Back from the Brink and into the Clink...

Well it seems life is playing a joke on me, a permanent one.
Why do I say this? I say this because as soon as I retired this blog, everything wacky started to happen again. I have thus deduced that in order to protect my health, I must start to write again, in the hope that my life will return to normal. Fat chance.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were on a train, coming home from a day out in the city. We sat at the far end of a carriage facing each other, beside a window with a view over the sea. This all sounds nice so far, but matters were soon to take a turn towards the bizarre highway.
The day in question was quite warm and there were a number of wasps about, which I might add that my wife is utterly terrified of. During our trip on the train a wasp started buzzing between us and also induced terror in my wife. Since we were at the end of a carriage, most people were too far away from us to see the wasp, and only saw this terrified woman sitting opposite her husband.

What happened next was not exactly helpful.

In my infinite wisdom I decided to slap the wasp into the window. The wasp was positioned halfway between us, touching against the glass. I raised my right palm and slammed the wasp into the window. As many of you know I can be a little over eager sometimes, so the thud of me hitting the window was not what is commonly refereed to as quiet...

That may all seem fine and dandy, until I tell you that the other passengers who had not seen the wasp thought I had just assaulted my wife!!
Immediately other passengers confronted us about what had just happened, and if it were not for my wife explaining the terror of the wasp, I might not be writing this from this side of the clink!

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.