren't listening, so you have to wing it. What happened next? And was your response embarrassingly off-topic, or, as with mine, serendipitously brilliant. (I'll share later.)
2. A couple of weeks ago, we were asked what basic life-skill we lacked. This week, I want to know what ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS life-skill you are actually ace at? Me? As a former house-husband responsible for all domestic duties including the laundry, I am ridiculously proud of my "flick" ability. Who knows what I mean?
3. Sticking with the idea of "ultimately meaningless", what is the knick-knack that a burglar (God Forbid!) would pass by, but you would be heartbroken if it got lost or broken? Nothing over 20 quid/bucks in value allowed, and we'll exclude the usual photos/lock-of-kids'-hair type stuff. I'm not really after sentimental attachments, more inexplicable possessive ones.
4. Big one now: when was the last time you were REALLY scared, and why? I don't know what I can justifiably expect you to say, as I'm still debating with myself whether to even share mine with you.
5. I eventually realised that my Question 5 was music-related, and thus banned from the EOTWQs. So instead of asking about your choice of funeral music, I'll ask what quirky request/demand would you like to put in your funeral instructions. I have a couple, one of which is that, subject to a veto by my girls (of anything meaningful or valuable to them), I'd like all of my friends to choose one album from my music collection to take away, keep, and play occasionally to remember me by. But of course that puts us back on the subject of music AGAIN, which means this question might get ejected from the EOTWQ lounge. So just in case, here's an extra question to ensure I stay at the minimum of five required . . .
6. Having made myself a coffee in my clients' works kitchen today and walked out, I turned around to pick up the folder I realised I'd left next to the kettle, and went *SPANG!!* right into the self-closing door! So - what's your last stupid, self-inflicted injury? On scales from 1 to 10, which score was higher: the pain or the embarrassment?
.
78 comments:
1. I tend to get distracted a lot, yet my recoveries aren't ever that brilliant, usually I'll try to ask a question, but that's risky if you ask about the exact same thing you just missed.
2. I used to do a pretty good seal impression.
3. Looking around me, I would say this old baseball that I found once. I don't know why I hold on to it, but then again I'm a big hoarder. The baseball is standing on a slinky I haven't touched in years. There's also a picture, not of a family member, but of Bruce Lee. I think it's very cool, partly because it's panoramic (not sure if that's the word I want to use, I took it from the french)
4. That'll be the time a tyre exploded as Superfreak was playing on the car stereo, while driving at night in the middle of nowhere in a state that is in the middle of Brazil's nowhere.
5. I've thought a little bit about the music, but not so much about the rest, I don;t think I'd do anything too quirky, I would ask that the RR/'Spill nation be informed though.
6. I've got a LOT of these, natural clumsiness + larger size= more opportunities for clattering into things, knocking things over, banging one's head on beams and doors. I think just the day before yesterday I stubbed half my foot on a door. Naturally I thought I'd broken all my toes. I'm safe though.
1. What are these "meetings" of which you speak?
2. Here are some rubbish things I can do:
a. Throw a grape (or similar) really high in the air and catch it in my mouth.
b. Pretty much beat most 5 year olds at hide and seek
c. Draw the shamrock in guinness (i haven't worked bar for years, and hopefully never will again)
d. Do "the cradle" with a yo-yo
3. I'm very attached to my 60s/70s pottery bulls( of which i have 4) , they have such a nice shape to them, but aren't worth very much.
4. OOOOooooooh, that's a biggie
5. i want to be taxidermied (is that a word) -stuffed- and passed down the generations (set in a scene of me holding a really obscure record in one hand, and a glass of red in the other - possibly winking)
6. I drunkenly almost completely severed the index finger on my left hand, whilst drunkenly trying to make a second cheese baguette, shortly afterwards I fainted and broke my nose. So, overall - 10 pain and 10 embarrassment!!!
1.Meeting?
House hubbies don't do meetings. We have everyone dressed and fed in time to get to theirs.
2. MEANINGLESS life-skill you are actually ace at?
Can't think of anything at the moment. First off I'd have to admit I was ace at something, and we haven't got the far in self-esteem college yet. And anything I'm okay at, someone eventually finds a use for it so it end sup not being meaningless. Perhaps that's by meaningless lifeskill - sucking the fun juice out of anything with clearheaded inciteful logic. Yeah, thats it.
3. knick-knack.
I have an unimposing alarm clock that I absoluelty love. Cost my wife £35 to get it from Germany, but I reckon it's the ultimate alarm clock and for some reason it just tickles me to have it.
http://www.quantys.de/solarprodukte/solar_wanduhr/index.html
4. scared.
Dunno if it was the most recent, but the most memorable was years ago when I was rear-ended (my car was hit from behind; down boys) and my first-born, then a baby, was in the back seat. He was fine, but I'll never forget that wail.
5. funeral instructions.
To be honest, I don't have any. When I'm gone, I'm gone. people can do what they like.
6. stupid, self-inflicted injury?
Oh where to start. Actually, I'll tell you about visiting Edinburgh a few years ago for the first time and deciding to take a self-portrait on a wind-swept beach in a wee bit of a gale. Got the picture, but the camera wouldn't zoom anymore 'cause of all the grains of sand in it. Pissed me off 'cause it was a good Nikon, which I'd got a couple years earlier after ruining another good Nikon taking pictures too close to a waterfall. Old dogs, new tricks? Nah. (Oh, and lots of money wasted at the camera shop, but the embarrassment was deffo worse).
-------
Is that gordo's vacation home? If so, I wish I'd been nicer to him all these many months.
1. I can't actually recall ever doing this in a meeting - I've just joined the town council, so give me a couple of months... I do do it much too often in academic seminars, but that's not too much of a problem; one of the first skills you learn is how to shift the focus of the argument into your own comfort zone, so provided that I picked up a couple of key phrases from the original presentation, it's easy to frame a question that sounds not only as if it makes sense but even as if it's going to the heart of the topic. A bit tough on the person giving the paper, of course, except that if they're any good, they'll already have the skill of answering the question they wanted to be asked rather than worrying about what they actually were asked.
2. Enormous reservoirs of trivial knowledge, no use whatsoever since the days when one used to be able to get the price of a couple of rounds of drinks from the quiz machine in the student bar. And, on the way to becoming useless at any rate, excellent map-reading skills. Death to sat-nav!
3. Slightly mysterious spoon, dug up from the garden in the early days of developing the veg plot. It's got a hallmark, and it's either pewter or a fake trying to pass itself off as silver. And a piece of the handle of an amphora, picked up when I was part of an archaeological survey project in france - a REAL ROMAN artefact! Ten a penny in reality, but this one is MINE.
4. Yesterday lunchtime; first bit of warmth and sunshine in a month, so had to seize opportunity to transfer bees from small 'nucleus' hive into proper hive, and I don't think I've ever seen bees quite that pissed off. Okay, I was in a protective suit, so nothing life-threatening, but a couple of stings in the wrong place could completely throw my current work schedule, and anyway it's an awe-inspiring sight.
5. So, if we can;t have it in EOTWQ, when can we have a discussion about funeral music? I'm with EJD on this, haven't really though about anything except the music, and worrying about whom I should leave my guitar (my one really precious possession) to. Very tempted to steal your idea about giving away the music collection - Mrs Abahachi would like that too.
6. 'Self-inflicted' presumably rules out all pet-related injuries, including the classic time when I was weeding the veg plot, had to make sudden adjustment to avoid braining chicken that wanted to see if I'd found any worms, lost my balance and fell into some nettles, breaking my glasses in the process. Since MsStepAbahachi doesn't come on here, as far as I know, I feel I should also mention the time, when she was looking after the house while we were on holiday, she sprained her wrist by slipping in a pile of cat vomit that she hadn't bothered to clean up from two days before. But as for a proper answer, it almost certainly involves burning myself on some dish just out of the oven, but I haven't done it for a while.
@ Tin - Two out of three ain't bad, as a fat man once sang. "Vacation" and "home" are correct, but it isn't Gordon's.
As for the rest of the responses so far, excellent stuff. Need to put the girls to bed now, but will be back later.
ah, pertinent this week you said.
cauli's
1. That's a bit specialised- we don't really do meetings here, except for building site ones. And in that case, it's normally advantageous to pretend you haven't heard anything, even if you have.
2. I can toss an apple behind my back, and catch it without looking. 50% of the time.
3. Nope, tried here, but I really can't think of anything. Guess I'm post-possession.
4. I did get a bit nervous recently while pulling Sandra back from the street on a pedestrian crossing while someone was running a red light. As you do.
5. I self inflict with kitchen utensils often enough for the occurances to blur into a continuum. I did once have an amusing night at A&E, taking a friend in who'd cut himself on a gutter trying to get our football off a roof; the other casualties were a hysterical couple, one of whom had self-concussed while trying to serve up a tennis ball, the other who seemed to have suffered a hernia while laughing about it. As I recall, there was a radio feature on Julie Andrews running in the waiting room, which just made the whole thing that touch more surreal.
Oh, if tin ever sends me his solar clock, like he *ahem* promised he would, I'd have a knick-knack.. he wouldn't of course.. OK, net 'Spill gain of zero, don't do it Tin.
1. It's never happened to me in a meeting, as far as I can remember, but maybe I really wasn't paying attention. I do remember, though, reading a pub review on Sportspubs (now there's a website that lives up to its title) that included a line about watching a guy and his girlfriend talking in the bar and her saying to him "You've not been listening to a word, have you? You've been watching the football."
2. I can do a note-perfect impression of Scooby Doo laughing. It impresses my nieces no end.
3. My old Subbuteo equipment.
4. I was on a river, drunk, on a boat. And fell off it. Fortunately we were in a lock. I resurfaced sharpish – adrenaline has that effect – and pulled myself up the side of the boat, helped by a couple of friends. At the time, I wasn't scared, but after I'd sat there, feeling very wet and sorry for myself, I realised that coming back up between the boat and the side of the lock could have ended very badly.
5. Cheese sandwiches, bacon sandwiches, a bar. It's less quirky than considerate: that way, you cater for the veggies, the carnivores and anyone who requires fluid.
6. I fell, heavily, last Tuesday on a wet street, and the following night played softball dosed up on high-grade painkillers and Deep Heat. I now possess a left wrist like Popeye's.
Although that's discounting the time I did my back in putting my jeans on.
Great questions Darce - I'll enjoy reading all the answers too. Here's my two pennorth...Not sure what that is in €
1. I generally say "Ben c'est une façon de voir les choses - moi je pense que..." and then you are not contredicting anyone. Another great French one is "C'est pas faux..." That just about covers everything.
2. I am really inordinately, obscenely and unfairly brilliant at reverse parking. It's called a créneau in French. I can park on a postage stamp. No idea why - I'm not a very good driver really. Just disproportionately good at parking backwards. I'm shite at parking forwards, mind you...
3. I suppose my violin. I never play much nowadays but it dates from 1850 and has a nice tone. I just want to protect it, I suppose.
4. Driving up the motorway and for some reason all the wondows misted up very very quickly ) We were all breathing too heavily. I was stuck between two fast cars so had to keep up the speed. It seemed to take an eternity to wipe the windows and de-mist the windscreen. It was probably a few seconds but seemed MUCH longer..
5. Rushed up the steps into the kitchen of our rented holidqy house. The shutter was halfway down on the door. SHTOINNNNGGG! I don't think the neighbours saw me, did they???
For the funeral thing - I want everyone wearing white. Black is so..funereal somehow.
AAARGH ... is me!!! FP. I changed my identity for a work related blog so the FP identity wasn't used and of course I am now ... all over. We can't have that now can we...? Actually ... has a kind of mysterons-type appeal. perhaps I-ll leave it for a bit.
You're going to have to remind me, I'm afraid: is that ... with the stress on the last syllable?
On reflection, stupidest self-inflicted injury was taking the top of my thumb off when trying to declog the manual lawnmower by spinning the blades round.
So it's a ticket-based queuing system; I thought it was a rota pinned up in the 'Spill kitchen.
1) I usually own up to drifting off; I'm making the most of being able to get away with it, while I've got a young family and people accept the occasional lapse.
2) I can twiddle my thumbs in opposite directions. That's really not useful. And I don't know what your "flick" is, DsD, but I expect it's mightily impressive. Abahachi, satnav will NEVER supersede map-reading skills. And those computers will never catch on...
3) Everything I can think of is disqualified under the 'sentimental' definition.
4) The house next door to us was unoccupied for a while (almost became a cannabis factory but the police were onto them); the garden has got really overgrown and I thought I'd have a go at a sycamore that was growing too high near our garden. I managed to tread on a wasps' nest concealed under layers of bindweed, and they had strong feelings about the law of trespass...
5) We have a pantry shelf just at the height of the crown of my head. I keep my spare insulin syringes and blood-testing stuff at the back of the pantry. The true extent of the stupidity is that I keep injuring myself, and persist in keeping my medical supplies there.
@ nilp
We had a family friend over from Germany this summer and I sent it home with him. He opened it, it set itself to German time, he packaged it up and mailed it back. I opened it and it reset itself ... to German time. After awhile, you just get used to it.
(And yes, the only niggling critique I have about my ultimate alarm clock is it is I can't set it to the right time. Details, details.
---
Why was Julie Andrews running in a waiting room, and why did someone make a show out of it?
Ha ha.. I just wanted to remind Daddypig of the Gary Larsen Rat Poison Cartoon, but instead I'll refer you to the second comment
here, which I just googled while trying to find said cartoon...
FP - I'd have said reverse parking is really useful, but then I've seen people in Paris doing a sort of reverse-park-shunt, where you go to-and-fro and gradually bump the adjacent cars far enough apart to make room for yours. If that's standard practice across the nation, then I can see why the skill isn't valued.
And I forgot my quirky funeral request; probably for someone to do their best with the bruises, wasp stings and other imperfections.
@ frogprincess - Thank you kindly for your moniker clarification, but as you're here, I'm afraid I have to tell you your answer to No.3 is disqualified on grounds of value. Unless of course you really did get something that nice that cheap, in which case I have a rather long Amazon wish list I want to email to you ...
Thanks nilpferd. There are profound truths in those Larsen cartoons.
And I can see we're going to have a real schadenfreude laugh with No.6, so my apologies in advance for finding all of your answers to that just TOO funny to resist a chortle.
incredib;e questions!!! - reading out the responses (esp to 6) has got us all in hoots!!
We could always swap alarm clocks after all.. ours consists of a stereo system (Sandra can't stand waking up to buzzers or the radio) which doesn't play cds any more, to which I've attached a squashed MP3 player (don't ask), which has "8 hours of silence" tracks, which I have to remember to start at 11pm, ie now, (just a minute), which then run into music on a loop, which plays and wakes us up at the right time, if:
1) Sandra hasn't turned the volume down, because she doesn't know how to turn it off in the morning
2) I haven't forgotten to plug in the MP3 player, because I've had 'Spill music on the same stereo, which is next to the computer
3) I've simply miscalculated the time until we have to get up
4) I've inadvertently brushed the touch screen of the MP3 player, "pausing" it
5) general hubris
We normally manage to get up on time at least 3 days of the week.
Post in haste, repent at leisure ... I ALSO meant to say that people shouldn't get too hung up on the formality of the word "meeting". Any form of gathering that you were present at physically, but absent from mentally will do.
nilp, I think you use more carbon in a night than many small nations do in a week.
@ blimpy
us?
Have you forgotten to take your medication again?
No not you, the other you. No not that one either. That one, over there - hiding behind the fern.
@tinny - i've been regaling mrs mcf, and auntie mcf with them - I'm not mentals, honest!!!
Our carbon footprint is balanced out by the nights I forget to even turn the whole f**king apparatus on.
@ blimpy
oops
and here's me sitting here in just a thong
1 This happens to me all the time, because NHS meetings are the most boring meetings ever. Luckily everyone knows this so it's OK to say 'Sorry, could you say that again please?'. Or even if it's not OK, that's what I do. Unless it's the chief executive.
2 Crosswords. I am ace at them - my favourite is the hard one in the Observer. I do get an incredible sense of self-satisfaction of course, so it's useful to that extent. Although many people will tell you I'm quite self-satisfied enough already.
I can waggle my ears, too.
3 Every May in these parts there's an event called Spring Fling, where local artists and craftspersons open their studios and the rest of us can go and have a gaze. One I visited this year was a potter who'd decided to make it an interactive experience - he'd made loads of little plain pots, and you paid a fiver to choose one, glaze it and have it fired. Mine came out stupendously lovely and I adore it and will never part with it.
4 Driving along the motorway in the dark and in the wet, I saw the car in front of me suddenly brake and swerve and thought I'd do the same. There was a stationary car in the fast lane.
5 It's not that quirky nowadays, but I've always thought I'd like to have a silver birch tree planted on top of me. Jacquemontii, for preference.
6 I got so cross with the mower when it wouldn't start that instead of just putting my foot on the place where you put it before you pull the cord that I JUMPED on it instead and sprained my ankle. Pain 6, embarrassment 0 as luckily no-one could see me.
@tinny - don't worry, i am also (and always) nude...
I think I need to go lie down in a dark room for awhile.
*waves to Mrs McF & Auntie McF. Have a nice threesome BACKSPACE BACKSPACE BACKSPACE evening.
@ nilpferd
We had a nice load of veggies with tea tonight, so if you forget to start your clock apparatus I'll do some carbon offsetting for you in my sleep.
nite all (noon comes early tomorrow)
1. Say "yeah" or "no", and give a small, cryptic laugh. Wait for somebody else to fill the ensuing silence. Then bluff something impressively articulate at the next available opportunity.
2. I can do the catching a grape (or popcorn) thing, but this impresses my elder daughter hugely, so perhaps isn't meaningless.
I have very rarely lost a staring match.
3. I become sentimentally attached to inanimate objects very easily, so hard to say. But life has been that little bit poorer since the handle of my favourite coffee cup broke. I haven't thrown it away yet, just in case...
4. Every few months, there's an incident that reminds me that hundreds of people hurtling around at high speed in rolling metal cages a few feet away from each other isn't a very sensible idea.
5. I haven't thought it through yet, but it might be on a beach and involve sending something off to sea. Although we did this at my wedding.
6. One that scores 10 on both scales, from when I was about 11: I attempted to vault over a duck house, and failed. Sharp corner. My dad, luckily, is a doctor, and managed to stick the wound together. It wouldn't have been a nice place to have stitches.
I'm a relative newbie to the EOTWQ, but could I take a ticket for the queue?
2. &, possibly, 1. Breaking wind.
3. Didn't think I was posessive until my car got knicked. Still missing my missing cd's, shaggy coat, rusty golf umbrella with the hole in it, plastic hairbrush/mirror, emergency cigar stash, windscreen wiper cloths [That's enough now, stop whining. Ed].
4. Saturday morning, with hysterical Shoeteen on the phone, after hitting another car (all ok, 1 door, 1 front panel, pride & finances slightly damaged). Good luck, Toffee.
5. No need to bother as am supposedly immortal.
6. Trimming the palm by the pool with gas powered saw, tripped & fell in with power tool running.
So, in the unlikely event that Blimpy and I make it to an RR social at the same time, he's the naked fellow missing a finger with a crooked nose. Noted.
DsD--Wonderful questions which I hope to answer eventually--they're marinating at the moment.
But I'd like to say to Saneshane--now that I've figured out a way to listen to music in the car and more importantly in the kitchen--I fucking love Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit. Seriously, I can't believe everyone in the world doesn't love them. ANd Ejaydee--Tabu Ley Rochereau is one of the most beautiful things I've encountered in a while. I listened in the car for a long drive mostly through golden countryside. And tonight we listened in our kitchen making dinner during a severe thunderstorm.
And just now listening to Selda. just remarkable.
I'll start off with 3, 4, 5 and 6 and meditate on the other two hard ones for later.
3. Knick-Knacks; It's a teaspoon, I like it's shape, it's got 'Bolivian Silver' on the back plus 6 of those stampings that teaspoon makers like to use and it was the one I used for my breakfast and lunch throughout WW2. When my Granny died it passed to my sister and one day dozens of years later I happened on it in her kitchen drawer, I couldn't believe it, I recognised it instantly. She forced me to take it.
I now use it religiously for my porridge every morning.
4. Really scared: Never. Hardly even frightened. I don't say that with any braggadocio, it just doesn't seem to happen; my wife comments on it.
I've lived through some severe bombings in WW2, had 3 very close driving calls in the mountains north of LA [where I drove again last week] and spent a night trapped in the bathroom of a house in Zambia whilst a dozen armed burglars rampaged through the house stripping it of everything, details are at my blog under 'Adventures in a Foreign Land' if anyone's interested. I was concerned and very aware of the danger but not scared, my main concern was that were we to live through the ordeal we'd be pennyless, passport-less, clothes-less, shoeless, basically having only the pair of shorts that I was wearing; I dreaded the thought of dealing with banks, airlines, shops, etc.
5. Funeral Music: I'm going to cheat. En-route to the crematorium I want the last movement of Mahler's 2nd. [the choral part]. If I'm not quite dead I'd love to hear it one last time, it's one of the most beautiful pieces imaginable. Once they light the match I'd like someone to click on Exodus by BMW for the ride home.
I'd also like you lot to be made aware of the tragedy, I'll show my wife how to post on the Spill.
6. That would be when I hastily set a ladder against the house and started scrambling up it without thinking. I reached about 10ft when it slid away from the wall, as it fell my right leg went through the rungs so that when we hit the concrete all my weight came down on the ladder and was transmitted to my ankle shattering the joint, it wasn't broken, it was pulverised.
They say 'Don't walk under ladders', I say 'Stay off ladders'.
1. Meetings. I have a classic for meetings.
Once long ago I was in a departmental staff meeting at the university, I needed to take a leak so I excused myself. As I passed the dept. office the secretary said 'There was a phone call for you, your landlady called to say that a guy was on his way to check the solar water heaters on the roof'.
Oh my god, he has to go through my apartment to get on the roof and I have about 10 8ft ganga plants growing on my deck, [remember that picture from months ago?]
I stuck my head in the conference room and said 'Personal emergency just arisen, must leave' and I fled.
I got there before him but I had to struggle all the plants which were in 24" tubs and weighed about 80 lb. each all the way through the apartment to the back bedroom, they filled it wall to wall, floor to ceiling.
I hosed down the deck to remove the spilt soil and leaves etc and he arrived shortly thereafter.
Whew, close call!
Probably just me, but found GF's prosective postmortem 'Spill post almost as depressing as last weeks public castration of the Gremlin. Was in a good mood too. Oh well.
Suggest that when/if 1st 'Spiller decides to depart mortal plane we ignore request & play "1st of the Gang to Die". That should keep any non-Morrissey fans around for a while at least.
But Shoey, would you rather that GF - or any one of us - just disappeared from the blog one day and was never heard from again? Personally, depressing though it is to contemplate the event, I'd rather be told if something happened to one of us. And force you to listen to my choice of farewell music when it's my turn...
@ Steen
Agree re Johnny Flynn.
Sussex Wit, Citizen Cope & The Mammals currently have highest rotation with me.
oh and John Cooper Clark. Brilliant
1. Lesson 1: avoid boring meetings! But when I am at one I keep active by drawing all kinds of stuff in my notebook, I noticed that while doing that I still keep following everything that's being said & done by everyone else....
2. I can build really perfect flying paper planes within seconds
3. My collection of Swiss brochures describing famous postal bus routes from the mid 1930's, bought a complete set in mint condition in a used-book store in Amsterdam in the pre-euro days for 15 guilders, so it qualifies (even though the actual value for a real collector might be much higher...)
4. Having survived a couple of car crashes, a train crash, some spectacular bike crashes and a couple of hairy moments high up in the mountains (nearly) without a scratch, I can't really remember being really REALLY scared, there were a couple of moments I had some fears about the well-being of my companions at those times....
5. Me? dead?? (see 4....)
6. Jumping into a Rotterdam metro through the closing doors I hit a small post with my knee, can't reapeat the things I said at that moment......
donds for Johnny Flynn - "A Larum" is a top record!
Hey Darce - claiming my fiddle back. I got it at a flea market for peanuts. I just recognised that it looked very old with a typical "slim" waist. It's 20 times worth what I paid for it. Send that list!!!
1) not good at meetings..
as a seventeen year old I quoted Cohens "I don't like those pill that keep her thin" line.. unfortunately it was a fashion magazine commissioning my photos.. did similar at an art gallery in Covent Garden showing some of my photographic artwork.. I embarrassed a very highly respected art director about their total stupidity in styles of design.. Like I ever wanted to work.
and I'm never getting those four hours from Wednesday back.. but it was my first meeting in 3 years.. I designed quit a nice image while resisting the urge to shout BLUNT.
Well I hope i didn't say it out loud.
2) I can juggle a bit and fire breath.. but I'm not ace.
3) most are sentimental or Music/book related.. but my fluffy Orange Snake ...
man, did I say that out loud?
4) my son didn't breath for the first 17 minutes of his life.. once in a while a cold shiver goes down my back and I have to go in and see that he's breathing and then into the next room to make sure his mum is too. Scared wholeheartedly.
5) Every time I moved house my friends came around and took whatever artwork they wanted.. as you say family would now get first grabs.. but it could be done again.
6) A few months ago, I twisted in my chair to find an A.R.E Weapons album for Blimpy.. I put my shoulder out and missed the next week of work... the pain at 2am was just about ok... the beer anesthetic did it's job..
At 6 the next morning a 10 no doubt about it.
Embarrassment factor... as none of you lot could see me- just about ok.. internally at lest an 8.
6. I only mentioned the latest one, but last night I remembered my top/low 2. First, a long long time ago, playing football during the break at school with small rock/big pebbles, I didn't know anything about football them but I liked how the keeper threw the ball in the air and kicked it out. I tried to do it but missed the rock and fell flat on my back. Embarassment 10, Pain 6.
The second one, my brother and me were taken fishing in Cameroon. I'd never so much as held a fishing rod so was largely out of my depth. I was on my own on a clearing by the muddy riverbank, when I noticed quite a lot of ants under me, I got up a bit too quickly and slipped in the mud, about 3 times before I finally managed to get back on my feet, half covered in mud. That and the lack of activity on my spot convinced me to join my brother and the guy who had invited us. He had caught one, without a rod, but with a rock tied halfway up the line that he used to throw the hook further in the water. I tried this method, spun the rock over my head, but just as I was ready to let go, the hook lodged itself in my thumb, so the rock didn't take off but instead knocked me on the top of the head. Double Pain=10, Embarrassment: 7 because it happened so fast they didn't notice what had happened.
steen
glad you are getting to play the tunes now..
oooo
postmans just turned up with a nice package from Domino.. cool.. the artwork inside Wild beasts two Dancers looks like Egon Schiele.. ace.
@Tin
the only Citizen Cope I have is the song Bullet and a target.. that's great, what do you recommend?
Shoey: Sorry for the downer, if it's my talking about my demise it's probably an age issue. I've found that the older I get the less it bothers me, I see my contemporaries dropping like flies and I know that I'm not immortal so one day....Just hope it's one of those easy ones, he died in his sleep etc. But not for a while yet.
i'll gloss over the dark thoughts and go straight to the Q's:
1. It has happened, but nothing a non-committal nod and slight grin couldn't fix!
2. Now, by normal human standards I am very far from being considered strong. However, I've always been incredibly light (and even more so since subsisting on a Japanese diet for the last seven years) and thus have an uncommon insect-like ability to lift my own weight. I used to be able to (maybe still, I haven't tried in a while) do this thing (and Satankidneypie can attest to this) where I would hold on to a lamppost and make myself hang horizontally, giving the "hilarious" impression that I was being blown by the wind!!
3. I'm not much of a hoarder, I callously throw away even sentimental stuff and can't think of any silly things I've held onto.
4. I'm scared of most social situations like, you know, meeting people and that, but it's not real FEAR. The last time would have to be the previously documented giant spider incident in Okinawa.
5. I'd like it to be a very discreet casual affair with none of that depressing black suits and forced solemnity business. I always thought i'd like to have "Something In The Way" by Nirvana played and still can't think of anything better than that.
6. I once tried to cartwheel over low(-ish, but evidently not low enough) wall and cut my chin open resulting in stitches. The very day I had the stitches out I stepped on the back of a child's tricycle which caused the handlebars to flip up and hit me in the....you guessed it....chin, which immediately busted the wound open, leading to another round of stitches (but only the less-than-manly butterfly stitches kind).
1] Since going freelance, I've started paying attention in most meetings I attend as it might lead to more work. The only other type of meetings are for the Trustees of an organisation that's just had its funding cut so the meeting's aren't boring so much as having slipped into a torpor of depression - but when I drift off, a sarcastic comment about the Arts Council of England usually brings me back on-topic.
2] Ah, now, as we know, all our life skills are ultimately meaningless but I understand precisely the spirit of this question and, discarding my flexible ring fingers as a physical attribute, I'd submit the recent spontaneous discovery that I may well do an uncanny George Formby impression.
3] I know this isn't quite what you're after but I had a break-in years ago in which, among other more obvious possessions, I lost a pair of nail clippers. Maybe the shiny metal convinced the magpies that they were worth something. I was surprised to find after a while that it really bothered me. I think it was because, with stolen property of greater value, you immediately replace it, compensate for it in other ways, or just mourn its loss. With the clippers, because I'd never think to buy another pair whenever I was at the shops, the feeling of wanting to clip my nails but having nothing with which to so do was unforgettably angst-ridden.
4] Realised I was going on a bit with this one so I'll post it separately.
5] Can't think beyond the music either, I'm afraid, and that would be Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' Heatwave as I'm trundled off towards the flames.
6] Answering the phone with one hand while trying to take a full, open, screamingly hot carton of Covent Garden Broccoli and Stilton soup out of the microwave, I dropped the carton - not too much of it ended up on the floor, most of it stayed in the carton, but some of it splashed onto my forearm and because - and here, the stupidity achieves Wagnerian proportions - I carried on with my phone conversations so only ran my arm under cold water for a few seconds until the immediate pain had gone, I developed a patch of crinkly, peeling skin, the size of a small post-it note, which spent the next few weeks flapping uselessly over more of my exposed flesh than I care to see again. It's healed now and the brown and hairy factors mean the traces are barely noticeable.
Back to 4] Tricky, this, because, between having two small children, learning to drive and the rest of the big grown-up things the last decade has brought, reasons to be scared crop up quite routinely and are easily sublimated. Maybe the being scared is cancelled out by the greater capacity to face up to it or do something about it.
I think - "really scared" might be over-dramatic but I recall a level of apprehension before flying to Bangladesh for a week's work in 2005. Other than the prospect of the work itself, everything else about the preparation for the trip was negative - missing my family, knowing the hassle being away would create with childcare arrangements, jabs and tablets to prevent hideous diseases, Foreign Office warnings about terrorism - so that a worm crept into my head telling me I wouldn't be coming back, if I got there in the first place.
As it turned out, an entirely English flight delay caused by fog made me late for the long-haul flight from Heathrow, meaning a miserable night in London before a hastily-booked journey the next day which itself was delayed in Abu Dhabi by a security alert.
What this all meant was that I arrived in Bangladesh actually contemplating the work I was supposed to have started that morning rather than the things I'd been expecting to go wrong. I then missed or ignored the driver waiting for me at the airport in Dhaka, had to tip a policeman and a bloke sorting out taxis to get in a cab, couldn't get the driver to understand I wanted to go to the British Council address on my list of important addresses and then realised the road he was driving down was the one my hotel was on.
In a sequence like a Martin Scorsese tracking shot, I then got led into this luxurious hotel, was given a cold glass of papaya juice while checking in, shown to my room with an inredible view of the Dhaka skyline, and then phoned to be told I had a cab waiting to take me to the British Council. A change of clothes, sunglasses on and window down in the back of the cab, I was able to soak in the atmosphere - by the time I got to where I was working, I was in a speedy, sleep-deprived and fearless rush of inspiration which lasted pretty much the whole week.
Cos I sometimes read or listen to the spill and cos I like these questions I feel I should contribute sometimes, So here's some fuel.
1. At a meeting I will quite blatantly state that I wasn’t listening by saying, "Could you repeat that please?". But...
At school I was once admiring the fine form of the girl sat in front of me when the physics teacher asked me a question. Startled I said, “Eh! Come Again?”. Oh the laughter...
2. Ironing. Fookin’ hate ironing but I’m really good at it. A skill I need about three times a year when I have to iron something for someone else. Oh alright maybe a bit more than three times.
3. A collection of badges. The top two would be The pumpkin head on fire cover from Sonic Youth’s “Bad Moon Rising”, The Coconuts (no Kid Creole) all in black dresses looking utterly chic and fun.I occasionally wear them knowing it will provoke nostalgia conversations. If music isn’t allowed A copy of the New English Dictionary from 1932. It’s a lovely thing. Reminds me that language has changed and words like swastika were once completely innocent. As you can tell by me spelin I rarely use it
4. It scared the health out of me. I have a wasp, and to a lesser extent bee, phobia. Anyway, at an old house made of timber I was on the downstairs toilet, a cramped converted broom cupboard, when I heard the most frantic buzzing right above my head. Blind panic overtook me and I leapt forward to headbutt open the locked toilet door. Sprawled on the floor, bare-arsed, with my trousers around my ankles and my hands over my head I looked up and was grateful to see that our guests were still upstairs. Then the buzzing restarted and pulling up my trousers i bolted out the back door. The embarrassment. It was actually a bumble bee that had got lost in the air ducts built to ventilate Finnish wooden houses. We had a colony living in a wall cavity above our heads where we slept. You could hear them buzz from April till about midsummer I think they went back to hibernating then. Being that close helped reduce my phobia somewhat.
5. Sorry, not thought about it.
6. Can I tell you about the time a cousin cut into his leg with a chainsaw…. No? Has to be me? Well, there was the time I headbutted a toilet door, and then the time I headbutted a steel girder. That happened when I was a cleaner in a sweet factory. Blood everywhere and as it happened on the day the factory closed for Christmas the supervisors of the cleaning company had left early. That was illegal and led to several people being reprimanded.
How about the time I was at a training camp to learn how to become a cricket coach? At the end of an exercise, in a fleshly waxed indoor hall, a Kookaburra indoor ball rolled to me, I flicked it up with the outside of my trainer and perfectly juggled it, right-footed, across the hall to where we were told to gather. Rarely had I achieved such perfection while doing that trick. So, I flicked the ball high with the aim to run and then volley it. Instead my left foot landed on a small bowl-shaped cone. I skated across the floor twisting sharply to the left and then to the right before collapsing in a heap. People laughed while I screamed in agony. My cartilage or tendons, I forget which, had ripped bone away from bone and left it floating around my high instep, such was the violence of my twisting while I tried to remain upright. I’ve never been really able to pound my left foot down when bowling since and lost a lot of pace. Oh and then there was the time I over extended my knee the wrong way when I dropped an 80 kilo water boiler onto my right shin. That happened just as I'd been allowed to start taking the new ball again... I’ll shut up now.
Fuel!
'Twas I. Unlikely to be a regular occurrence. I had a lot of free time and just thought I'd contribute something for once. Also, I realise there were too many obscure cricket references in there for my last act of total brainless stupidity to be fully comprehensible.
Boy, these are tough questions - and I'm cream-crackered after a long and stressful day at work, so my answers will probably stink.
1. I've certainly drifted off in a number of meetings and been extremely close to nodding off in one a few years ago - I don't know that I've ever come up with a line worthy of your attention. This is embarassing though - I often drift off when ToffeeGirl is telling me something important, and then find myself 'busking' for a while, hoping that something will click before she realises that I haven't a clue what she was talking about. I'm bad ...
2. Here are two things I'm really good at, but which have absolutely no life value that I can think of:
a. I can read fluently upside down (preferably, the book should be upside down not me, but I suppose the overall effect would be the same either way). This is occasionally useful when reading letters/memos on my bosses desk but that's about it ...
b. I can accurately repeat what someone's saying to me, seconds after they say it. OK - that sounds rubbish - but if, for example, I'm listening to a recorded message I can recount the message word for word. Imagine the possibilities! Exactly ...
3. A couple of mantlepiece-type items that once belonged to my Grandma. Wouldn't want to lose them.
4. Fairground ride at Blackheath Common about ten years ago. Scared me shitless.
5. My mum was buried with a 'Stand Up If You Hate Man U' biro. I'm not sure that I can beat that!
6. We used to have one of those metal garage doors which sort of rolled up. Each metal strip was about four inches wide and there was some sort of rubber backing that held it all together. For some reason I once tried to shut it by pushing down on the top of one of the metal strips instead of using the handle (hey, who knew?). The result of course was that the strip above the one I was clutching with my finger tips started to close against my one - my fingers had strange bruised lines on them for several days.
Well, I thought that was a wonderful first comment, Fuel. It was good to see your name. Don't worry, it's not addictive. (cackle)
Okay, here goes...
1. This happens when I'm waitressing sometimes. I'll ask somebody for their order, and literally forget what they say by the time I get a chance to write it in the pad I'm holding. I usually laugh and explain how stupid I am. I probably have a reputation for being very dim. (I think it's because I just don't care!)
2. Did I tell you about the cherry stems? I can also blow bubbles off my tongue.
And, in keeping with my mention of memory in the last question, I have a bizarrely sharp memory for things in the distant past that don't matter at all. Not such a good memory for important things like facts, though.
3. This is a hard one, because I tend to assign sentimental meaning to the most meaningless objects. I have little twigs and leaves that Malcolm and Isaac have given me that I just can't get rid of. Yes, I'm a hoarder.
4. Well, there was that time in the plane coming back from Hawaii, but I've told you about that. So, maybe... when Malcolm was three he woke us up in the middle of the night with a fever of over 105. I was terrified. The worst was yet to come, though...he had a fever for 10 days, didn't eat, nobody could tell me what was wrong. It was terrible. Sort of panic followed by slow motion fear. I don't like remembering it.
5. I'm sorry, I have trouble thinking about this stuff.
6. There's a lowish shelf at work I bang my head on every time I stand up after bending down to write something. Not too painful or embarrassing, though. Oh, wait... one time we had a few friends over, we were watching movies we'd made, (projected on the wall--it was a fun night.) Malcolm was 2ish at the time, and I was still nervous about him on the stairs. He started climbing up, and I sighed and went to carry him down, again. I slipped and fell, holding him, halfway down the stairs. Embarrassing and frightening, but everybody was fine in the end.
"My mum was buried with a 'Stand Up If You Hate Man U' biro. I'm not sure that I can beat that!"
Much respect to your mum, ToffeeBoy. But how about getting a chant of "Stand Up If You Hate Man U" going at the funeral itself?
@ barbryn - now that would be good!
@ ToffeeBoy/barbryn - though if the mourners were all chanting that, wouldn't it reflect poorly on the deceased, who'd be lying down the whole time?
@May1366 - that would have been a coffee-splurted-over-keyboard moment, except I'm not drinking any coffee.
Lie Down If You Hate Man U it is, then...
1: Boring meetings? So, so very many of them in tecahing, all stuffed with acronyms that you don't understand and by the time you do, they'll be passe and there'll be some other useless wankery going on. If I'm that bored I stick to doodling viciously and compiling playlists.
2: Like Steenbeck, I can do the Audrey-from-Twin-Peaks cherry stalk thing. With extra drooling. It's tremendously sexy.
3: Knick-knackery, it's a toss-up between a very solid sandstone golem that we got from Prague the first time we went. It was a magical trip and we both adore Prague. The golem is pleasingly shaped too, not the really ubiquitous ones you get, but a little bit different. T'other is a sculpture I got from a charity shop in Aber made of silver wire set into a granite plinth. It's a very stylised 60s woman's face and a label stuck to the plinth says who it is, why it was made and who made it, so it's got some sweet history and is very simple yet beuatiful. It casts a wonderful shadow. Sometimes I am tempted to get in touch with the lady in question (she and her husband make sculptural radiators) and ask her about it, but I worry she'd want it back. Selfish but true. Jon doesn't like it.
4: I don't really get scared, I lack the fear gene in many ways. Even when I should be terrified I find I'm thinking "Hmm, I am sure I should be having an intense reaction to this" but still fail to muster up the necessary. One moment which makes me feel sick is when I was nannying: I was throwing Jacob, the little boy, into the air and chucked him onto the sofa, just as his sister pulled back the sofa cushions, leading to him smacking his head with an audible crack against a wooden strut. Makes my stomach hurtle south, even 15 years later.
5: Not really thought about it much, bar the music and where I want my ashes to go. Hopefully I have a while to think about it.
6: Tried to move this stupid chair on its rollers so I could plug in my camera, used foot against laminate floor for leverage, rollers locked, foot slid with force into corner of solid Ikea wooden computer station. The air was blue, as were my poor crushed tootsies.
GF, Hope it's an easy one too, but not for a while yet, ok?
Did steen borrow FP's cpyrighted cackle?
About time Fuel. Need some Bunnymen support round here.
Oh, & Said you will always be one of my favorite characters in "Lost". Can you introduce me to Kate?
I DID Borrow her cackle, and thought about her when I was typing it. Sorry, FP, it's an homage, not thievery!
Late as usual ...
Boring meeting - talking about local authorities - the speaker suddenly turned to me and asked a question to which I replied (stirred from my reverie and without a clue) "Doncaster!" It just happened to be the right answer (or if it wasn't, no one knew). My friend and I now refer to these lapses of concentration as 'Doncaster moments'.
2. I'm very good at making friends with people's cats. Everyone else will be carousing and I'm in the kitchen with the cat on my knee.
3. I would miss the glass Welsh dragon I was given in 1983 when I left a job in Cardiff. It's a bit chipped and utterly worthless but I'm fond of it.
4. Southwold lighthouse, coming down the stairs which surround a void which goes all the way to the bottom. About 3 years ago. Have mentioned it before. Dreamt about it for a week.
5. Dunno really. Just 'get drunk and enjoy it'.
6. Stepped backwards off the wrong side of the step ladder when I was painting the ceiling in sprog's bedroom. I was on my own so the pain was highest (8-9), but then I had to explain to Mr Munday what the big bang was and why I couldn't walk properly (landed on my back).
I still feel bad about the whole ARE Weapons injury causing
cauli here, dropping in, not using my new id ;-)
sorry, no time for Qs.
missing you guys, enjoying swedeish rain and mist on the lake...
Late as ever, but with a valid excuse this week: the computer crashed. I had no idea how frustrated I'd feel not being able to go online, and I thank *The Creator* that there are still teenage-boys-not-off-on their-hols-yet in this neighbourhood, willing to come and help their friend's technophobe Mum.
1) Don't think I've ever been in any kind of corporate meeting, but I am stuck with our equivalent of the PTA. I knit (and thus get out of having to write the minutes!)
2) I can do a mean shuffle off to Buffalo.
3) Nothing at all really, unless you can get me some kind of internet connection for under 20 quid (see above)
4) Handing my 10-month old daughter over for open-heart surgery. She'd already had several other operations (and coped with them all far better than I had!), but that one was by far the worst.
5) I don't have TIME to die, let alone think about it.
6) I'm very fond of burning my hand on the oven door; an oven glove clever enough to prevent that has yet to be invented.
Off now to catch up on the rest of the week!
1) No brilliant recovery whatsoever. Just sit there blinking and nodding and eventually say "sorry, I've got no idea what we're talking about".
I was once asked by a manager "did you draw that cat while I was talking to you?" Yes, I said. Do you like it?
2) I can write parodies of Bob Dylan songs if given enough wine and poked with a sharp stick.
3) Some photographs taken during my first visit to a place in Euston called Transformation.
4 and 6) A few years ago I was feeling rather smug and pleased with myself because I had been to the blood centre to donate platelets. I strutted down the street to the tube smirking at passers by and generally feeling like the bee's knees. I got to the station. I could hear a train arriving so I ran down the escalator and on to the platform. Unfortunately somebody had been sick on said platform and I put my pretty young foot into the results. I slid forward, landed flat on my back and briefly lost the plot.
When I opened my eyes I was not only lying in somebody else’s puke but my right foot was hooked under a (mercifully still stationery) tube train.
The passengers stared at me as if mildly interested and nobody pulled the communication cord. Unable to move I wondered vaguely if, when the train started moving, it would take my foot with it leaving me like a character in the Monty Python version of Salad Days. Would the lack of platelets mean that the blood wouldn’t clot but just go on pouring until it ran out? In fact I suppose it would have taken all of me and that would have been the end of that.
Fortunately, two women helped me to my feet and provided tissues and wet-wipes to clean myself. There were plenty of men about but none of them lifted a finger. The station staff seemed remarkably uninterested in my predicament and I went home aching all over, stinking to high heaven and reflecting that pride really does come before a fall.
Once home, I had a nice shower and a change of clothes, sat down, realised just how close I’d come to dying and shook like a leaf for several minutes.
Embarrassment and pain factors unclassifiable. Only lasting injury was an aching coccyx. The scared factor was entirely after the event but recurred in several flashbacks.
5) I would like the choir of Johanna Primary School to sing Waterloo Sunset.
Taken as such, Steenbeck! :-)))
Sorry for being absent from my own thread everyone. Love these responses, and will be back tonight with a proper summary of my thoughts.
Re question 6, I forgot the time I fell off the monkey bars in the park. I was abut 48 at the time. Pain - low (just winded)- embarrassment: 20 out of 10.
That should be 'about'.
Thanks, everybody. Given the previous few EOTWQs, I had an impossibly high standard to keep up to, so I'm grateful for enough responses that the column didn't fall completely on its arse.
Having said that, Qu.1 didn't really work, did it? Used to happen all the time to me, so I figured it would be a common experience. Oh well ... Anyway, I said I'd share, so if only for the other 9 getting all comments emailed:
I used to be the 'late' shift manager in a v.large mail order warehouse. The majority of my p/t evening staff were drawn from Bradford's various Asian populations, and when things were less than harmonious, they would often stop speaking English and bitch about each other in whichever Indian/Pakistani language they had in their respective lockers.
There was a large, tense meeting once when redundancies were rumoured. As the meeting went on, fragmented, adjourned, re-started, etc, I just glazed over. One of my supervisors, and his shop steward brother (who were two of the biggest shit-stirrers in the company) were sat nearby, talking in hushed tones and quite frankly, looking very furtively at some of the managers as they did so. For whatever reason, I swear I heard one of them say to the other "I'm getting a drink, do you want one?", and as he did so he looked at me. So I replied, "Ooh yeah, I could murder a coffee: strong, milk, no sugar please."
My supervisor's jaw hit the floor, and his brother's eyes widened until he looked like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. It transpired that my guess about the question was correct, but IT HAD BEEN ASKED IN PUNJABI !!! Just then the meeting reconvening, and I was quietly told about the Punjabi bit by another manager sat the other side of me. The penny quickly dropped with me that the Slag-Off Brothers must have been doing frantic mental reviews of all the conversations they'd previously had in front of me, in the assumption that I couldn't understand a word. I thought that was ace, and played the Mr. Inscrutable card from there on in. Funnily enough, I was treated with rather more respect after that!
As regards the rest, DsD 'Spill points go to:
2. Pointless Life-Skill - frogprincess, for her reverse parking brilliance in a country that thinks 'bumper' is an instruction.
3. Knick-Knack - goneforeign's spoon.
4. Scared - Shane, Debby, and all of the other parents have an unfair advantage here, so limiting my selection to 'self', GarethI wins.
5. Funeral - Toffee's Mum gets the award posthumously, and I shall think of her whenever I join in the song.
6. Self-inflicted pain - Blimpy had this one in the bag, right up until the Duckworth-Lewis-style factoring [that favours the embarrassing] gave it to AliM for the monkeybars incident.
And a post-script. Sorry to let you down, but I've decided my Really Scared moment is too personal to share. But tincanman's car accident resonated hugely. When we had our head-on crash in 2003, I didn't have time to be scared beforehand; my driving brain was too busy looking for a contact avoidance route. But as the dust and smoke cleared, and the pain and shock kicked in, NOT being able to see or hear Jess from her childseat in the back was the longest few seconds of my life.
. . . . . . . . .
Horrible few seconds / eternity, never happened to me or mine, but always at the back of my mind. BUT brilliant brilliant Punjabi translation story, "Ever discovered a skill you didn't know you had" might be a good EOTWQ.
And the "flick" ability that you're so proud of...?
Evening, DaddyPig.
Unexpectedly, DareysGran still has the borrowed eMac, so I have an (admittedly snail-pace) internet connected machine available.
The 'flick'? It's that rapid snap of the wrists whilst holding a washed-but-still-wet piece of clothing, just before you hang it up to dry. Get it right, and the item shouldn't ever need ironing!
And as I hate - and am useless at - ironing, I've made sure I'm damned good at the flick
...and we all thought you had gone all 80's electro with your hair style.
Yes, thanks for clearing that up...
Post a Comment