One more pair of trousers

Believe it or not there is one more tale of woe involving my trousers. This is actually my worst yet, and in many ways the most spectacular. No single incident has involved so many people with such catastrophic results. Here begins the lesson.

The Date: Friday 6th of June 1997 Location: My Bedroom, Crossmolina, Mayo, Ireland.

This was my last day of my last year of regular schooling. I was to start my final exams the following Monday. On this last day I decided not to bother going into school and instead was home 'studying'. Not very likely to be honest, but its what I told myself, and my parents.
I filled my morning with watching TV in bed, a truly worthwhile pursuit. However this bliss was not to last much longer, for the upstairs of this large house in Mayo was filled with a roar, and a loud one at that. My mother was calling me to tell me that Sister Mary, the Principle of the convent school to which I went was on the phone for me. I quickly darted out of bed panic-stricken that I was in trouble for dossing off school, for that is really what I was doing. I got the phone and picked up the receiver. What I heard next was this:

"Peter! Thank goodness we found you. You have to get into school right away, its urgent, and you must, you absolutely must wear your full uniform, Oh and by the way, Sister Fionnuala is on her way to collect you!"

To which I responded:
"Hello sister, I'll get dressed immediately, but I'm not sure my trousers are fit to wear"

And she said:
"You have to wear them, Sister Fionnuala will be with you in a minute!! Bye!"

I put down the receiver and started to panic. You see the previous day in school had finished with a "Rugby Match" or really a big fight over a ball. I was probably the strongest in my year and these matches would usually involve me dragging several people up the field with them hanging on to me trying to bring me down. This as you can imagine was not good for my clothing and by the final minutes of the match my trousers had endured the following:

1 X Broken Zip

1 X Completely torn though behind

Many many mud stains

2 X ripped trouser legs

1 X complete rip at the knee of the right leg.

I realised I had to work fast, I yelled downstairs to my mother who came upstairs armed with sellotape and safety pins, for there was no time to sow anything. We managed to tape the rips on my right knee and on the trouser legs when the front door bell rang. SISTER FIONNUALA WAS HERE.
Panic stricken I did a quick safety pin job on the backside of my trousers and jumped into them and the rest of my tattered uniform and legged it downstairs. However at this point my trouser zip was still not fixed and I decided I would have to fix it on the way with the Sister Fionnuala, a nun if you were not sure!
I remember she looked shocked at my appearance when I jumped into the car and even more shocked when I started fiddling with my zip and trying to close it with three safety pins while sitting in the passenger seat of her car!
(She told my mother later that she was afraid I might put it through something I shouldn’t)
The school was about three miles away and as we pulled up I had finally managed to sort of close my fly and hobbled out of the car. The first thing I noticed was that the place was deserted, not a soul to be seen. I went inside the main entrance and looked around. At this point my walk had been reduced to a careful scurry, as I had to take very short strides to avoid stressing the main precarious joins in my trousers. Inside the school there was still not a soul to be seen anywhere.
The next thing I hear is the intercom:
"Would Peter Neill please come to the Gym Hall immediately"
I filled with shock at what I had just heard made my way to the door of the gym and pushed it open and peeked inside. What I saw was horrendous. There before my eyes were all 600 students lined up according to year. My first reaction was to hobble over towards my classmates and join the line. I made it halfway, and then my luck broke. Over the speakers came the following:

"Would Peter Neill please come up onto the stage".

I had no idea what was going on but I knew I had to obey and march forth towards the stage.
At this point everyone was looking at me, my precarious walk and my simply unique leg coverers, as they simply could no longer be referred to as trousers. Giggles started around different parts of the Gym but were swiftly muted by the patrolling teachers. I started what seemed like the longest walk of my life, from the back of the gym to the stage, my own personal Green Mile. After what seemed like forever I made it to the stage and was faced with yet another problem, this 5 foot high stage had no steps, but instead large blocks of wood which you used to get up to the top. I realised that the required separation of my legs in order to overcome this obstacle was not a viable possibility, for my trousers would not survive that.
And like a bold of lightening the idea hit me, the solution. I decided to bunny hop up the steps, keeping my feet together. For no apparent regard for my self-esteem I proceeded to bunny hop up the steps to the sounds of laughter, confusion, and possibly fear, actually, definitely fear.
As I made my final bunny hop up the steps before me I could see ten teachers standing in a line, at the head of which was the principle, Sr. Mary. She summoned me over toward her, with a somewhat confused look on her face.
I awkwardly scurried across the floor toward the teachers and the disaster that was my trousers became apparent to them all, for their eyes were filled with an odd mixture of glee, amusement, horror and fascination.
Finally I arrived beside Sr. Mary, beside the microphone in front of 600 students. And then she uttered perhaps the strangest sentence of all.
"Peter Neill, I here by award you, Student of the Year 1997"
What!!!!!!!" The gym broke into applause and laughter. I did not know what to say, but in my shock I had lurched backwards, breaking a delicate part of the framework that was my trousers. Sorry, Leg coverers. I immediately grabbed by belt for dear life and kept my trousers from falling down around me. Sr. Mary now held out a plaque toward me, one that I could not take from her, as doing so would have released hell unseen since the opening of Pandora’s box upon 600 innocents. Thankfully she immediately understood and held onto it.
I tried at this point to leave the stage but was stopped by 600 people shouting "Speech, Speech!!!” I hobbled my way back to the microphone. My speech consisted of one highly thought through, carefully constructed sentence:

"Thanks, but does anybody have a spare pair of trousers?"

A Totally Bizarre Coincidence

It seems my blog has reached a new height, I got my first review and for the last few days I am getting about 250 visits a day, so why on earth does nobody ever leave a comment???

Anyway, a few days have passed and so its time to reveal my next installment to my tale of woe. This one is pretty short but the odds against it are huge, so it has to be posted.

I moved to Dublin from Kilkenny seven years ago. At this time the only person I knew in Dublin was my Comedian friend Reuben.
One evening we were driving into the city to go to the cinema or something. Along the way we pulled up at a set of traffic lights. This is where the trouble started. Sitting there waiting for the lights to go green I started to look at the cars on either side of us.
I looked to the right, nothing interesting of note, I then looked to my left and spotted the person in the next car. I immediately alerted reuben, "Hey reu, look at the blonde in the next car!".
I was puzzled by his reaction, he sat there silent, when I had been expecting him to agree instantly. What he said next shook me to the bone:

"Yep, Its my Sister"

Look before you kiss

A large part of me cannot believe I am about to post what I am writing here.
In the following paragraphs you will find out much about me and the most awkward situation I have ever got myself into.

First for the background. My Father is an Anglican Bishop. For those who are not sure, Anglican Clergy are allowed marry, so no running to the nearest tabloid please :)
Anyway a few years ago he was appointed as the new Archbishop of Dublin. Part of this process is an enthronment service at the main cathedral in the diocese. In this case it is Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.
As you can imagine it was quite a big affair with loads of friends, family and clergy from all around the country. As well as civil and government representatives all over the place.
After the service there was much meeting and greeting taking place. I don't think I personally had ever shaken hands with so many people in my life.
During this process a series of old ladies who apparently had not seen me since I was "so high" came over to me. They were between 5 and 7 in number and of years between 300 and 500, well collectively at least!
Each of these old ladies did the common old lady thing and leant forward and gave me a peck on the cheek as they said hello. Nothing strange so far.
At the end of the onslaught of greetings another hand out stretched towards me. I in full automatic mode, outreached my hand and shook theirs in greeting. In this same graceful automated maneuver I leant forward and went in for the cheek kiss, for the kill if you will.
As I approached their cheek I noticed how crushingly hard this old ladies grip was. Never mind I thought and continued. Finally I hit the target, But not without realising that perhaps this old lady needed a shave, for her stubble was quite advanced.
As I retreated from the kiss a feeling of horror entered my mind. What if this was not an old lady, but an old man!! I continued my retreat until this character fully entered my field of view. It was not an old man.....It was in fact a Male Irish Army General!! One who was there to represent the President of Ireland, one whom was the head of the Irish Army!!!
To say he looked shocked is somewhat of an understatement. Our faces looked at each other in shock for what seemed like an eternity. Finally I decided I should say something to lighten the situation.
Those of you who know me will know that I should always say the second thing that comes in to my head, definitely not ever the first.
However the first thing made its rapid journey to my lips before I could stop it:

"Ah well, Good thing there is no soap on the ground eh?!"

I was filled with horror at what I had just said. I looked to the general to gauge his reaction. I thought he was getting angry, but he collapsed into helpless laughter. I, totally filled with relief, attempted to explain my mistake, but he just walked of in pieces laughing.

Don't think I should ever apply to the Irish army now! :)

Don't turn it off!!!

Strange as it may seem I am about to share with you yet another disaster which involves my trousers. I'm not sure what it is about me and trousers, but it always seems to end in tears. Perhaps I'd look better in a kilt? Probably not.

This incident dates back to 1998 when I was an employee of a very large IT company on the North Side of Dublin. My position there was as a junior member of the IT support team. A team supporting 650 users.
One day one of the other guys on the team asked me to head down to one of the Server Rooms and shutdown a particular server. It was a none critical server, so there was no issue with doing this, at least not yet...
A brief amble later I arrived at my final destination, and entered the server room. It seemed more like a scene from a NASA film with huge fans and blinking lights everywhere. The Server I was to shutdown was called "Dub06". It was connected along with 5 other servers to a single Keyboard, Mouse and monitor via a switch box. I selected the corresponding button on the switch box to give me control over "Dub06". All fine there. I then told the computer to shutdown and after about two minutes I got the message saying "It is now safe to switch of your computer".
Grand I thought, I reached over to the left to the front panel of "Dub06" and hit the power button. As I pressed the power button in I had a moment of horror, this machine was not "Dub06", it was in fact "Dub01". This was not good, "Dub01" was the server that housed all the files those 600 people were working on and I was about to turn this off in the middle of what they were doing!.

Those of you in the know will remember that in the late nineties the power switch on a computer did not turn it off until after you released your finger from the button, ie. When it clicked back out after you pressing it in.
Thankfully I realised before I let go of the button that if I continued to hold the button in the machine would not turn off. At this point I breathed a little sight of relief, albeit too soon, as I thought "All I need to do now is call the IT department and tell them to get everyone to close what they are working on, thus allowing me to restart this machine safely.
I looked to my right, to where I expected to find a phone. All I found instead was a phone minus a handset, and no speaker phone option. "Grand" I thought, "I'll just use my mobile". Wrong again, I took out my mobile and because the server room was located in the basement, no signal whatsoever!!
I now started to panic. I was standing in a server room, unable to move with my finger and arm starting to ache while holding this button down. There was no one else with me, and unlikely to be anyone else coming and if I let my finger off the button I loose my job.
In my desperation I looked around for options and then like a vision of an angel I saw a phone sitting on a tall stool behind me, about 10 feet away from me. Out of reach.

I now felt like crying, but shortly after a cunning plan entered my head. I proceeded to take my right shoe off and aimed it at the bottom off the stool, in the hope that it would cause the stool to fall toward me. A delicate operation considering I was still holding the button down with my left hand. Sadly I missed. I took off my second shoe, took careful aim and A HIT!!. But it wobbled and failed to fall, the phone hanging over the edge as if to tease me.
Finally as my panic worsened, I realised I had now only one chance, my trousers. I dare any of you to remove your trousers with one hand while out stretching the other arm to a fixed point from which it cannot move or your in serious trouble. Not easy!!
After a few minutes careful fumbling I am holding one leg of my trousers in my hand, standing in the server room holding a button in for dear life itself, trouserless, shoeless, shameless and exposing my boxers to my surroundings. A nice combination.
My button pressing arm was now in total agony, lactic acid and all that good stuff. I started to swing my trousers at the stool in the hope of catching the stool/phone and bringing it toward me.
After about 20 total misses a very very near miss where I almost knocked the phone away from me I managed to catch the phone and tug it forward crashing to the floor toward me. Thank the Lord!!
I now managed to reach to the phone with my toes and slide it toward me. Once it got within range I picked it up, and found it had survived the crash to the floor! I dialed the IT dept and after about 15 minutes the IT dept got everyone to close their files. I was safe!!
However all did not end there. I asked the person on the phone not to send anyone down to me for reasons I would explain to her later. Big mistake! I had an audience of about 40 people in those last 15 minutes. The sight of me standing there semi nude with the server made a few people wonder about strange fetishes. Laughs were had, concerns for my mental health were highlighted, insults were made and my self respect was decimated. Score!

Moral of the story: Removing ones trousers should not be treated as a universal remedy to everyday problems.