The Tales We Keep Telling, 12: The Short Arm

This story dates from when I lived in a shared house in the west of Newcastle. One summer afternoon, we held a barbecue, and all the housemates invited their friends. One of my housemates' friends, who helped me do the salad, had a short arm, ending just after the elbow joint.

I thanked her for helping chop the veg, and she grinned and said: "Yes, but I have to be careful when I do that... I once nearly made someone faint in A&E."

"How did that happen?"

"You see this scar on my arm?"

She held up the end of her arm, which had a neat white line near the end.

"That looks nasty."

"Yeah...." 

The story was that she had been chopping peppers one evening whilst starting to cook dinner. Her method was to pin down the pepper with the end of her short arm, and hold the knife and chop with her hand. Unfortunately, one of her housemates came in the kitchen behind her and let the door slam. She jumped, the knife slipped, and she cut herself across the end of the arm.

The cut was in an awkward place and wouldn't stop bleeding, so in the end she bundled a tea towel around the end of her arm, and went to A&E for stitches. This was a weekend, so it was a busy night, and she was sat there for a while.

Next to her was a guy who was possibly the worse for wear. She noticed him staring at with a faint expression of horror.

"What happened?" he eventually asked, with a faint tone of dread.

"Oh, I cut myself with a big knife."

The drunk paled and started to look woozy. "Did you find it, like?"

My housemate's friend followed his gaze to the bloodstained tea towel at the end of her short arm, and suddenly realised what he was thinking.

"No, it's okay! My arm has always been this length!"

The Tales We Keep Telling, 11: The Old Dudes on the No. 62 Bus

I frequently catch the no. 62 bus home from the pub of an evening. The no. 62 winds its way along the Byker Bridge and Shields Road before striking out north to Heaton, and the clientele covers a wide range of folks. At that time of the evening, though, there's usually a few older Geordie chaps returning home from the pub.

One evening, I was sitting behind three of them on the top floor, as the bus rounded the corner from Shields Road up towards Chillingham Road, past what is now the Lord Clyde pub, and was then called Peggy Sue's. This was about 11pm, and there was what the police would probably call a "domestic disturbance" taking place outside the pub.

The old dudes and I stared out of the window and watched, much like the pub's bouncer. They umm'd and ahh'd.

Old Dude 1: "She's not going to go home with him."

Old Dude 2: "Nope."

Old Dude 1: "Now she's going to hit him over the head with her shoe."

Old Dude 2: "Yup."

Old Dude 1: "That's what it's like round here on a Tuesday evening."

Old Dude 2: "Yup."

Old Dude 3: (with tone of solemn contemplation): "When you two eat a boiled egg..."

::pause::

"...do you have it with salt?"

The Tales We Keep Telling, 10: Injecting in the Kitchen

Another funny story from my last but one house. It was certainly full of characters, including at one point, a naked butler. He was not the naked butler for the house, for which I'm grateful, but did work as one in his spare time to earn some extra cash. He was also a bodybuilder, and had the most boring diet I've ever seen, consisting of rice, chicken, Bird's Eye frozen mixed vegetables, and Herinz barbecue sauce. It seemed to work for him, but I can't imagine eating the same thing that often.

He lived in the house around the same time as my now ex-landlord who, towards the end of my stay there, moved back into the house with his girlfriend. (He then sold the house, which is why I left.) I wandered downstairs into the kitchen (that's always where funny things happen), and encountered him and his girlfriend, with him injecting something into her stomach.

I can say with some certainty that I'd never seen someone doing this before outside of a medical context. I eventually plucked up the courage to ask: "Um.... what are you doing?"

"You know we're going on holiday soon?"

"Yeeeesss?"

"Well, this stuff helps you tan, we got it off the Internet. Do you want to try it?"

"Thanks but I think I'll stick with my existing skin colour."

Funnily enough, it did work, at least for his girlfriend, who turned a shade of light brown. He turned a weird shade of orange brown that no human being of any ethnic origin naturally displays. (I suspect he may have taken more than the recommended amount.)

Funny fact; my ex-landlord was a police sergeant.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 9: The Police in My Living Room

Yes, it's another tale of house-sharing. I actually have two stories that fit under this heading. One I don't tell for comic effect, since it was about something illegal (not done by me, I hasten to add), and is responsible for me knowing from first-hand experience that when the police raid your house, they really do bang on the door at 7am.

This dates from when I lived in the West End in a giant house with badly-designed walls. One of my housemates was a trainee policewoman, and responsible for me being a strong contender to win any competition about the biggest surprise you've ever got when you woke up. One Saturday morning, as I staggered down the stairs at my usual pre-coffee dopey amble, I suddenly realised my kitchen and living room were filled with about 15 policemen and women. (This is something of a surprise when you're wearing your elderly pyjamas and dressing gown.)

It turned out they'd had a social the night before for people on the police training course, and all of them had stayed over night at my house. In the living room.

I can only assume they must have slept stacked on top of each other.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 8: Conversation in my Home Town

Much as I love my family, there's a reason I don't live in my home town. (I usually joke that it's because I didn't want to get pregnant, become a hairdresser or work in a shop. I respect people who undertake any or all of those options, but that was never going to be me, and in the 2000s my home town didn't have a whole lot else to offer me. It's got better since, but still...)

A conversation I had there when I returned a few years ago sticks in my mind. I was visiting my family, and called in at Costa Coffee. Behind the counter was someone I'd done my GCSEs with. We did the hi-nice-to-see-you conversation, and she asked "So what are you doing these days?"

My reply: "I moved to Newcastle, got a research job there, I go scuba diving on a weekend, thinking of buying a flat... how about you?"

Her reply: "I'm serving you a coffee."

What followed was one of those rare moments of telepathic silence, when two minds are thinking the same thought in unison.

Specifically: "Yep, there's really nowhere else this conversation can go from here."

The Tales We Keep Telling, 7: Escapades on the Town Moor

Some time back, I did the taxi survey of Newcastle, which involved spending a lot of time sat in a parked car on the Bigg Market on a Saturday night, counting taxis and ignoring drunks. I was lucky that the person I was counting with was a fellow diver, P, with whom I swapped many tales of fish and other interesting things. He told me a couple of stories from his time as a fireman, one of which you can read elsewhere on the blog ("Gordon, Don't Be Such A Dickhead"), and another which I shall recount here. 

He and his friends were once working a late shift one Friday, when the call came in to go out to a car that was parked on the Town Moor. Was the car on fire? No, the car was not on fire, but the people in it couldn't get out.

P and his colleagues hopped in the truck and went round to see what the trouble was. It was something which I suspect did the rounds of all the shifts that week, and for several weeks after.

A couple had parked their Porsche on the edge of the Town Moor to enjoy a little recreational fornication. They had put the front seats back as far as they would go, and had been trying to have sex on the back seat. Sports cars not being especially roomy on the inside, this involved a certain amount of contortionism, and the man (who was on top), had thrown his back out completely and was unable to get up. His extremely irate partner had called the fire service.

P and colleagues stood around for a minute or so assessing the issue, then P leaned forward and spoke through the window: "Sorry, there's no way we can get him out without cutting off the roof."

The woman began shrieking that they couldn't possibly do that, the car was worth an enormous amount, she would sue, they couldn't possibly cut the roof off. The shrieks were so long and so loud, that P and colleagues agreed to try opening the door and getting the chap out that way.

They tried valiantly for twenty minutes, but it was clear that, due to a combination of the size of the now-wishing-the-earth-would-swallow-him-whole man, the tiny size of the door, and the fact that he was clearly in too much pain to be easily moved, this was not going to be a goer.

P leaned in through the window and explained the situation. "I'm sorry, but there's no way we can do this without taking the roof off."

He leaned back to avoid the shrieks, and, seeing her left hand, added: "Sorry, but it's the only way we'll get your husband to the hospital."

The woman fixed him with eyes like daggers of ice, and spat: "He's not my husband. This is my husband's car."

They did, P told me, eventually have to cut the roof off the car. How the woman explained this to her husband is anyone's guess.

(I doubt it would be any consolation to her to learn that this sort of thing happens to other people too - from the excellent Nee Naw blog: 101 Embarassing Sexual Accidents.)

The Tales We Keep Telling, 6: The Dead Dog In The Suitcase

This isn't my own tale, but it is brilliant and deserves repetition. Alas, I'm not Paper Jam Jack (not his real name), who tells it better than I, but I'll give this my best shot.

You know a story will go well when the teller starts with "This story doesn't go how you think it will go. Did I tell you about the dead dog?"

The consensus, expressed at the Circus Circus event somewhere around the third round, was no. PJJ took a draught of Wylam's finest, then continued.

"Ah, well I know someone who knows someone who was asked to house- and dog- sit for some family friends. The only thing was, the dog was quite old and ill to begin with, so they actually said before they left, 'We wo't be surprised if the dog dies'."

"That can't have made for a stress-free start."

"No. So she was dog-sitting, and anyway, after a few days, the dog died in its sleep, which was a shame. The couple had gone off halfway round the world and wouldn't be back for a while, so she thought she'd better call them and find out what they wanted.

"She called them, explained about the dog, and asked what they wanted doing with the body, since they wouldn't be back for nearly two weeks. They said they wanted it keeping, so she needed to ring the vet and ask if the vet could put it in the freezer."

"They couldn't home freeze it?"

"Would you eat ice-cream that had been near a frozen dead dog? The freezer wouldn't be cold enough. So she rang the vet, and the vet said yes, they could freeze it if she brought it over. The only trouble was, the vet was in another town, and she didn't have a car, so she had to get the dead dog to the vet by public transport.

"So she wrapped the dog up in a plastic bag, and realised that the only way to move it - it was quite a big dog - was to put it in an old suitcase and trundle it onto the train. Now this is where the story doesn't go how you think it will go...

"She got on the train, and it was packed, so she needed to get the suitcase - with the dead dog inside - onto the overhead luggage rack. She wasn't too tall, and the dog was quite heavy, so she had to struggle to get the suitcase up there. Suddenly, a young man came over and helped her shove the suitcase onto the rack, and they got it up there with no problems.

He asked her, "That was heavy - what was in it?"

She decided not to tell him the truth, but the only thing she could think of to say that was heavy enough was "Musical equipment".

"So she went and sat further down the train where there was a seat, and decided to catch up with her emails. After a while, she realised the train had stopped at a station, and she suddenly thought she ought to check if the suitcase was still there."

"And it wasn't?"

"The young man was running off with it down the platform."

We absorbed this in silence, then burst out laughing. The young man's face when he opened the suitcase and got out the "musical equipment" must have been one of the great faces of all time.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 5: Life Saved By Not Wearing a Helmet

This isn't really a Tale We Keep Telling, as it's only been told once, and not by me. However, I'm going to nick it, because it's awesome. I freely admit it may not be as good as the original, and I may have skipped a few details, but I believe the gist is intact...

I was sitting in the pub one night, when, somewhere around the second round, a friend piped up with "I know someone whose life was saved by not wearing a helmet".

"How did that happen?"

It turned out that the helmetless survivor liked abseiling cliffs as a hobby. The tale started in traditional fashion: "You should always wear a helmet, but he was in a rush..." The helmetless abseiler and some of his buddies had gone for a Saturday trip out to the cliffs, abseiled down, and started up, when my friend's acquaintance noticed that there was a problem with a rope.

He went down with only one rope to hold him (there are supposed to be two). You can guess what happened next: the rope failed to hold him, and he slipped, cracked his head hard on a rock, and plummeted downward to the rocks beneath under the gaze of his horrified friends.

"They were expecting him to start bleeding or something, but he just lay there on the rocks. It turned out, he was completely floppy as a result of being knocked out, so he hit the rocks very relaxed, and survived."

"That must have been quite a relief."

"Well, then he starting floating out to sea..."

The friends then discovered that they had no mobile reception, and sprinted inland to call the Coastguard (mental note to self: I'm going to add "Check mobile phone reception" to my dive safety plans from now on). Fortunately, they got there in time, the lifeboat got there on time, and the now thoroughly-soaked, concussed and bruised abseiler was retrieved from the water and carted off to hospital. He survived.

"And just think, if he hadn't had a helmet on, he might never have survived," my friend concluded.

It is a mark of the awesomeness of this story that people waited a whole five seconds before asking: "Wouldn't it have been better to have two ropes AND a helmet?"

We agreed it probably would. Still, I think this guy qualifies for an honorary Darwin award, and those are the best sort of Darwin awards to have.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 4: The Glass Bottle of Piss

Nah. This one also doesn't get told until I leave my current employment. Let's just say that it occurred towards the start of my current employment, and usefully disabused me of any notion I might have had that the new employer was going to be any better organised than the last one. We'll leave it at that.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 3: Got Thrown Out Of My Office By The Army

Tough luck. This one doesn't get told until I actually leave the office in question.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 2: Audience of Psychopaths

So I went to see Laura Marling at the Sage the other day (my life is a whirlwind of fun and excitement, except for the three-day bouts of depression and the knowledge that it will not be 13 people leaving my team of 33 people in September next year – it will be 15). It was a good night, despite the fact that Ms Marling was battling the forces of illness and failing musical equipment. 

It is a tribute to her musicianship that she played an entire one and a half hour set entirely on her own whilst having to make up the set list pretty much as she went along, since her main guitar wasn’t working. She was also suffering from the after-effects of the incompetence of whatever restaurant she’d eaten lunch at – she has coeliac disease and, as she put it “They glutened me, the bastards!”

Nick Mulvay, the support act was pretty good too, although I couldn’t help fondly remembering the support act last time around, Timber Timbre. This was basically one guy and a guitar, and I (perhaps unfairly) remember one thing about his act. You have to imagine a man, sitting on a stool at the front of the Sage’s Hall One stage, spot lit, strumming a guitar and singing a romantic ditty…

Timber Timbre, tunefully: “I’m coming to Paris… to kill you…”

Audience laughs, musician stops singing and playing and looks around thoughtfully.

Timber Timbre, matter of factly: “I have an audience of psychopaths”.

(Begins singing again) “I’m coming to Paris … to kill you…”

The Tales We Keep Telling, One: The Guy Who Pissed on the Fruit Machine

It's a funny thing, going to the pub with the same group of friends for years. You develop your own little mythology, mostly featuring around alcohol and, in my case, tales from sharing a house. I kind of miss sharing a house from the point of view of funny things happening, but I SO don't miss the washing-up wars, the continual need to creep round the house for fear of waking folks up when I get insomnia, and the general sense that at any point someone might comment on something I'm doing. (What do you mean, baking at half past midnight is weird? IT'S MY LIFE DAMMIT!)

Some tales we keep telling, of course, cannot feature here for reasons of not wanting to get folks (including me) in trouble. But I see no reason I can't immortalise a few of them, and here is the famous tale of the Guy Who Pissed On the Fruit Machine.

So for this, we need to go back at least five years (flipping heck, I've been in Newcastle a long time). Our little reading group, of which I am proud to be a member, was having its Christmas Do, and we chose to begin with drinks in the Union Rooms. The Union Rooms is the Wetherspoons near Central Station, and used to be our regular haunt until the Five Swans opened, which is nearer the Central Library and handy for the buses and Metro. We prefer Wetherspoons for several reasons: it does real ale, everyone can just about afford to buy a round without needing to take out a loan, and there's no background music. It also affords us the chance to be rude about the food on a fortnightly basis, which usually ends when someone points out that each fortnight we say this, and each fortnight everyone orders the same food and complains about it afterwards.

So, back to Christmas. It was 6.30pm on a Tuesday two weeks before Christmas, and at the Union Rooms, that means a minor level of chaos. We were at the main bar downstairs, and had just bought the drinks when we turned round and saw a guy stagger in. He looked at least fifty, grey-haired and dishevelled, and had clearly been on the receiving end of the stick of life. He also didn't seem to know which room he was in, which pub he was in, or possibly which planet he was on. He staggered into the room, stood just inside the doorway, looked around the room, then turned round and pissed on the fruit machine with a sigh of relief.

I can safely say that this isn't usual behaviour, even in the Union Rooms. As we watched, the manager dashed out from behind the bar, and dragged him away, pointing and yelling "Now look what you've done!" Security became involved, and the man was propelled outside the door. We wandered back over to our table, and drank our drinks.

As we turned round and headed to the door, we saw the same man, clearly not sure where he was or why he was there. As we watched, he staggered up to the door, clearly thought "Yup, that's a door, alright", and wandered back on in.

Right in front of the manager.

I wish I could do justice in words to the expression that came over the manager's face, but if I say that he reddened, his eyes bulged, his finger pointed, and the word "YOU!!"came from his lips at treble volume, you'll get the picture. Security became involved again, and we made our escape to Zizzi's without anyone micturating in our direction.

This tale comes with a short epilogue. Some months later my friend A, who was there on the night in question, was having a curry with some friends in Latif's. As they left, he heard a familiar trickling sound and turned round. It was the same guy, in the same jacket, this time pissing on a record shop doorway. Apparently this is a hobby of his.

Either that, or A is being stalked by a random pissing guy.

It's a great life in the Toon!