How many lives have you got left?

[Globalti]

Assuming that like the cat, we get nine, I've got six left. My nearest to death experiences were:

1 - Aged about 15, I crossed a road without looking, was surprised to hear a strange buzzing sound and looked round to find a white MK1 Escort van, wheels locked on the wet road, just as the front bumper came to rest against my leg. I will never forget the look of shock on the two occupants' faces.

2 - Aged about 24 and out rock-climbing I tripped over a root at the top of Causey Quarry in County Durham and plunged head first towards the edge and an 80 foot fall. Somehow I grabbed a root and slid to a halt with the upper half of my body over the edge, staring straight into the eyes of my startled girlfriend looking up from below.

3 - About 10 years ago at the end of a tiring day, driving back to Budapest in Hungary with my agent asleep in the passenger seat, I was following another car and daydreaming. The road followed a railway, doglegged, crossed it and carried on. As I followed the car through the dogleg I had a fleeting impression of the bumpers of a train flashing past my right shoulder. She didn't hear the train, slept on and I said nothing when she awoke.

There might have been a couple more I wasn't aware of but those are the incidents I've never forgotten.

 

[TVC]

Seven for me:

1 - As an early teenager I placed a banger in the neck of an empty vodka bottle we found in the woods and stood over it whilst it went off. The bottle disappeared and we heard the fragments landing some yards away in all directions. Of the three of us there, the only injury was a small rip in my mates jeans.

2 - 2006 got hit by a car. No details, I've already talked about it enough round here.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Near misses before I turned 17 were too many to list, I used to do things like jump out of trees, I was (I thought) utterly indestructible. Sadly falling from a standing position from a Ford Fiesta doing 50mph proved otherwise, I have been a LOT more careful since, and it's a cliché but since becoming a parent I take a lot fewer chances. I found a letter I wrote a girl just after that accident and reading it back now sends a horrid chill down my spine http://lawsie.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/strangest-letter-i-ever-wrote-to-girl.html

 

[Globalti]

Holy cow! Shouldn't that be in Rider's Tales?

I'm going to let Gti Junior read that later, we keep telling him the most dangerous part of his life is about to begin.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Only about 2 left

The brain damage I had when I was 18 months old nearly killed me through blood poisoning.

I was nearly ran over by a car age about 3. I was with my Mum and I just ran into the road unannounced. I still remember the car screeching to a halt and the driver giving my Mum a really dirty look. What a silly kid I was!

I almost drowned age about 6

I was diagnosed with leukaemia age 16

I fell off a small cliff in Germany and somehow managed to land head first (it pays to have a thick head some times).

I have almost...... actually, I won't say that one, it involved ludicrous amounts of alcohol.

I almost died from severe ulcerative Colitis a couple of years ago. My large intestine had ruptured and everything.

Actually, I will have done other things, so, technically, I probably should be dead!

Lucky white heather me!

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Holy cow! Shouldn't that be in Rider's Tales?

I'm going to let Gti Junior read that later, we keep telling him the most dangerous part of his life is about to begin.

I just tried to re-read it, and even although it was twenty years ago it was still too recent to read that blog post to the end!

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Seven for me:

1 - As an early teenager I placed a banger in the neck of an empty vodka bottle we found in the woods and stood over it whilst it went off. The bottle disappeared and we heard the fragments landing some yards away in all directions. Of the three of us there, the only injury was a small rip in my mates jeans.

You've just reminded me that I blew up my little sister and myself once! I wrote about it for a publication but can't remember which one so can't find a copy online!

 

[postman]

Many years ago i caught a virus,then got Pericarditis very nasty.So i am in the L.G.I. they sort me out put me into a bed.Then they give me a pill to put under my tongue.
Tell me to get some rest and sleep,it was nearly the permanent sleep,i began to feel sweaty and light headed i managed to get the attention of the Nurse there were only three of us on this ward.
I told her i did not feel well,then nothing i awoke surrounded by medical staff i was whisked upstairs onto the I.C.U. spent a couple of days with them then packed off home with pills.Weird don't want to go through that again,bad reaction to the pill that went under my tongue.

 

[RaRa]

I reckon I'm into negative numbers but stand out incidents include my own birth where technically I was born dead, impaling myself on a Raleigh Budgies handlebars and a fractured skull when I fell on the pointy end of a ski and then proceeded to topple off the side of the mountain.

 

[Globalti]

Our parents used to go off one or two nights a week leaving us kids rampaging around a big house and garden; we found a big tin of sodium chlorate in the shed and discovered that if you mixed it with sugar, it burned vigorously giving off dense clouds of white smoke. I could never understand why my Mum didn't wonder where all the sugar was going; we became quite good at confining it in various containers and lighting it with spectacular results. We used to get my Dad's shotgun out and load the two cartridges we found in a box - gawd knows how we never killed anybody. We dug tunnels in the garden and didn't get buried, we had bonfires, we climbed huge trees, we ran around the fields in the dark with a candle lantern, we melted lead pipes on the gas stove and cast big peace symbols in moulds made from fireplace cement, we found a redundant septic tank in the neighbours' garden, climbed in and built a floating platform with old drums and bits of wood, we made bows and arrows, shot things with an air rifle, smashed our bikes into piles of cardboard boxes, we used to push our bikes right to the top of the Chiltern hills and race back down at breakneck speed, ride for miles along country lanes with not a care in the world, go skating on frozen ponds, go tobogganing down the same steep hill.... the more I think about it the more freedom I realise we enjoyed in those days. And all of this around twenty years before anybody even thought of mobile phones.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I apologise if this is needlessly flippant, but why was there a Raleigh Budgie in the delivery room?

I've just remembered the big jump I did off a ramp, when my front wheel parted company with my bike prior to landing.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Our parents used to go off one or two nights a week leaving us kids rampaging around a big house and garden; we found a big tin of sodium chlorate in the shed and discovered that if you mixed it with sugar, it burned vigorously giving off dense clouds of white smoke. I could never understand why my Mum didn't wonder where all the sugar was going; we became quite good at confining it in various containers and lighting it with spectacular results. We used to get my Dad's shotgun out and load the two cartridges we found in a box - gawd knows how we never killed anybody. We dug tunnels in the garden and didn't get buried, we had bonfires, we climbed huge trees, we ran around the fields in the dark with a candle lantern, we melted lead pipes on the gas stove and cast big peace symbols in moulds made from fireplace cement, we found a redundant septic tank in the neighbours' garden, climbed in and built a floating platform with old drums and bits of wood, we made bows and arrows, shot things with an air rifle, smashed our bikes into piles of cardboard boxes, we used to push our bikes right to the top of the Chiltern hills and race back down at breakneck speed, ride for miles along country lanes with not a care in the world, go skating on frozen ponds, go tobogganing down the same steep hill.... the more I think about it the more freedom I realise we enjoyed in those days. And all of this around twenty years before anybody even though of mobile phones.

Sounds very familiar, how I never got enflamed, impaled or engulfed as a child is a mystery.

 

[RaRa]

I apologise if this is needlessly flippant, but why was there a Raleigh Budgie in the delivery room?

Haha thats my awful punctuation

The budgie incident actually occurred aged about 7 after a watching an episode of the A-Team. They were always jumping off things onto the bad guys without so much as a bloody knee. So my friends and I lay in waiting on the garage roof and jumped off onto the poor unsuspecting kid who pedalled by. It was carnage, i was impaled on the handle bars, my friend landed on the pedal and broke her foot and the poor kid who we jumped on ended up with an arm broken in 2 places.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Haha thats my awful punctuation

The budgie incident actually occurred aged about 7 after a watching an episode of the A-Team. They were always jumping off things onto the bad guys without so much as a bloody knee. So my friends and I lay in waiting on the garage roof and jumped off onto the poor unsuspecting kid who pedalled by. It was carnage, i was impaled on the handle bars, my friend landed on the pedal and broke her foot and the poor kid who we jumped on ended up with an arm broken in 2 places.

Wow, just wow!

 

[Globalti]

I've just remembered the petrol..... we used to pour petrol all over the place, light it and set off big explosions of orange flames and black smoke....