If You Don't Want Me To Annoy You....

I don't get annoyed. Not all that much and never to the point where I'll physiclly act on it. Actually, sometimes i do but, as i said, not all that much. Most of the time I don't even register the annoyance until much later on. When the incident happens I'll barely notice it, but then i'll be laying in bed at night with nothing but my own thoughts for company and it'll hit me; "You dirty mother fucker!" With this in mind here are the people who have annoyed me this week; No.1. Nigerian Business Man: Now this wasn't one of those laying in bed and then getting angry moments. This was blind rage from the off but it was all within the confines of a legitimate business meeting so I had to quell my urge to reach over the dinner table in the plush surrounds of the Holiday Inn Brent Cross restaurant and smash his laptop over his head. God only knows what he was writing on that laptop but my annoyed mind pictures him constructing an email to HQ back in Lagos, saying; "We gone got ourselves another one, John Paul! Bank details to follow". My office told me not to meet him. My Boss told me not to meet him. Everyone I spoke to told me not to meet him, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt until they give me a reason not to, so like a mug I went to meet him and wasted my time and his. Actually, it wasn't an entire waste because I got to look right into the eyes of someone telling the most bare faced cock and bull story with a straight face, which would have been rather amusing if I had been able to pull him up on it to the proper degree and call him a lying cunt. Anyway, you paid for dinner, you fucking amateur, so I win! Nigeria -£11.95 and no Christmas lights for the kids. England 1. Yes!!!! No.2. The restaurant at Holiday Inn Brent Cross. Food comes on plates, not wooden fucking blocks. Why do some places think they need to fuck around things like this? Plates have served us perfecly well for centuries, yet some smart arses think it'll be cool and edgy to serve up their food on the back of a sea turtle. Actually, that would be quite cool. I'd happily eat their overpriced food off the back of a sea turtle if only to take my mind of the taste and I'd also be happy to ignore this level of pretentiousness if their nosh didn't make me want to vomit on the journey home. Your smoke and mirrors haven't worked on. me, Holiday Inn Brent Cross. I'm on to you, you fucking charlatans! No.3. People being extra specially miserable on the anniversary of the death of a loved one. Now this might sound callous, but hear me out. I've never lost anyone close to me but Im sure that time will one day come. And when it does you can bet your arse that 9 years down the line I won't be miserable as fuck on the anniversary of that persons death. Why is it that some people think they should.....no, need to be extra fucking solemn, tearful and miserable on the day that their loved one died? I'm not talking one year on or two years or even three, but I work with a girl whose father passed away 9 years ago and she was literally wailing away in the office and if the fucker had passed over yesterday. This may sound harsh but why do these people do it to themselves? Why do they feel that they need to be extra specially fucking sad on that particular day? Why not deal with the grief on a day to day basis? You'd be perfectly entitled to think about your lost loved one every single day and gradually deal with the grief that way rather than save it all up for one fucking day of the year when I come in to get some vital work done. The cynic in me says it was for purposes of garnering attention. And it worked! Not on me but there were quite a few ladies rushing around with tissues and cups of the sugariest of tea whilst the more rationally thinking men in the office sat back, shook their heads in disbelief and tried to get on with their fucking work. Why do it to me and why do it to yourself? Why not expend that energy doing a Fun Run for cancer research. Across the fucking M25! I'll even sponsor you. No.4. Petrol Station workers who ask you if you have any petrol. The scene, one day, will go like this: I park your car away from the pumps. There are no other cars on the forecourt. I walk in pick up a sandwich, a paper and a drink and go to the counter to pay for them; "Good morning, JUST these please." "Any petrol?" "AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! If I fucking had petrol I'd tell you, you slackjawed fuck. You ask me this every fucking day! If i have petrol I'll tell you the pump number and if this was the one day I decided to steal a whole tank of the stuff, your ingenius Columbo style of questioning isn't going to trip me up. Now just ring up my egg sandwich and fuck right off!" Though I guess it wouldn't matter if I did go berserker in there one day. They'd only ask again the next time. The wankers! These sort of lists should always come in 3's or 5's, or even 10's if you've had a particularly bad week, but i'm struggling to think of a 5th gripe, so i'll leave it there. Though i guess the week isn't over yet.

I Know A Farmer Named Giles.

You probably won't want to hear this, especially if body problems upset you. If they do turn back now, if you're a reasonable, open minded person who's not too precious then read on...

The Good Lord must be angry with me at present. I don't think I've done anything wrong but he's decided to bestow on me the 11th Deadly Plague-namely Piles. Now, you won't have read about piles being brutally imposed on the people of Egypt in Biblical times because when it was being typed up by those ancient religious scribes all those years ago, piles were deemed too horrifying to be included. Rats, frogs, darkness, fire, unhealable boils and death- they were all fine, but they left out the gory details about those poor Egyptians being cursed with piles because they believed that it showed all too much what an angry vicious cunt God can be when you get his back up. And who would want a God like that? Anyone who's had them will agree-they're just not very funny when you're on the receiving end. I'm not sure how I got them this time. Probably from just eating service station junk and sitting on my arse a lot. I feel truly unlucky.

Well all this got me thinking; thinking about all the times I have been blighted with piles and the various different reasons for it. Apparently, once you break the seal (literally there's a seal there-like a head gasket and once it goes you're fucked for good) you can expect to be afflicted with this terribly embarrassing afflication sporadically until the end of your days. The first time was at Benicassim 2002. It must have been a combination then of bad diet (damn you Pinguin burger!), hot sun combined with lots and lots of cheap booze and overpriced Spanish drugs because I remember waking up one morning in the half built toilet block that we had captured as our sleeping quarters, due to our tents being hotter than the sun after 8.30 in the morning, and feeling this never-felt-before stinging sensation in my nether regions. I was bemused and scared in equal measure. I try to value to my hygiene as best as possible at a festival, but all my good intentions usually get thrown casually into the breeze after day two. Despite this I wasn't going to start poking around down there with a dirty finger for any reason and besides, I had also half convinced myself (after years spent reading internet based stories of horrible insect-related holiday anecdotes) that I had been attacked by a spider or scorpion in the night and that some poor soul would have to suck the poison out. In desperation I turned to my friend;
"Paddy! Wake up!"
"Huh! What?" he said puzzledly as he half turned over, revealing a face that was covered in concrete dust having spent the whole night face down on the hard floor.
"Paddy, you're gonna have to take a look at my arse. I think I've been bitten!"
With worrying immediacy, he replied: "Go on then. take your pant down and i'll take a look."
Now thats either the mark of a true friend or of a person who's waited for years to be asked that question. I've never been sure about Paddy. Reluctantly, i tentatively pulled down my strides and bent over a good few feet away from him, holding my bum cheeks apart so he could see.
"I can't see! You'll have to come closer!" he exclaimed. It was possible, I suppose. He had just woken up after a heavy nights drinking so it wasn't outside the realms of possibility that his eyes were blurry. I shuffled closer to him.
"I still can't see!"
I shuffled ever closer.
"Look! Do you want me to have a look or not?"
I shuffled nervously closer to him still.
"Hmmm" he said "does it hurt when i do this?"
Before the final words left his mouth and i had time to move, he jabbed a small stick into my arse crack.
"Aaaaaaaahhh!!! You fucker!" I screamed and recoiled away in horror and in searing agony, "That fucking kills, you prick!"
He just laughed, dropped the stick and lay back down with his dirty stone encrusted arm covering his eyes; "It's just piles. I wouldn't worry about it."
Just piles! Just fucking piles! Worry about it?!?! I was fucking crestfallen! What had i done to deserve this? I was only 21! Piles were reserved for gay men and old people who sat out on cold benches outside Woolworths all day long. This couldn't b happening to me?
"What do you mean 'just piles'? What the fuck do i do now?" I exclaimed.
"Well you can poke them back in or get some cream or just ride it out." He said with annoying nonchalance. Let's just say that option 1 didn't go at all well. It was about as close I've come to passing out in my whole life. Riding it out wasn't going to work either because i was miserable for the rest of the day, especially so when word spread about my delicate condition amongst my friends and then on to the nice young women that we had befriended. We were sat in a bar later on when a nice young tanned girl from Bournemouth put her arm around me and jokingly consoled me with the words "Don't worry, Paul. My Dad has piles and they don't last forever!" I looked up and could see Paddy smirking at me, he had told everyone! The bastard!
"Please don't touch me!" I pleaded half jokingly, but pathetically, "I feel dirty!" and then I got up and walked over to Paddy.
"Right! I can't take this anymore. What's this cream I need to get?"
Still smirking he replied; "Alright Champ! That's the spirit! We'll beat this disease together! It's called Anusol in England, i'm sure it'll be the same over here. Lets go to the chemist and find some!"
So we made our excuses, actually, they weren't so much excuses, Paddy gleefully told the laughing table that we were going to purchase pile cream and we left.
Now my grasp of the spanish language isn't great but i'll always give it a go. I insisted amongst our 8 strong party that they must all try and order their drinks and booze in spanish and that the spanish business men and women would more than likely speak english anyway, but they'd be pleased with our efforts. So I took out my English-spanish dictionary and looked up how to say "Can I please have some pile cream for my rabid arse crack?" It wasn't in there, so I decided upon saying "L'Anusol, por fa vor?" in a pseudo-spanish accent.
I had had a few drinks but still needed to pluck up the courage to enter into what could only be a frightfully embarrassing encounter and then we walked into the chemist. We had been in there already once or twice to buy plasters, bandages and sun cream so they were familiar with us and therefore hated us already. There was a queue which we joined and Paddy stood chatting to me as I geared myself up only half listening to the gubbins that he was coming out with. I could smell the booze on his breath.
"Don't worry, it'll all be over soon." he said with a grin "Soon after you've bought the cream and then applied it with your finger 4 times a day for a week!"
"Just fuck off Pat! This is bad enough without you adding to it!"
Soon it was our turn at the counter. A queue of locals had already formed behind us so this wan't goin to be pretty.
"Hola Signorena!" I said nervously to the angry looking lady behind the counter in my best spanish accent, "L'Anusol por fa vor?"
"Que?" she replied with a puzzled look.
"L'Anusol?" I repeated.
"Que?"
"Um, l'Anusol? You know? Pile cream?" I leant in and whispered anxiously.
"Que?" she again said before calling over her co-worker, an even angrier looking gentleman.
I repeated my request to him but it again fell on deaf ears. The queue behind me seemed even larger now and i could feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment. This was just fucking marvellous! Everyone in this this town seemed to have some grasp of the english language and my token gesture to speak their lingo had served me well up until this point, but not here! I had found the oly two people in own who either couldn't or didn't want to talk English.
Paddy decided to chime in unhelpfully, "You know, L'anusol?" He pointed at my arse and said loudly- "Non funciona! Non funciona" He had read this on a out of order pool table the night before and was now pointing at my arse and declaring to the whole shop that it didn't work. The situation descended but Patrick was convinced that we were getting somewhere. The two shop keepers talked amongst themselves and came back with an array of boxed spanish medicine. Most of it looked like laxatives and none of it was pile cream.
"Come on Pat, lets just go please!" I was dying with shame at this point. "I just want to get out of here."
"No no no. You need fixing up. They've got to have it!" he replied as he lifted up and shook each box they placed on the counter. He was fucking loving this.
Then, from the middle of the queue, came an angel. An olive skinned beautiful angel. This young spanish girl sidled up to the counter. She was utterly stunning with big brown eyes and a mass of shiny black hair. She looked at me and said in a sultry Spanish accent "Ah, you have piles, no?"
I could have died right there.
"Um, I'm afraid so, yes" I admitted quietly before realising that I could no longer keep eye contact with her out of utter shame. She then turned to the people behind the counter and spoke a few words in Spanish. The male shop keeper let out an audible laugh. I'd like to think he was bound by some spanish code of pharmaceutical ethics, whereby it's an offence to laugh at any of the ailments your customer comes in with and that hopefully the laugh was more out of relief that he could now finally get shot of us, but at the time it felt like the whole shop was laughing at me. He walked to the end of his counter, reached under it and came back with a small box. It was fucking Anusol! Not the spanish equivalent with a name we couldn't pronounce, but good old fashioned Anusol. Paddy picked up the box and laughed, "Yey Anusol!" he said as he held it up next to his head and pointed out the words on the box to the shopkeeper.
"Si, Anusol!" the shopkeeper replied with a nod.
I turned and thanked the beautiful girl who had already made he way back to her position in the queue.
"Es nada" she replied with a smile which nearly killed me again.
I put some euros down on the counter, turned on my heels before the man could give me the change and got the hell out of the shop. I could hear Patrick ending the sad situation with a florish by drunkenly thanking everyone and saying goodbye.
I stood waiting for him with the box of cream in my hand when he came out the door and we walked away.
"See Champ!" he said sarcastically before giving me a slap on the arse, "I told you it wouldn't be so bad!

Fatal Funfair Attraction

I lost my phone the other day. I sent a text to it saying that if anyone found the phone please could they contact me and i would pay £50 for it's safe return. Well sure enough, 15 minutes later I get a call from a guy. "Great!" I thought until the situation took a turn for the worst. The man phoned my house number up after i sent the text and was being more than a little bit crazy. He said that someone else had phoned my phone that morning and was claiming that it belonged to them and that they had lost it last week. The person had also said that they would meet him to pick it up that day. I told him that was impossible and that he had found my work phone, i could tell him the first 10 numbers on there, the last few texts and to ring any personal number on there and the person on the other end would confirm it was mine. This was still not good enough for him and he said that if i wanted it back i would have to meet at the shops near my house at 1pm, the same time he had arranged to meet this other person. I was a bit freaked out but told him that i would definitely be there. I enquired as to who this other person was but he just said "I can't give you those details" as if he had suddenly landed a job on the telephone exchange and was bound by the fucking Data Protection Act.
Not wanting to lose out in anyway, i got to the rendevous point 10 minutes early and stood out in the pissing rain waiting for him to come. All i knew was that he had a silver transit and that, by the sound of his voice, he was middle aged- already the two biggest characteristics the Police look for in serial killers.
I stood there smoking a shielded cigarette, bemoaning my cursed luck when a car pulled up next to me. I took no notice of it until i heard a "Hi Paul!" coming from the now open window. I bent down and looked in. Sat inside the car was a girl i knew a while ago called Amy. Hers was the first number on my mobile and it was in the next couple of moments it became apparent that the stupid man had phoned the first number in my directory and had now compromised my position by telling this bunny boiler the vicinity in whih i lived. I had met her at a festival and initially enjoyed her company, it was only during the journey home when i was coming down and chatting with my friend that I reconciled that; she actually looked an awful lot like my mum, that I have enough problems in my life without oedipus jokes being fired at me mercilessly and that it would be best for all concerned if I never saw or spoke of her again. As such, I had been ignoring her texts for months and her phonecalls in the middle of the night had become most tiresome and now this goon had told her exactly where I'd be at exactly what time. "Amy!" I said puzzledly "what are you doing here?" "I got phonecall from a guy who had your phone and i thought I'd come and get it for you." Now this might have been a nice gesture if she didn't live in Surrey and I didn't live 50 odd miles away in fucking Reading. "Um, don't you think thats a bt strange" I enquired. "you could have just told him to ring my mum. Or my house. Or one of my friends?!" "Well i wanted to see you and you haven't been answering your phone." I was properly freaked out by this point and could not wait to get away from there. Just then the silver transit van entered the car park. It pulled up alongside the car and out stepped a fat, bedraggled guy who looked like Super Marios idiot brother. I could see he had my phone in his hand and thrust mine in his direction. "I really appreciate you bringing that back for me." I had planned to get the phone and then draw out the cash if he asked for it but now i just wanted away. "You must be Amy" he said, completely ignoring me "Is the phone definitely not yours then?" Before she could even answer i chimed in "No, the phone is definitely not hers. She just drove here to pick it up for me. All the way from Surrey." I took the phone from him, he didn't ask for the reward and I sure as fuck wasn't going to offer him one after this debacle, so I just thanked him profusely for returning it to me and shook his hand. As Mario left and climbed back into his van, I turned to Amy; "So just how were you planning to get the phone back to me when the only means of contacting me you have is on this phone? Actually, please don't even answer that and please don't contact me again" and i turned on my heels and quick stepped home in the rain, hoping that i wouldn't be followed. I looked back once to see her standing in the same spot staring in my direction. Perhaps it was a bit harsh of me but the whole sorry saga seemed a bit too much like a deleted scene from Fatal Attraction for my liking. And afterall that I really would have hoped that she'd have got the message. Regrettably, she's obviously not given up all hope of redemption as she's phoned me 3 times alredy this morning and 5 times yesterday.
Why me?

And that's that.

I thought there was more but i'm reliably informed that that is my output to date and who better than me would know? A guy called Mike, apparently. Thank you, Mike.

So now I get to move on without a dark shadow of shite talk hanging over me. I can start anew. And so, to bed....

Shine On You Crazy Side Lamp

A few years back, when I was living at home with my parents, I had been out on the town with my girlfriend, drinking heavily and doing a bit of smash to make our less than salubrious Reading surroundings that little bit enjoyable.We were feeling a little frisky so decided to go back to my house when the pubs and clubs had shut at 2am. I shared a room with my little brother at the time, so the first thing I did when i arrived was creep up the stairs and remove my little brother from his bed, before gently co-ercing him, in his confused and sleepy state down the stairs and onto the sofa. "It's OK Mark" I whispered in his ear "You're just having a dream. Go back to sleep now". I dug out a natty old, musty smelling sleeping bag from out of a cupboard, flung it over him with complete disregard for his comfort, before giving my girlfriend, who had been waiting patiently in the kitchen the all clear. We moved up the creaking stairs and into the bedroom. I shut the door and tried to block the glass pane above it with some FHM magazines, in an attempt to stop the escaping light from waking my parents. As i was doing this she removed her clothes and laid seductively on the bottom of my bunk beds and watched me quietly cursing as i struggled to get the magazines to stay into place. Eventually, horniness prevailed and i gave up, removed my clothes and went to climb in next to her. As soon as my knee hit the mattress the wooden bed gave out a loud creak. These beds had been in my family before i was born. One of my earliest memories was falling out from the top bunk and smashing my head on the floor, resulting in my first trip to hospital since birth and now here they were conspiring against me again to fuck me up and stop me from getting my groove on with my ridiculous drunk missus.Thinking quickly, I pulled the duvet off the bed and laid it down on the floor, before pulling my girlfriend out next and putting her ontop of it. The ritual began and we were soon quietly rolling around on my bedroom floor, knocking over my little brothers Lego Techniques kit and cracking the plastic boxes of his Playstation 1 games with our clumsy lovemaking. Before long my girlfriend gave the signal to say that she was about to reach her peak, which was usually my cue to start drilling as hard as possible in an attempt to climax together and then go straight to sleep. But I could feel nothing. After a day of drinking and drug taking I was completely dead from the waist down. This was gonna take a while. After a few more minutes I could see that my girlfriend was beginning to lose interest with me rutting away ontop of her. "Are you nearly finished? I'm really tired and i want to go to sleep". "Shhhhh!" I snapped, "I think i was nearly there then and now you've stopped me. Don't put me off!!!" "Oh for fucks sake!" she replied and then just looked up towards the ceiling with complete disinterest. I bravely continued on my quest. I wasn't going to let a mere moaning young women from stopping me winning this battle. If I were to surrender now I would surely succumb to the dreaded Blue Balls and spend a night in unrivalled agony whilst she slept oblivious and unsympathetic to my plight. I continued.A few more minutes later, whilst i had been concerntrating with all my might on keeping sexy thoughts while staring with tunnel like vision at one of the fallen FHM magazines on the floor across the room, I looked down at my girlfriends face to see that she had fallen fast asleep. Her eyes were closed and her head had fallen to one side. There was dribble trickling out the side of her mouth and her nose had begun to make a light snorting sound. "The fucking selfish bitch!!" I thought to myself as i tried to wake her by thrusting with more vigour than ever. But she didn't even stir. "Nobody could actually fall asleep whilst having sex?", i mused "And certainly not a woman with someone huffing and puffing ontop of her, with their penis (no matter the size) jabbing furiously into them".I reconciled that if she was feigning sleep then I'd continue, undeterred by her clearly audible fake snoring, and she'd have to break character soon. And, if she was actually asleep then that wasn't my fault. This wasn't rape. Was it? She was my girlfriend and had initially consented to sex. It wasn't my fault if I was such a stallion that she couldn't hack the pace and ridiculous length of time it was taking me to shoot the cat. No, this definitely wasn't rape.I continued with gusto, but soon the sight of the dribbling, comatose girl beneath me became less than erotic. The smudged make up and the sleeping look on her face were actually curtailing my desire and could only serve to extend this rather soulless experience even further into the night. My knees were hurting now as they scratched against the harsh pile of the floor. I could feel the pain in my knees but still nothing from my loins. I took the executive decision that something would have to change. I would have to find something new, something more sexually arousing, something less asleep to look at while i humped away at her. Without stopping all together, I reached over to my bedside table and pulled out the bottom drawer to reveal my porno mag stash. In one deft move I lifted a magazine out, flipped it open and lay it on the floor so i could gawp at the surgically enhanced, airbrushed ladies inside. This was it! This would certainly help me achieve my messy goal. But there was still the small matter of my girlfriends offputting face to contend with. No matter how much I tried to concerntrate on the delightful grot mag before me, I was always drawn back to her drooling face. "Can I do this?", I thought. "Can i balance this porno mag over her face without waking her?" If she hadn't woken by now then surely she'd sleep through me covering up her face with a year old copy of Razzle. I lifted the magazine off the floor and draped it over her face. She didn't move or stir and inch. "Two birds, one stone!", I thought. In one move of complete genius and stealth I had managed to block out the unsightly distraction of her sleeping face and replace it with the visual delights of some naked bird called Cherie who was infinitely more asthetically pleasing than the slumbering heap on my bedroom floor. I was surely on my way to victory now. I rutted away faster than ever, like a Grand National jockey on the home straight after negotiating the final, most difficult hurdle. Here it comes, i thought, here it comes! But then just as I was reaching my ends the bedroom door burst open "Mark! WHY have you got your bedroom light on at this ho....oh!" My mum stopped mid sentence and stood in the doorway. She had merely come to tell her 11 year old son to turn his light off but was confronted with her naked 19 year old one instead. Her tired mind struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. Was she dreaming that her second born and favourite sun was having sex with a clearly asleep girl with a porno magazine over her face on the bedroom floor? Would I be able to get up and quietly usher her back to bed, like I had done with my younger brother, and convince her it was all a horrible horrible dream? That was doubtful."Oh fuck! Mum!", I squealed as I jumped to my feet, stark bollock naked, reaching down to grab the copy of Razzle off my girlfriends face as i did so in an effort to hide my erect little fella from my mothers view, whilst also revealing the true identity of my tired lady friend in one final act of humiliation. She looked at me, then she looked at the naked girl fast asleep on the floor and then looked at me again. I can't say what was going through her head at the time but i attempted to guess. She had never met this girl before and she may well have thought that she had just played witness to her beloved son rohypnol raping a defenceless young lady. I attempted to interject these thoughts before her tired brain had time to calculate the horrific scene before her. "Um, it's OK Mum. This is my girlfriend Jess. You know, the one I was telling you about? I was just trying to wake her up", I lied. I think my dear old mother must have taken the decision that there was little she could say at this hour of night that would help the situation she had walked in on; "Just get both of you into bed and turn out the light. It's nearly 4 o'clock in the bloody morning!" she said sternly, before taking a step backwards, reached out for the door handle and began shuting the door behind her. Just as she did so I could see her head drop and I knew that i probably hadn't heard the end of this.I looked at my girlfriend still asleep on the floor. The game was up, i couldn't continue now. It would be just wrong. Plain wrong! I would have to give into the dreaded Blue Balls and stomach pains from Hell this time. I knelt next to her, put my hands on her shoulders and gently shook her, "Jess! Jess! Wake up, you've fallen asleep, darling", I said softly. She fucking typically woke up straight away this time, which would leave any logical person to believe that their lovemaking was as potent as a gentle shake of the shoulders. "Huh! Did I? Sorry!" she mumbled, with that confused look you always get from a person you've just woken up. "Yes, Babe. You fell asleep. It was a long day though, wasn't it. Come on! Lets get you into bed!" and i gently lifted her off the floor and eased her into the creaking bottom bunk. I kissed her goodnight and looked at her as she fell straight back to sleep, completely oblivious to the horrific situation that she had just played a major a role in and i would do my level best to make sure it stayed that way forever.

Love For SALE! Good Price!

About a year or so ago, on a damp September Monday evening, I was out in Reading town centre having a few drinks with a couple of friends of mine. If you've ever lived in Reading you'll know that for 362 days a year there's little else to do other than get out of your mind on drink and forget your less than salubrious surroundings. And for those other 3 days of the year, your getting out of your mind on drink at Reading Festival. Well this night was just one of those, when 4 young men realised they had little better to do but sit in a dinghy little pub, pumping money into the out of date juke box and just get drunk enough for the next day at work to be fucking unbearable. We were sat around chatting about precisely nothing when another friend burst through the door drunk and laughing;"Lads! Take a look at what i found in the phonebox across the road! It's gotta be a fucking joke!" he said, before he tossed a scruffy hand written piece of card on the beer splattered table. My friend Barry slapped his hand to the wooden table, as if he was trying to win a game of Snap, and grabbed at the note, knocking more beer out of the pint glasses in the process, and began to read it to himself, his lips moving silently as his eyes scanned the writing."Read it out then, you fat knacker!" another friend piped up, confirming his request with a quick elbow in the ribs. "Ow!! Ha Ha! Alright, you impatient cunt! Take a listen to this..... Fucking hell!", he replied in his thick Irish brogue. "Jaysus! This is mental" and he began to read, trying to stiffle his giggles as he did so; Do you want to have sex with my Hot Italian wife?Anything you want to do to her - £40Ring this number: 0??? ???????? The table came alive with interest as disbelieving hands reached out to grab the scrawled calling card. "Fuck right off!" Barry declared, still laughing and fending off as many clamouring hands as he could manage, "It's mine!""Just let me have a look, you dick!" I said and snatched it out of his hand when his eyes were diverted elsewhere."That's got to be bollocks! No one would whore out their wife for £40! That's either a husband who's been cheated on looking for revenge or just a complete wind up!""You're such a cynical fucker!" Barry exclaimed to me, snatching the advert back out of my hand. "And anyway, if it is a wind up we'll soon find out." With that he pulled his mobile out his pocket and started to tap in the numbers from the card."What are you doing?" my friend Brian questioned."What the feck does it look like i'm doing? I'm gonna phone up and see what the craic is. Now shush!""Ha ha! Brilliant!!""Shhhhh! It's ringing" Barry said firmly but with a glint in his eye. And with that we all stopped chattering and listened, desperately trying to hear the illicit phonecall that was about to take place."Er hello? Um yes. I've just found a card with this number in a phone box outside Broad Street Mall. Yep I think thats the same one. Is it for real? Whats the deal then? ""The deal is you're going to get arse raped!", someone chimed in. The tables stifled laughter from the four of us sat listening intently got louder and was greeted with a steely glare from Barry. We shut up and he continued;"No, that's nothing. I'm just sat at home with the TV on" he lied, "So it's definitely not a wind up? OK. And whereabouts are you based? Yeah i know that. Is she busy tonight? Oh great. I'll be around a bit later then if that's alright with you. Yeah the names Barry. I'll be sure to drop you a text when i'm on my way then, Alan. OK, yep. Bye then", and with that he hung up and looked on proudly as we all fell about the table in laughter. He spent the next 5 minutes fielding questions about whether he was really going to go through with it from one of my friends, with me telling him that it was probably still a wind up and he'd be a mug to even go near the place, whilst my other two mates egged him on to take the situation as far as he possibly could. Regardless of all these suggestions, Barry had already made up his own mind the minute he saw the words "have sex" and "£40" in the same sentence. Barry is, what most people would call a bit of a perve. This is a man who, in the past, has proudly admitted to wanking off to women’s tennis and, due to a distinct lack of female companionship, has a stack of the sickest grot mags imaginable nearly as tall as himself. He’s paid for sex before and had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about riding another mans missus for the seemingly paltry sum of £40. Despite two of my friends continuing to goad him into it, I spent the next hour trying to come up with really great excuses as to why we shouldn’t go; ‘She’s got to be bog monster, the mans bound to be a psycho, you’ll get relentlessly buggered before they stuff an orange rubber ball in your mouth and shove you in a box’. You know? That kind of thing. I spent the second hour with him slowly coming to terms with the fact that, no matter what I said, he was definitely going to go through with it. To say I was apprehensive about the whole thing would be a massive understatement. Having only recently seen the film Hostel, where a group of horny young boys get chopped into nasty little bits because they listened to their penises rather than their brains, I was fearing the worst. After a couple more drinks,three of my mates got their stuff together and exclaimed that they had work in the morning and left, shouting encouragement through the open pub door as they left. Barry lapped it up before picking up his mobile and waving it at them, before he began sending the fateful text to Alan. His eyes squinted at the screen as he sent his proposition. He pulled out the card from his top pocket and tapped the number in again, before setting it down next to his glass and asking, as cool as like, "Do you want another drink?" His phone soon bleeped with a response confirming that Alan was definitely up for it, his wife was looking forward to it too and to go round in 45 minutes. There was little point in attempting to talk him out of it now, but i gave it one last try;"You're fucking mental, Barry" I said shaking my head, "you must have a death wish""Death wish? More like a fucking sex wish!" he retorted "If you're so worried about me going alone why don't you come with me?""Go to some nutters house? Like fuck!""Ah, go on! I thought one of those boys would have done but they've got work. You haven't. I'm sure it'll be fine. The bloke didn't sound like a nutcase.""He's whoring out his wife, for fucks sake!!! How can he sound like anything but a nutcase?!?!"Aw, you know what i mean! He doesn't sound hard. He was very softly spoken. And he said his wife was fit!""Well he would say that, wouldn't he . Firstly he's fucking married to her and secondly, he's trying to pimp her out to you!""Aw go on!""No chance mate"And for the next couple of minutes he tried to talk me into accompanying him, before he pulled out the big guns and reminded me of a time (the details of which I won't mention here) when he had gone above and beyond to help me out. "Oh for fucks sake! I knew you'd bring that up eventually! Alright alright, i'll fucking go with you!""Ha har, yes!" he said triumphantly "I knew you wouldn't let me down" before patting me on the back."Not much choice when you bring that up, you fucker! I'm not happy about this!" So we spent the next 40 drinking and chatting, barely mentioning the seedy encounter both of us were about to enter into. At the beginning of the night I had been dead against the the whole crazy idea of riding another mans wife but maybe it was the booze and the adrenaline coursing through my veins or the fact that I now had to go up there anyway that made me blurt out as we were leaving, “I’m not going second!”. We spent the short walk out of town debating who would go in pole position. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that if we were to go ahead with it, I would only do it if she was fit and there was absolutely no chance in hell I was going to get on up on her after he’d had laid his greasy fat paws on her. He argued, that it had been his idea, he had found the card and that he should get first dibs. After I threatened to go home once more, he said there was only one fair way to decide it; we’d have to flip a coin for 1st place. I lost. The urge to turn and run took over me again, but my friend kindly reminded me that any man who reneges on their word on the sacred flipping of a coin is a total arsehole. We arrived at the door with me still cursing and insisting it was a bad idea, but we were here now, there was no going back. Barry rang the doorbell and we could see a man getting out of a chair through the frosted glass window, as he got closer to the door it became apparent that, thankfully, he wasn’t the man-buggering mountain we had both feared. He opened the door and stood before us was a pony-tailed, slightish, man, about 30 years of age, fairly innocuous looking but maybe he could still be a knife-wielding psycho and he’d run in and maim me when I was humping his loved one. “Oh two of you! Come in guys” he said, as if he were greeting a couple of old friends. He offered us a drink of wine, which we both politely declined. We had spoke about this in the pub and if they were going to drug, bum and murder us, we’d have to make it a whole lot more difficult for them to get the rohypnol in our systems then drinking a glass of spiked Liebfraumilch. He told us to sit down in the living room, where he had been calmly watching the tale-end of Eastenders alone. I could smell weed in the air and it was obvious by the dog-ends in the ashtray next to him that he had just put out a spliff. We all sat there for a moment without speaking, just watching the screen before he finally piped up, “My wife’s upstairs, she’ll be down in a minute.” “Um, are you gonna watch us?" Barry finally said. I was glad he had said it because it had been playing on both our minds and I was struck dumb with the bizarreness of the situation. “Don’t be silly, I’m not into that kind of stuff!”, Alan said. He actually seemed quite annoyed at the suggestion. Here was a man who was about to let two lads ride his wife and we were the “silly” ones for suggesting that he might like to watch! “Have you got the cash guys?” he said, “that’ll be £80 for the both of you. Separately. Aida’s not into threesomes.”Maybe it was the fear, or perhaps the sound of the woman’s name subconsciously put me off the whole idea but, in hindsight, I can proudly say that I bottled it. “Its not the two of us mate, it’s just him” I said thumbing at Barry, “I’m just tagging along”. Barry nudged me, not very subtlely, repeatedly with his knee, I turned round and he glared at me. The look in his eyes said “You cunt!”. I did feel a bit bad at that point, but now that the pressure was off and I knew I wasn’t shortly going to be riding this guys missus, I could have a bit of a friendly chat with him. I went on to tell him that we had both been a bit worried about the situation and I was here as back up. I think the words “Safety in numbers” actually came out of my mouth before Alan stopped me and reassured us that he and his wife did this thing all the time. I asked him why he didn’t utilise the powers of the internet to find potential suitors for his wife, surely it would be safer than leaving scrawled notes in telephone boxes. He told us he didn’t like computers and by the looks his house, he probably couldn’t afford one anyway after spending all his money on pot. At that moment, we heard a creaking on the stairway, which lead down into the living room. I looked up and could see some feet, some decidedly chubby ankles and the bottom of a robe. Aida made her way down the steps. To call her obese wouldn’t be fair but she was certainly big boned about 5 foot nothing with black hair and was wearing a blue towelling men’s robe. She looked, as Alan had already told us she was, very Italian and, by the size of her, she’d obviously had a few too many meatballs. At that moment, I was so so glad that I had already made my excuses and I sat there waiting for my mate to come out with his before we ran out the door, but they didn’t come. “Aida this is Barry and Paul” Alan said. “Hello boys”, Aida said in a really annoying Italian voice that I think was supposed to sound seductive. Now she wasn’t exactly ugly but she certainly was by no means a looker and I’m sure she was cultivating a nice moustache, which was probably a sign of the hairy things to come. Alan explained the situation to Aida and she looked at me in disappointment when he told her that I wasn’t going to be joining her in the bedroom. “Aahh, that’s a shame”, she said. At that point I wasn’t sure if she was doing it for the cash or for the love of cock, but I felt the need to explain myself. “Umm yeah, sorry I can’t. I’ve got a missus” “So has he!” Barry said quickly, pointing at Alan. We all laughed a bit but I could tell, by his tone, that my mate was still annoyed with me and that Alan really just didn’t give a shit about people ‘doing the naughty’ with his wife. Aida walked towards my mate on the chair and took him by the hand, “Come on then” she said. He got up slowly and they both walked towards the staircase. “Have fun darling” Alan said to his wife. “You know I will” came the reply. As the walked up the stairs, my friend turned round and gave me one last telling glance. He wasn’t happy. I know he was bang up for it before but he had been clearly sold down the river about this womans hotness. I didn’t know why we hadn’t run and why he was going to go through with it, but if he was able to get a boner with that woman and was going to ride her with her husband only sat downstairs, then he was a better man than I. The door closed upstairs and Alan turned round to me and said “Have you got that money?” After bottling it, shelling out £40 was the least I could do, so I handed him two £20 notes. As stood up and he stuffed the two bits of paper into his pocket, I was struck with what a tiny amount it was to let someone jump your wife. He then just sat down and casually flicked on Casualty. With that a loud THUD came from upstairs. ‘Oh fuck! She’s killed him” I thought. Then the sound of the bed creaking and a low moan from Aida allayed my fears. “Christ! They’re really going for it.” Alan said. That was it. This was just too much. I was sat in a room with a man, watching the telly, whilst his wife was being ragged. “What’s the eh, the um, reason you and your wife do this Alan?” I was about to add, “Is it for the cash?” but he interjected, “Aida’s just loves sex and I have trouble keeping up with her. What can I say? She’s a fiery Italian woman” “She’s a fat Italian woman”, I thought to myself. After I stoney silence, broken only by the sound of the bed creaking rhythmically upstairs “What about the money?” I finally asked. “That’s just a bonus for me. It keeps me in this” he said pulling a big bag of weed out of his pocket. The arrangement became crystal clear. His wife got sex with strangers. He got skunk. “Do you want some spliff?” “Alright” I replied, completely forgetting the no drink or drugs policy. What was already one of the most surreal nights of my life had just turned even more so, as I sat smoking a potent joint, watching The fucking Casualty with a complete stranger, whilst my mate had intercourse with his wife. About 25 minutes after they had gone upstairs, the squeaking of the bed and the sex noises stopped. I hardly noticed it as I was quite stoned and engrossed in a wonderful episode of the hospital drama. My mate came down five minutes later alone. I stood up. We both shook hands with Alan, as if we’d just completed a run of the mill business deal and left the house. As we walked down the path and Alan shut the door, my mate gave me an almighty kick up the arse and started calling me a bastard. I just laughed as he went on to explain that the minute they walked through the door, she had flung her robe off to reveal a stumpy, chubby body and a big Italian black bush. She had torn at his clothes and had rough sex with him, scratching his back and his arse, all the while swearing at him in Italian. I asked him for the £40 and he told me in no uncertain terms to “Get fucked!” and the “he had taken a bullet for me". "But I didn't even want to to do it!""Nor did i once I clocked her coming down the stairs, but we both couldn't pussy out and insult the mans wife.""Insult him by not having sex with his wife?" I said whilst giggling"Yeah. That'd be like saying she was a fat ugly bitch", he replied."But she fucking was!!!""I know, but she was fucking mental in bed!!" Barry replied and then went into graphic detail about what had taken place upstairs. There was no point in me pushing it as there was no way he would ever pay up. To be honest, I was stoned and giggling like a girl at this point as he went into even more detail about her big minge. The laughs alone were worth it and I just thanked the Lord that I had bottled it, so I wasn’t entirely worried about the cash. I asked Barry if he wanted to go for a drink."Fuck that! i'm going straight home for a shower!"So we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, with me laughing to myself all the way on mine.I phoned him the next morning to rib him about what had taken place. He pretended to still be angry with me for chickening out, but i could tell by the sound of his voice that he was joking."So any regrets about last night?" I asked him."My only regret was bringing you, you useless cunt!""Ha ha, seriously you must feel a bit wrong for sleeping with that bush pig?"He’d had a night to sleep on it and collect his thoughts;"Paul, that was the single greatest sexual experience of my life! I'm fucking going back next week for some more!" This time, from the sound of his voice, I could tell he that he meant it. To be continued.........................................

Don't Make Friends At Festivals.

At Reading Festival 2006, I had been split up with my longterm girlfriend for little over a month when i saw her walking around arm in arm with some other prick. In fact, we weren't really split up properly, just going through the motions like we always did. The festival is always a drink and drug fuelled time but seeing that put me on a downwards spiral of misery, which resulted in me eating a shitload of magic mushrooms in a desperate attempt and remove my mind from this planet. The problem was that you should only partake in mushrooms if you're feeling on top of your game, so doing them when you've just had your heart ripped in two is a really fucking stupid idea. About half an hour later they started to kick in and, rather than being elevated to a higher stream of consciousness as planned, i was struck down by an overwhelming urge to start booing. I literally couldn't stop myself as the tears began to flow and was surrounded by a group of mates who didn't have a fucking clue what to do. After about 10 minutes it became ridiculous! I was aware i was crying but couldn't do a thing to stop myself, so i just tried to carry on what i was doing by watching bands and drinking. I was laughing and chatting with my mates one minute, but the very next i would burst into a bigfit of uncontrollable, childlike "Boo hoo hoos!" I, literally, just could not stop myself from crying as the mushrooms riddled my mind. I can't remember who we were watching but i was stood up drinking my beer and noticed that there was an exclusion zone of about 5 metres either side of me as all these people were staring at the weirdo tripping his nuts off, crying his heart out but continuing to watch the band. Eventually this woman came up to me. She must have been about 30 and she had these orange ball light things on two bits of string that she was swinging around her head. You know, those hippy fucks who bring circus equipment to a festival in a lame attempt at making themselves look zany? Well she was one of them. She started asking me if i was alright and i explained that i was having a bad mushroom trip rather than saying i had just had my heart ripped out and shat on. She started acting all motherly to me and gave me a hug and asked if i wanted to get out of there. I said i did and we went for a wander, with me still crying a bit behind a large pair of sunglasses. As we were walking she started spinning her stupid orange glow balls again and in my hallucinating state, I became transfixed by them and finally stopped booing. If you've ever done mushrooms before you'll know that the simplest thing can alter your mood, such as a song or someone telling a ridiculous joke can set you off in an unstoppable laughter fit. Well the sight of this hippy spinning her stupid orange balls made me forget i ever had a whore of a girlfriend and i started laughing and joking with her, pronouncing her as the saviour of my weekend.We went back to my tent and were sat outside drinking and laughing. She was still doing some poncey trick with the orange balls that i couldn't stop looking at when she said; "Do you want to go in there?" whilst nodding at my tent. "Nah, you're alright" i said, "I've just split up with my girlfriend and i'm not really up for it". The truth was, I wasn't but i had taken so many bits and pieces in the last 24 hours that i was worried that i wouldn't be able to do anything anyway. Not to mention the fact that this women was clearly a bit of a hippy and only God and her would have known the last time she had a wash."Right then, i'm gonna go" she said as she stopped spinning the balls and let them fall to her feet."What, what do you mean? I said back feebly. The very thought of this woman and her life giving orange glowing balls deserting me filled me with dread. I'd be sat alone in the dark and surely the tears would return. It was a delicate balance and i couldn't let my shattered libido upset that. "No, don't go!" I said "I've changed my mind. Let's do it!" and i sheepishly made my way into the tent, followed by her. We were soon getting down to the nitty gritty in the cold damp August night. I was still spinning out from the mushrooms. When i kept my eyes open, her features became distorted and even more scary than normal. When i shut my eyes, my ears became more sensitive than ever and my ears played tricks on me. "Did you hear that? I think someones planning on burning down my tent!" "Don't be ridiculous!" She quite rightly said, "there's no one out there!" "No, I better go and check! I definitely heard someone planning to burn down my tent!"This is where things took a turn for the worse. As i sat upright and made my way to look out the zipped door, she pushed me back and pinned me down; "Stop being silly! You're imagining things. There's no one out there!", she said forcifully as she sat on top of me. She then started getting extra aggressive. I'm not sure if she thought she was being sexy and assertive, but she began ripping and scratching at my back as we were kissing."Aaargh!!" i screamed as her nails tore down my back."You like that, don't you!" she told me."No, i really don't. That fucking hurt"My protestations of pain only seemed to spur her on as she continued to rip away at my back, bite me and rut away at me with increased ferocity. I'm up for trying new things but after about 5 minutes of this I had finally had enough. "OK, please stop. That really hurts and i feel a bit ill and very tired. Can we just go to sleep?""Err, OK" she said dejectedly. As soon as she said it turned my aching back to her and hoped that she would take this as her cue to leave. She didn't and i spent the next half an hour pretending to be asleep but all the while listening to her rummaging and fidgetting around my tiny tent. With my back on fire and my head swimminng with all manner of substances it was a struggle to get to sleep but i finally got there.I woke up in the halflight. I couldn't feel the crazy woman next to me so assumed that she had gone. "Hey, are you awake?", I looked up quickly and saw her sat at the end of the tent by the door. She was wearing my clothes from the day before. All of them. I sat bolt upright and looked at this mentalist wearing my jeans, t-shirt, jacket and trainers, all clearly a few sizes to big for her. "What...what are you doing?" I mumbled."You be me and i'll be you!" she said with a psychotic grin on her face as she threw her bra at me. So what had started with some light masochistic sex had now turned into a full blown role reversal situation and there could be only one loser- me! I was more than a bit scared now and my mind was buzzing with ideas of how i could get out of this messed up situation. "Um, OK" I mumbled, "I just need to go to the toilet, but i'll be back in a moment". This was the best idea my tired mind could come up with. I was running away from my own tent. Genius! I pulled on some shorts and a grass stained t-shirt from the day before last. "I'm gonna need those, but you can have them back in a minute" I said, nodding at my trainers."OK, don't be long" she smiled with this evil grin. Her face looked creased and grey in the halflight of the morning.I half pulled on my trainers and made i run for it. I didn't know where i was going but anywhere would be better than there. I thought about just diving in a friends tent but that would be far too obvious. She'd no doubt track me down and i'd be stuck with her for the rest of the weekend. I briskly walked towards the river when i realsied i had left my phone and my wallet in the tent. A small price to pay for freedom, i reconciled. I got to the river and sat on a bench. My back stang as i leant against the wooden board. I took my white grassed stained t shirt off and looked at the back of it. It was streaked with blood and looked like a had been in a fight with a bear. I looked at my watch. it was 5.30 in the morning. I knew i'd have to stay away from the tent for a while, perhaps a couple of hours or so before Glenn Close got the message that i wasn't returning, so i lay down on the bench and tried to sleep. I awoke again at about 8 o'clock. My head was pounding and i had an almighty thirst on me. It was getting warm already and sat on the bench looking at the serene river scene before me, too scared to return to my tent and the mentalist nodoubtably still inside, my thoughts turned to my ex and how my first sexual encounter with another woman in ages had quickly turned into an absolute horror show. Would things always be this shitty? Probably. At about 9.30am, after blagging fags and water off as many people as walked past i made my way back to the tent. I approached from the side so as not to be seen if she was still hanging around. Thankfully, she wasn't. I dived inside of my tent and immediately looked for my wallet and phone. They were both there and no money had been stolen. I looked at my phone and noticed that she had left me a message; Really enjoyed meeting you. Give me a call if you want to meet up again xx and her name, whatever it was. Needless to say, I didn't call her ever again. I can't recall her name now but that's not a problem as the scars to my back are a more poignant reminder to that horrible, sexy night than any name could ever be. Anyway, later on that morning i had a laugh and a joke sharing the torrid tale and presenting my gruesome injuries to my friends when i saw them, without letting on how much it freaked me out. I did, however, bump into my ex girlfriend again amongst the 60,000 throng of people. I drunkenly confronted her and she said the bloke she was with was just someone she worked with. I called her a lying whore. He pushed me. I headbutted him. It turns out they did work together afterall.