The Mo-staaaash story

November is a month that has been hijacked by men growing moustaches for the benefit of prostate cancer sufferers. It’s hard to imagine an equivalent month where women don’t wear makeup; it’s not completely equivalent, but it’s probably similarly horrifying.

Anyway, men love this kind of thing, purely because any attention is better than no attention… and it’s for a good cause!

I (thank goodness) accidentally shaved on November the 2^nd, fully unaware of the momentous decision I was accidentally making, accidentally.

Anyway, someone has to give money to these people, so the more people that accidentally shave accidentally the better.

My friend Joel Michelin Stokes, born August 2^nd on a warm or cold summers morning, evening, day or night had selflessly grown a moustache along with some of his fellow Johnny English Reborn production colleagues. Joel grows a great beard; just like a mossy rock, but seems to have problems with moustaches.

For this reason I decided that Joel needed some sponsorship; but I didn’t get round to it until his second speculative email arrived with a convenient link to his mo-space page.

I clicked through and was not surprised to find that Joel had aptly named himself Giles Keyte, pronounced “Yjeels Kayt”, a French chauvinist womaniser whose moustache would be irresistible to all ladies by the end of the month.

Thoroughly impressed by Joel’s creativity in creating middle class alter-egos I promptly sponsored him and left a message informing him to:

“use this money to purchase a moustache comb, I know it’s meant to be for charity but they won’t notice the odd moustache comb here and there, relax!”

Feeling very satisfied with my days work and thanking my lucky stars for accidentally shaving accidentally on November the 2^nd, I had a look around the Johnny English movember team. There was an amazing group picture of all the crew with Johnny English with an amazing big moustache and Joel with his shining white face.

I had a look at the my friend Yjeels’ team mates and noticed a member by the name of Joel Stokes… Oh crumbs!

Conclusion: Joel had mistakenly sent me a link to his fellow Movember member Giles Keyte, pronounced “Giles Keyte”, thus directly facilitating a transfer of sponsorship from me to him aswell as a comedy message requesting he buys a moustache comb with charity funds. How we laughed.

The end.

Ger-Ger's escapades in Bristol Story

Autumn has arrived! Leaves are beginning to fall, it's harder to get out of bed, our windscreen washer ran out and needed replenishing... not so related to autumn; more related to the length of time between filling up the washer fluid and filling up the washer fluid again.

Anyway, so that sets the seasonal theme, but highly unrelated to this; my parents came for a weekend! I was very excited because when my parents visit they take me to do touristy things and we have lots of nice food and drink, and also lots of great family banter and mercilous teasing of everyone which is a good antedote to pride.

Anyways, so what I really want to share is this:
Our saturday plan was to travel from our house in rural suburban, middle class, green, leafy bliss in Henleaze down into the centre of town to visit SS Great Britain; the greatest boat ever to carry people and then get dumped off the Falklands Island for years before people realised it was an icon of the 19th century and needed hauling back to Bristol to be renevated and looked at.

I'm not here to discuss the funtimes that were had strolling round the SS Great Britain; I'm here to relay the bus-stop times.

So; at the bus-stop was a wonderful homeless ruffian sipping on white lightning cider and playing the harmonica and being very chatty and outgoing to the people around him. When the bus came, we all moved towards the bus, the homeless man included. We all boarded the bus except for the homeless man, who seemed to have some kind of beef with the bus or some people boarding the bus.

As the bus pulled away to a single fingered gesture by the man, my dad let us in on his thoughts on why the man was upset.

My dad said that, as the man had got up from his seat at the bus shelter, my dad had thought he was getting onto the bus, thus abandoning the can of cider that he was leaving sitting on the pavement at the bus stop. My dad then told us that in London, he had a habit (you can also read 'compulsion' here) of knocking over drinks cans he saw left in the street because they would either be left over drink, or urine; i.e. not nice.

So you can take the man out of London, but you can't stop the man knocking over a poor man's treasure in Bristol.

So; the homeless man returned from his outing to the bus entrance to find that someone had knocked over his cider. He wasn't best pleased, but had no idea who had done it. Thus he was very angry with the bus in general.
The end.

The Bordeaux Quay Cookery School Story

For Christmas, Hannah got me a voucher for a 3 course demonstration at Bordeaux Quay cookery school. This involved witnessing a professional chef cook up some delights whilst 16 of us watched and then ate the delights that were produced, accompanied by a glass of wine.

To cut a long story short, we witnessed lots of amazing chopping and garlic crushing, and learnt about great ingredients and cooking techniques.

The highlight of the evening was as Hannah and I were leaving. Hannah was checking her phone which had a few messages on it, and we were exchanging comments about the food we'd just experienced. We both needed to go to the toilet so we went through the door into the toilet area. I went into the mens and suddenly had the realisation that Hannah was still chattering away looking at her phone and following me. She didn't acknowledge the situation until I turned around and said, "wrong place!", at which I've never seen her turn around and run away so fast. I was laughing for the next half an hour.

The End.

The Proposal Story

March 7th, 2010 dawned like a cold day in Vietnam. The light came through my curtains but it was a grey light that cast no shadows, and did not induced a party of sunshine vitamins within my body.
Contrary to how the day began, I was very excited. Lest us forget; this was proposal day. It was 7.30am.

Since Hannah had to be at church an hour earlier than normal, I had to pick her up at 9.20am, which left me precisely only a bit of time to create one of the most mediocre 'proposal themed' clue trails in history. I sprang up, grabbed a suitable desert spoon which would later be dubbed for eternity 'the digging spoon' and left the house (after putting clothes on and ting).

I drove for 10 minutes before I realised I'd left my map and clues behind. I went back to get them, lest us forget that these were vital to the clue trail.



So, Hannah and I first started going out at Blaise Castle, so it was only fitting to venture back there to propose. Or it was unimaginative and convenient. But how unimaginative is a 'proposal themed' clue trail? So hush your gums.
I got googlemaps involved which told me approximately 0.5% of what Blaise Castle would actually be like when I was laying a trail there. I hammed together some amazing clues which loosely led around the landmarks of Blaise castle.
The first clue was for Hannah before we got there, the rest were buried by me and required Hannah to dig them up with the digging spoon. Here they are:

1.
Hello, I am a clue which will lead you to an exciting place!
Follow my trail of riddles and you will be rewarded
Go to a burning manor
Search at the foot of the left-most shrub

(Clue 1, pretty easy. Except the left-most shrub was meant to be one of 3 next to the carpark. In real life, there were about 15 trees next to the carpark.)

2.
Well done! You are a very talented detective Miss Barnes.
To reward your efforts I provide a small gift.
Across the pasture you will find a wood.
Look for the greenest of the green

(Googlemaps said that in the midst of the dark green trees was a light green dazzling tree, sadly winter had ruined that)

3.
Congratulations, you’re cleverer than I gave you credit for!
Another reward for such sterling investigating
I wish to learn more about this “Blaise Castle”, follow me!

(Faint praise)

4.
You’re a very special lady Miss Barnes!
Following all these clues so easily, I’m very impressed.
I’m thirsty, but I only want water from a round expanse.
I lay my clue where the Billy Goat’s gruff lives.

(Wrong! I was referring to underneath a bridge, but that's where the troll lives!)

5.
You are a wonderful lady Miss Barnes!
You are near the end of your journey.
Stand at the bridge, facing where you have come from,
Travel to the first tree in you line of sight.
Once there count 10 large steps North
Then 17 large steps East
Then 12 medium step West
Dig down 20cm...

(Googlemaps said that this would work, real life said that there was a path surrounded by cliffs.)



So finally Hannah was guided to the area where she was to dig for the mystery 20cm deep prize. I'd dug a little bit of earth so that it looked like I'd been there previously and buried something, but after about 2mins of struggling with rocks, roots and worms, I think Hannah was losing faith that this was the right place. I tried to encourage her that this was correct, "maybe underneath the rocks...", "a little to the right maybe?...", Hannah was beginning to fall out of love with the loyal digging spoon servant.

As the kids and dogs moved away the perfect proposal moment approached, I didn't know whether to be on one knee already, or make a big show of it. As I was deciding, a man and woman came walking into our secluded area and hung around for a bit, deciding where to go. This meant another 10 minutes of torturous digging for Hannah. I chipped in a bit of the digging, it was exciting to dig for something!

Eventually all the men, women, children and dogs dispersed and conditions were again perfect. Hannah was soldiering on with her digging spoon against a nice wide layer of rock which was never going to yield.

"Hannah, there's not actually anything in the hole"

I think by this point her suspicions were growing, she turned around and said something like "why?" or "Oh".

I was on one knee as my jeans will proove. I said "Stand up", so she did. I held her hands and said, "Will you marry me Hannah Barnes", can't exactly remember what she said but it was a positive answer.

That's when we cracked open the tiny champagne...

The photobooth story

So, I needed some passport photos. Where do you get passport photos from?

Well the obvious answer is... it varies, but often supermarkets, arcades and train stations cater for the needs of photo hungry passport and visa requirerers.

So I tootled off to Bristol Temple Meads station (built in 1839 by Brunel, it hosts a myriad of trains, photo booths and other reputable services).
The lovely station woman in the season ticket window had no change for my tenner (I'm too weak to carry four £1 coins around, it's much easier to carry five or ten of them in the form of paper and change up when the time requires) so I required another way of obtaining appropriate coinage.

The main ticket windows were all chocker with travellers hoping to set sail on a clickety-clack journey of escapist wonder, and so my gaze turned to the lovely shop run by William Henry Smith.
I purchased some worcester sauce flavour crisps which cost 93p (a shocking markup from their wholesale price) but which left me with precisely a fiver, 7 pence, and four £1 coins which perfectly matched my mission objective.

I preceded delightedly out of the shoppy shop and bounced along to the photo booth making sure that I kept my crisps hidden so that the lovely station woman who failed to change my tenner earlier didn't feel bad for making me spend money for no reason.
I took a seat in the photo machine and dared to wonder whether I'd, just this once, look respectable in the four tiny images about to be created. I clumsily inserted my four Great British Sterling discs and waited for the patronising woman to finish explaining all the things she loves explaining.
I adjusted the seat and waited in heart stopping anticipation for the countdown... 3... 2... 1...

POWERCUT!

Oh bother. Two seconds later the power came on again but the machine had forgotten me. I told the lady, she said there was a number to phone but gave me £4 because she was really really nice.

Then I got my photos done and carried on my day.

The End.

A Brazil story

Recently I was in Brazil to help give a training course. Everyone on the training course spoke English to a varying degree.

As we were walking along the beach road between a restaurant and our hotel I asked one of the men;

"How long do you work each day?"

He replied; "3 years"

But he realised that there was something wrong with this answer in context to the question so he asked me to 're-phrase the question'.

I said; "How many hours do you work for each day?"

He replied; "3 years, yes"

I was happy with that.

The best story ever story

This is the story that I wrote whilst Hannah was sad about her jobs and all I could think to do was write a story in a text document entitled, "The best story ever". I think you'll agree that this is far better than you can ever imagine. I'd like to credit Mr. T Morris & Mr. J Stokes for alot of the joke structure in this story.

Amazing story

Once upon a time, there was a knight in shining armour. Not a night, like the opposite of day. Don't be fooled, I mean night, with a k'. Not K-night, coz the K is silent. I know, silly. ANyway, so this knight was called Billy-Joel. He had been named after the popular singer. His family lived in Ohio, USA and he was raised as a cowboy on his dad's ranch.

He was an expert at lasooing cattle and his dad was very proud. But Billy-Joel had dreams far surpassing his dad's ones.
At night when it was quiet and all that could be heard was the sounds of owls and wild rabid dogs chasing
squirrels, Billy-Joelly-Pie would lie awake and dream of teaching children in the mornings adn then childminding for children in the afternoons. It wasn't so much the children that he dreamt about (in a good way), it was the un-equatible challenge that this dream posed.

He would have to say goodbye to the cows with their simple minds and big bulging udder0-bits, and he'd have to say goodbye to being able to control them with a flick of his lasoooo. He dreamt about chaos and confusion and stress. Because Billy-Joel had a life of ease and country living where he ate well and thought little.

Chapter 3

"Pardon me", said Billy Joel as he burped up an oniony flavoured pizza sort of thing. He ran outside and was never seen again by his dad. Well not quite never, but a long time.

SO Billy Joel was on his way to his dream adventure. He got a ferry over to England because he managed
to sneek into the lifeboat whilst the sailors were all having a ciggi break. And he ate spiders and worms that
happened to be crawling around inside. He was truly committed to his dream, and this was no problem.

It was September 29th when Billy Joel landed in England. He slipped passed the border guards by pretending to be a passport and he was inside the land of the free, home of the queen. You may be wondering whether Billy-Joel was describing England like America, you'd be right. But others would say you are wrong.

Billy-Joel found himself hanging underneath a lorry bound for Bristol. He had some company, a man from Yorkshire called Stephhien. Stepphhien liked to play the flute, which drove Billy-Joel absolutely happy-insane. So the journey went really fast and they both arrived in high spirits.

Billy-Joel asked Ste[[hiel;
"Do you know where I can teach children in the mornings and then childmind in the afternoons? It's been my dream since I was a little ranch boy".

Stephhils replied:
"No, but I doue knows a laass nameed of Hinnah Bates who doth something similar!"
"Oh yippee" cried Billy-Joel.
He accidentally let go of the lorry and tumbled down into the road.. Luckily he'd tumbled off the M32 motorway and landed in the garden of Rosebery Court. His small blonde cropped head bumped against the garden door.

End of Chapter 2.

The near death, mountain slide story

A year ago this weekend, the 31th of January or something, I thought it would be nice to drive up to Liverpool in a lovely shiny hire-car to visit my friends Jack and Andy and partake in a bit of Welsh mountain climbing followed by some evening poker, this is the story from last January, 2009:

On Saturday we drove over to Wales (in my hire car). There were 5 of us. We planned to hike up Glyder Fach which is near Snowdon. It’s a scrambling mountain where a lot of the time you’re climbing up big boulders and rocks rather than walking on a path so it was hard work but more fun. Going up was fine and easy and as we got higher there was more and more snow lying around. We reached the peak and set off along the ridge to where the path goes down and around and back to the road (not the way we’d come up).
The path down turned out to be rather treacherous for people without any equipment, i.e. us; more specifically, me. The mountain was really steep and covered in scree, which fell the instant you touched it. Nothing was very solid, and the only way to go down was to keep low and try and not dislodge too much scree. The main path was covered in snow and you could see where people with crampons had climbed up it.

I had a ‘good’ idea of using the footholes that were left in the snow as places to grip. So I slid on my bum with my feet in these footholes. It was like decending a ladder forwards and a lot quicker than the scree method. I reached a point where the footprints ran out and started making my own holes in the snow by digging my heels in which worked fine.

As I got lower the snow became more icy and less easy to make holes in. I realized that I’d need to move across to the scree area now as my snow route had run out. However, the scree area was about 5 metres to my left with nothing in between.

In the process of testing out whether I could make any footholds to my left I lost all grip with my feet and was holding on to a ‘foothole’ above me with one hand. I considered the fact that if I lost my one handed grip then everything would be aweful, and I found out that I was right.
I lost everything and started hurtling down the slope. It was really fast, faster than I could react, and completely uncontrolled and I really thought I’d be seriously injured, particularly if I hit the rocks which were scattered everywhere.

There was nothing much I could do to slow down because I was sliding on icey snow. After I’d picked up a ridiculous amount of speed I hit a flattish rock which made me airborne and I landed in a less snowy, more gravelly/rocky area. I didn’t feel like I was slowing down much even though I was off the snow and I knew that if I carried on sliding I could get seriously hurt. So I think I just dug in with my hands and eventually somehow stopped.

I checked myself and seemed to be alright apart from my fingers which had made holes in my gloves and were dripping blood (from where I’d clawed to a stop). I shouted that I was fine to everyone above me. And a couple of walkers below me yelled to see if I was ok.

From where I’d settled it was pretty straightforward to get to the bottom, there were lots of big rocks to move between. I got down and met a walker who said I should buy a lottery ticket & he knew people who’d died falling that distance, which was nice.

Anyway, another of our guys Jon met me at the bottom and we walked to the car which was still 1.5 hrs away. I’d sprained my left ankle and massively bruised my right hip so walking was a bit painful but I knew I needed to get to the car for warmth.
Anyway, me and Jon got back to the car and the others met us there about 30mins later and I was able to drive us back with my fingers covered in Savlon.

My complete injury list is: scraped left rib cage, bruised left hip, bruised coccyx, cut right shin, sprained left ankle, bruised left instep, bruised left & right hands, and the skin missing from the tops of my index and middle fingers behind the nails.

After the shock and adrenaline of it all, I’m feeling very lucky that I didn’t hit my head or any big rocks, and didn’t break anything and was able to walk and drive home. Plus, I was wearing crap woolen gloves which allowed my fingers to break through. If I’d had proper gloves on, I’d have had less grip!

Anyhow, I feel like Bruce Willis must feel in Die Hard films now, all battered and bruised. Thank god I’m not dead. 2 people died on Snowdon yesterday. Lesson learned; don’t climb mountains without proper equipment especially in winter.

John Xx

The new year grapes story

This is where this blog originates from. I told this story in Austria and got absolutely roasted by Barkers, Tim & Sam. Since I've been going out with my wonderful girlfriend Hannah, I seem to have lost any ability that I might have once had to spin a story into something that can hold people's attention. I think it stems from my admiration for the way that Hannah manages to squeeze every tiny irrelevant detail from any subject she's trying to tell me about. Often I get impatient and pre-empt where I think she's going, which causes her to lose her thread, thus lengthening her stories further.
Luckily, the opposite of being a killer wordsmith is hilarious and much more fun.

So anyway, Ricard from my work who is Spanish told us about the tradition which people in Spain partake in at new year. As the clock strikes 12, you have to eat 12 grapes as quickly as possible, or as each chime strikes on the clock, something like that. Anyway, so last year (new years eve 2008) one of Ricard's friends thought it would be funny to slip an olive into the bowl of grapes! As you can imagine, an olive with a stone in the centre would be quite a contrast to the other 11 grapes that have been chomped down at pace as the clock strikes 12.

Ricard was pleased to assure me that this year (new years eve 2009), he was a good boy and no such tomfoolery took place.

I told Ricard about how my friend Tim attempted to poison me with undercooked rice at new year, but that's another story for another time.

The 3 point turn story

So I went to pick up Hannah from her childminding house, which was on a quiet street near the downs. It has been cold here for about 2 weeks so the small streets are very icy due to all the snow, ice and frozen-ness that's around. 

I was required to be there at 7pm so I got there at approximately 7pm being the dependable man I am, after getting petrol for my car which was running low and had been sitting in the snow un-moving for 2 weeks.

So I stop by the side of the road and give Hannah a call to let her know I'm here. She only lets it ring 4 times and hangs up so I figure she's on her way, and I might aswell utilise my time by turning the car around as I'll have to do that anyway, with Hannah or without (even though Hannah does admire my 3 point turns).

Lest us forget that I had some sausages cooking in the oven at home which were part of our sausages, soup, bread, rocket and cheese dinner. Any delays to this car journey could spell tragedy for the taste of the sausages and also the lives of my unsuspecting housemates who were living next to an unattended sausage timebomb, ready to explode in a good few hours.

Anyway, so I check my mirrors, check my blind spots, check my hair and reverse to the left, all's good. I then go forwards to the right, all seems fine. Due to the camber of the road, the car (Jackson-Shirley) has nestled it's front wheels into the gutter, I have no problems with this.

I skillfully flick the gear stick into reverse, look behind me, set the accelerater, delicately release the clutch, and it's wheel-spin 'o' clock. Turns out the front wheels are nestled nicely on some icey gutter frozen-ness.

Oh no, sausages, Hannah, hair, so much to worry about, so little time!

I remember what they teach you in skills-school. If you wheel-spin in 1st gear, try 2nd gear, less torque, more traction on ice. Then I remembered that I only have 1 reverse gear, gutted! There's a wall in front of me so there's no option of going forwards.

Anyway, so I notice a nearby skip, I hop out and grab some long, thin pieces of wood and nestle them under the front wheels. I attempt to reverse as slowly as possible, using all of my extensive clutch skills, but all that results in is some burning wood smells.

Lest us forget that Hannah has now come outside and surveyed the scene, there are sausages in the oven and my housemates are completely unaware that any of this is happening!

Anyway, so eventually I got a bigger piece of wood which could go behind both wheels at once, then I reversed a little bit and managed to go back enough so that I had space in front of me to go forwards and right, avoiding the wall. The sausages were perfect and I've patented an idea for a car with 2 reverse gears, everyone's a winner, well done!