What's the Maddest Thing That's Ever Happened to You?

[Mr Pig]

Used to flatten pennies under the wheels of passing 'Inter-City' 125's.

We did the same thing but with the ballast stones. The line that passed near our house was a low-speed freight line, a train about every half hour, and we played on it often. We'd sit on the rails and work our way along sitting ballast stones on the top of the rail until we heard a train coming, you might end up with thirty-feet of stones on each rail. When the train hit them they shattered, pinged and flew all over the place! You didn't give a lot of thought to danger at that age. A kid was killed on the line shortly before we moved there but in the fifteen years I lived there no one was hurt.

Another sunny afternoon three of us made a den 'under' the track! We dug out a hole in the banking, right under the track, just big enough for us to huddle into. We were sitting on the bank right next to the rails and my two friends (who were about nine at the time!) were smoking cigarettes and talking about this guy who reported you for stuff like that (they were the kind of guys who were on first-name terms with their social workers etc) and one of them shouted "Look out, a greaser!".

Over at the other end of the dump a guy had just stepped out of his car. I thought this was the guy they were talking about, the guy who could get them in trouble for smoking. I sat happily by the track, as I didn't smoke, and said 'What, that guy over there?'.

One of the guys said 'not him, THAT!' and pointed behind me. I turned round to see the f****** huge front of a train about ten-feet from my head! I hadn't heard it coming and I totally crapped myself! Where I was sitting it wouldn't have hit me but in shock I leapt over the low fence by the line and sprinted away from the track. I looked back to see my friends pop out of the hole and start throwing stones at the train, which is what we always did.

That line is now a cycle track but work has started on turning it into a passenger rail line between Airdrie and Bathgate. Which is very sad because where I live now it's at the bottom of my garden! :0(

 

[4F]

Hmm just remembered another one. After quite a heavy session I decided to take the shortcut (5 miles) though the forest home. All was well until I remembered the stories in the local press about the "suffolk panther" which had been allegedly spotted in the area only the week before. Of course from then onwards I was convinced that it was stalking me so proceeded to find the biggest stick possible to give it some if it should attack thinking how I would be the local hero to have got the beast.

However trying to explain to Mrs FFFF the following morning as to why there was a 6 foot length of tree in the front garden was another matter..

 

[got-to-get-fit]

had an austrian policeman draw his handgun and chase after me ...for reasons i wont go into

Old party trick was to drink a shot of tequilla and pour a line of salt onto the bar and snort it

Rang my best friends boss and told her he wouldnt be into work the next morning as we were all of our tits on class A drugs

Screwed my neighbours wife videoed it and posted him the tape (i hated him by the way)

Got a lift home by the police from a train station platform that i had fallen asleep on (wife not ammused)

When i was a kid i on my paper round i regularly posted the monthly copy of razzle that a middle age gentleman had ordered........ to his 90yr old female neighbour for a laugh

i have calmed myself down a bit now.

 

[CopperBrompton]

Drove an uninsured brand-new truck into a war-zone while smuggling drugs:
http://www.benlovejoy.com/journeys/croatia/

Ben

 

[mickle]

I lived in Malawi as a teen in the seventies and decided in my wisdom to hitch up to the lake from Blantyre. During a petrol shortage caused by Moz rebels blowing up the lines. Duh. I got a ride in a Toyota pick-up for most of the way. We stopped in every village to unload people and chickens. My presence was a really big deal, kids would run out from every village to stare at me. Often the bravest one would run over, touch my hair and run away giggling. The driver, when we got to the end of his route invited me to stay with him and his family, which was an honour I didn't deserve so I made my excuses. My next lift was in an air conditioned Merc. The guy very kindly took me several miles out of his journey but made it very clear that he thought I was a stupid eejit for hitching during a petrol shortage.

Which dropped me at the end of a nine mile dirt road.

With night approaching.

With no other traffic whatsoever.

So I started walking. Knowing that it's only nine miles to my destination. Walking. And it's starting to dawn on me that perhaps I should have stayed at home this morning, and then the sun went down. And all of a sudden I find myself in the middle of Africa. On my own. In the dark. Proper black dark. Cannot see a thing dark.

Oh sh!t. Fecking spiders!, snakes!,I find myself a rocky outcrop and sit on it. Breathe. There will be a car along in a minute.. except of course that there is a petrol shortage, there are no cars on the road. I've seen fewer than ten vehicles all day. And then I hear the fecking babboons. Off in the distance but getting closer.

It could have been an hour but it felt like an age, I see the light of approaching headlights (oh thank fcuk) so I step out into the road. It's a white pick-up, it stops, I go to get in the passenger door and as I open it the driver says 'Get in the back you zarking idiot' and I spend the next nine miles of dusty dirt track in the back of a bouncing pick-up thanking a god I don't believe in.

 

[Noodley]

Nothing.

 

[mr Mag00]

cant think of much atm

 

[bobg]

Had a "couple" of drinks during a day shift, offered a mate a lift home on the back of my motorbike, went straight across the lights across the A13 in Dagenham, up the pavement and half way down the dairy products isle in Tesco's before we all slid to a standstill. ( at least I think it was Tesco's)
Surreal rather than mad.... inter office wellington boot throwing competitions with Dagenham CID during night shifts ... have partaken in alcohol strangly enough... ( it was the 70's )
Accepted the offer of a "lift" across from ship to shore in the grab of a crane, the operator clearly bore a grudge., winched it up to its max height, rolled a fag and went home....

 

[Disgruntled Goat]

Drove an uninsured brand-new truck into a war-zone while smuggling drugs:
http://www.benlovejoy.com/journeys/croatia/

Ben

Ben, I think you have just become my all-time No.1 hero. That was incredible.

 

[Disgruntled Goat]

Had a firework explode in me and my mates' face. One of them lost his eyebrows and apparently would have scarred him or affected his sight had he not rushed back to my house and stuck his face in a bowl of water.

Tried hitch-hiking in Belgium, in the pouring rain, at night until I realised Belgians don't pick up hitch-hikers. Walked the nine miles from Zebrugge to Bruges (sleeping in a bus stop on the way), had a coffee and a pastry and went back home.

 

[Disgruntled Goat]

had an austrian policeman draw his handgun and chase after me ...for reasons i wont go into

Old party trick was to drink a shot of tequilla and pour a line of salt onto the bar and snort it

Rang my best friends boss and told her he wouldnt be into work the next morning as we were all of our tits on class A drugs

Screwed my neighbours wife videoed it and posted him the tape (i hated him by the way)

Got a lift home by the police from a train station platform that i had fallen asleep on (wife not ammused)

When i was a kid i on my paper round i regularly posted the monthly copy of razzle that a middle age gentleman had ordered........ to his 90yr old female neighbour for a laugh

i have calmed myself down a bit now.

You are a bad, bad man

 

[CopperBrompton]

Ben, I think you have just become my all-time No.1 hero. That was incredible.

Heh, thanks.

Ben

 

[ChrisKH]

Made a sugar and weedkiller pipe bomb (several actually) and let it off in a sports field near a Telecom building. LITERALLY hundreds of windows were broken! It was 1974 - the police were called as they thought it might have been the IRA!

Four schoolboys were seen running into the distance pissing themselves laughing and shitting themselves at the same time!

That rings some bells. Cue memories of a frontal assault on a rats nest on Canvey dump using sugar/weedkiller grenades (spray cans, hole in bottom, stripey straws with bomb mixture in them for fuses) and air guns.

I have also just recalled stripping the wires of an extension lead with my teeth. Then realising it was still plugged in at the mains.

 

[ChrisKH]

Talking of canoes Joe, as a teenager we used to canoe past Bradwell Power Station, link up and swap canoes. if anyone fell in whilst walking across the canoe 'raft' you were wet for the day. What I haven't mentioned is that this was adjacent to the power stations cooling outlet pipes where the warm water came out. So you were probably wet and slightly radioactive. Worse still, our school Outdoor Pursuits instructor instigated this practice.

 

[Night Train]

Drove an uninsured brand-new truck into a war-zone while smuggling drugs:
http://www.benlovejoy.com/journeys/croatia/

Ben

I think you have certainly risen in the hero stakes too. An excellent bit of selfless madness there.