Retirement

Well, its a sad sad day.

I have decided to retire this blog, for what I hope are the right reasons. You see I'm not having as many bizarre situations occur these days, perhaps sense is creeping in somewhere, or perhaps a guardian angel has me as a permanent assignment?
I could add various little stories, like the one involving a full bladder in the back of a car, a soda bottle, a nun and a traffic packed road, but I dont wish to dilute the quality of the blog like I did the Soda....

I have another more serious blog now where I write about various technology related subjects, on gizmo.newsvine.com so feel free to drop by and have a look.

I will not be deleting this blog, and if at some stage in the future my guardian angel dies in a tragic blimp accident, I'll bring this blog back to life, but for now, its a little bit of history........

Almost too bad to blog

Well not even I believe this one, I think I must have spent the last year in some sort of dream state, meaning that this blog and everyone of you reading it are not real. So if you would all be kind enough to pinch yourselves and save me the hassle that would be great!
Last week my wife and I were in a large local department store. As usual she was browsing all manner of skirts, tops, shoes, scarfs, bedding, coats, trousers and the occasional spatula.
As you might imagine, I reluctantly pried myself away from this ‘browsing’ and started to wander around the store. I looked at the occasional item, such as the credit card swiss army knife, but thought better of it, as I get myself into enough trouble without weaponry. Eventually I found my way to the mens shoe rack. Now I’m not one to boast but finding shoes that fit me is somewhat of a rarity, and when I found not one pair but no pairs that I could even get a foot into, I was not remotely surprised.
At this stage I began to get a little tired and began to search for my better half. I got up from the bench where I had been trying on shoes and slung my laptop bag over my shoulder, with one strap over my right shoulder and the other hanging loose. Take note of that, its actually important!
I started to look around the store for my wife and caught sight of her examining a multitude of trousers. She evidently had not yet moved on to spatulas. I began to make my way toward her and after about ten strides noticed a tugging from behind. Immediately I adjusted the laptop bag I was carrying as I just assumed it was the strap sitting awkwardly on my shoulder. Having done that I continued walking and after another ten or so strides I started to feel the tugging again. This time I turned around to try and see what it was.

What I saw next horrified me as I actually thought I was going to get into serious trouble, the kind of trouble where you only get to see your family from the other side of some very large bars!

The item doing the tugging that I had been noticing was in fact a pram. It seems that on my journey across the store, the loose strap on my laptop bag had snagged the handle bars, and you guessed it, this pram had a baby included. It seems I had inadvertently towed this little one across the store away from its mother, a mother that was now heading toward me with great speed and phenomenal determination!
In my panic I yelled “I’m Sorry, I didn't mean to” but before the sentence had left my mouth she grabbed the pram and made an expression that made me feel like she was about to pummel me. I honestly think that she was about to call security but thankfully I managed to explain to her that that I had accidently towed her baby away with the loose strap on my laptop bag. Thankfully she seemed to accept this, but she still departed my presence quite rapidly!

On a finishing note there is one good thing I can take from this story:

I’m glad I didn’t try and go downstairs.

Father, Son and Holy.....

This one is not so much about what I did, but what I observed and my reaction to such.

The year was about 1993 and I was at a harvest service in my local church. I was there with my mother and my brother. We were sitting right at the front of the church, thus ensuring a prime view of what was about to occur. I always had a reputation for been prone to giggles in a church setting, but nothing could have prepared me for what was going to happen in this sleepy little church over the next hour.....

A Franciscan monk was the visiting preacher at the service. Typical to the stereotype the monk was in his eighties, wearing the usual brown gown with the hood and the white rope around the large waistline. About thirty minutes into the service came the time for the sermon. The monk, we’ll call him Ambrose for the purposes of this story, slowly made his way toward the pulpit and slowly ascended the steep spiral staircase towards the top. Once there Ambrose settled himself into position and began to preach.
Thirteen years on I don’t remember the content of the sermon, but I do remember the finish, it was an ending that no sermon has or ever will match...

As Ambrose came to the end of his sermon he concluded in the usual manner by saying a brief prayer and then he began to cross himself like this:

“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy”

He was about to say “Spirit” but as he was about to utter the final word he took a step back in his preparation to descend the spiral staircase. It turned out to be quite a step back, as the next sight that graced my vision was that of an eighty year old monk backward somersaulting down a spiral staircase. The speed at which he descended and the noise which accompanied was unprecedented in the history of preaching. After what seem like an age to my fascinated eyes he pounded to the floor at the bottom of the staircase and with the thud I completely and utterly lost control of myself. While everyone else was rushing to check his pulse I was in fits laughing, so much so I was struggling to even breath.
I know its terrible but I could not help myself. I was promptly sent out of the church by my mother to calm myself down, even though she was having difficulty avoiding loosing control herself!

Thankfully there is a good ending to all of this, in that Ambrose fully recovered from his acrobatics. I'm sure by now he may well have departed this earth, but hopefully not in such a spectacular manner!

I honestly don’t know how anyone can say church is boring.....

Sometimes your watch beeps and its God

Combine the following concepts:

Accident Prone, Bishop's son, Woman Priest, Bishop, Dad, Ordination, Star Trek, Alarms, Formal Church Service.

Ladies and Gentleman, What can possibly go wrong?


The year was 1996 and a good friend of mine, a woman called Paula was about to be ordained. My dad was the Bishop of the diocese, and as such he was the one who was going to ordain her.
Anyway, as you can imagine, an ordination is quite a formal occasion. Everyone is there wearing their Sunday best and relations gather from near and far. Paula had very kindly asked me to take part in the service. This meant that I had to wear one of those fancy garments, but also to hold the HUGE book that dad was reading from while he had his hands on her head whilst praying for her during the actual ordination ceremony.

Now for a bit of back ground. Many of you know that I am a bit of a Star Trek geek and that during the 90's Sky 1 used to broadcast it every day at 5pm. Well since I was such a big fan I never wanted to miss an episode and as such had a rather funky watch with support for two separate alarms. Been the geek that I was, one was set daily for 4.55pm and the other for 4.57 pm, just in case I was mid-fight with my brother and missed the alarm.

Before the service all went well at first, there was the usual hymns and prayers before we got to the ordination and I was sitting quietly to myself waiting for my part.
I would ask you to remember as well at this point that the church in which this was happening was a biggish church with high ceilings which meant any small sound was amplified ten times by the architecture.
Sure enough my part came along and I was signaled to come to the front of the church while Paula knelt on a cushion in front of my father who was going to lay hands on her head and pray for her. I made my way, quite scared I must point out, to the front and received a HUGE prayer book. It was way too large to hold with one arm and when held by my two arms and leant against my chest, felt like it was pushing my teeth into the back of my skull.

Once I got comfortable my dad began the ceremony and read off several prayers from the book I was holding in front of him. Things were going along nicely and I remember dad getting to the point where he asked Paula a question in part of the ceremony. It was something along the lines of: "Do you Paula promise to help bring others to faith........" Paula went to answer the question and suddenly BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. The 4.55pm Star Trek Alarm!! I tried desperately to stop it while dad tried to continue on. I could not believe just how loud my little casio managed to be in these surroundings. To my frustration, there was simply no way I could stop it. I needed to use one hand to click the watch button, but while holding this huge book, it just was not possible. I could not put it down either as a) there was nowhere to put it and b) Dad was reading the ceremony from it.

After what seemed like an eternity (30 seconds) the beeping stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief and dad continued on with the ceremony.

Suddenly however I was horror stricken! In 90 seconds the alarm was going to go off AGAIN!! At 4.57!!! I tried to catch my dad's eye to tell him to hurry it up, but to no avail, his eyes were focused sharply on the book. Sweat began to run down my forehead and I was sure the pages were going to get stuck together. The seconds were counting down and I knew I did not have much time left. I knew there was nothing I could do, there was simply no way for me to stop my watch. I looked around helplessly, but to no avail.
Suddenly I thought my luck was changing, for a moment I thought I was saved, Dad was finishing up. You can always tell, the tone changes towards the end of a prayer. He was just getting to the end of the prayer, the bit where he declares the person as been ordained when it came:

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

I was horror stricken but at the same time I was fighting not to burst out laughing, I actually drew blood from my lip I was biting it so hard. My dad managed to keep going somehow and finished the ceremony.
Paula the newly ordained priest told me afterward that she thought maybe God was telling her something.

If thats the case, God must love Sci-Fi.

The Apple of Death

This post and all others have been moved to this sites new home on www.peterneill.eu

I don't know why I am even bothering to write this, as not one of you is going to believe it. Maybe its for personal therapy or maybe I think that someone else who has done this terrible deed may need to hear that they are not alone..... Actually they are alone, because its me and no one else could possibly have done this.

This ones short, but, as they say, Quality, not Quantity.....


I remember it was a long journey on a hot day on the way to camp site in mid July. Mum and dad always passed fruit back to my brothers and I , as usually the longer we spent eating, the less time we had to fight in the back of the car. Anyway, one day my dear mother passed me an Apple.

As you might expect I munched through it and once I ate the exterior I now had a manky apple core in my hand. I decided the best way to deal with said core was to throw it out the window. Now bear in mind that we are traveling down a large European road, most likely doing sixty anyway.
I rolled down the window and with one quick lunge launched it toward the side of the road. As I lunged I had a moment of panic as I realised that a pedestrian was in the approximate path as far as I could see.
Just how much in the path soon became terrifyingly real as I witnessed the apple core smash into their nose at approx sixty miles an hour relative speed.
I am going to be honest here and say I don't remember exactly what happened next. I am not even sure I ever admitted it to my parents......The one thing I do know is that I always eat the apple core now, and in writing this article , I think I have just realised why........