yen_powell

Didn't realise that's where bungee jumping started! As for the second video, made my balls shrink just watching it when he was walking on top of those supports.

I had to collect my son from a wedding reception in Bristol to take him camping. No idea which bit I was in, but it was some sort of hotel and I could see the famous suspension bridge very close by which everyone said I should drive over as it was the best way to get to Devon. So I managed to get onto the thing. No sod had bothered to tell me you had to pay to cross it and did I have the right money, did I buggery. Me and my young son trying to find the right change amongst the darkest recesses of my car and camping gear with a queue behind me. I was also very surprised at how narrow the bridge is when you are actually on it. edit. Did a youtube search to remind myself what it was like.

I bought one of his DVDs a while back, Mondo Sahara, the theme tune is very catchy.

Oh to be young again My girlfriend and I were walking up the yard behind her parents' house one dark evening, probably checking the chickens/ducks were locked up after a fox attack previously, her mum and dad would have been in the house. We saw a caravan as were were walking up the yard, looked at each other and opened the door and went inside. I think her dad had just bought it for selling on. A few key items of clothing were off, but then we must have moved off centre because it suddenly tipped up a fair bit, one end hitting the ground with a tump. No jacks down, just resting on the two proper wheels and the jockey wheel. Ruins the moment when you are trying to find clothes you put down in total pitch darkness before her parents come to investigate.

That Africa Twin is still cleaner than mine ever were despite all its hard work.

I haven't heard of that, but it's entirely possible. Most of the houses were built as part of the giant council estate. I think it's an anniversary soon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becontree Looked up about bomb damage and found this reference, this is only a small area, you can walk across it an hour, they got off very lightly, barring the suit of course. During the Second World War, there was a total of 426 fatal casualities, and 1178 seriously injured people, while 1297 properties had to be demolished and a further 12743 properties were badly damaged across Barking and Dagenham.

This is a story told to me by my late Mum about my Dad. Both my Mum and dad lived in the same road as children, Goresbrook Avenue in Dagenham, not far from the large Ford factory. Apparently when my dad was little, say 3 or 4, his much older brother was due to get married. It was late in the war so rationing was going on and a second hand suit had been purchased and was being lovingly repaired, ironed and prepared in the front room. My Grandad had cycled off early in the morning to the newsagent at The Heathway to get his Sunday paper. As he was pedalling back there was a large explosion that blew him off his bicycle, possibly a V1 or V2 nearby on the green. Unhurt he got back on and pedalled back home only to find the houses, including his, all missing their windows and doors. My Nan and my Dad were both still in bed when my Grandad left so he was in a panic that they had been hurt by the flying glass. When he jumped off his pushbike to run into the house he couldn't get up the stairs as the front door was wedged half way up and jammed at an angle there. He was calling out as he wrestled with the door to get past it before finally running into the back bedroom where my Dad should have been. He wasn't there so he went into the front bedroom and found my Nan and Dad in bed with glass all around them, but unhurt. There was a piece of metal buried in the wall just above the headboard. My Nan used to tell my Mum that my Dad had saved her life because he had come into the room complaining of belly ache whilst she was sitting up in bed with her head where the metal fragment would have hit. She had let him into the bed and they had both laid down in the hope he would go back to sleep not long before the explosion. My grandad was relieved until he checked out the rest of the house ands found the suit for the wedding had gone. He was convinced a neighbour had been in and stolen it whilst he was upstairs sorting everything out and clearing up glass so my Nan and Dad could get out of bed without slicing their feet up. The suit's location was revealed when the first fire of of Autumn was lit and smoke filled the room choking everyone. The pressure from the blast had sucked it up the chimney. Goresbrook Road today, the green (and the Gore stream) it faces is on the right.

Keith-Roy, the man I knocked out despite missing his face with my fist. As I said, one of life's c*nts. My bike club was camping at a place called Wormshill in Kent, this wanker had been plaguing me all day, especially as he got drunker. We were playing football, well the others were, I can't even kick it straight, and he thought it was hilarious to keep charging into my side and sending me flying a few times. The last but final time he caught me with an elbow on the ribs which hurt a bit so I said to him if he did it again I would do him a mischief. Trouble is, I am rubbish at anything like that. He took it as a challenge and barged at me before I'd even finished walking away so I swung my fist at the lovely target of his face and bloody missed, catching him across the throat with my forearm.. He fell over anyway and knocked himself out for about a minute. Only one person actually saw it, they were charging about after the ball, Keith (the priest), he said nothing. Everyone else thought he had just collapsed. I ran and got my camera and got a picture as they were checking him out. Unfortunately he woke up and crawled about a bit looking for his glasses and then sat at the side for a while. He lives in the wilds of Wales now....you're welcome to him. The picture is a photograph of a photograph on a pin board in the garage, hence the blue pin and the sliver of Alsation pup at the bottom (Leibe).

I've been out for the day to Peterborough, calm down.

Well, I wasn't going to put it in, but he seemed to know me in the picture and looks a happy sort.

Me and Strange Dave on the right just after finishing our first Cambrian Rally, me on a borrowed Honda CRM 250. Borrowed an hour before the start because I broke my DR. Strange Dave crashed into the back of me when I suddenly stopped after realising I was off the marked track and in a live firing area and we both went flying. I told him to turn and ride back, then I made sure to follow at a safe distance and only where he had already ridden. Three northern bikers who came and rescued me and Colin (Lazy Eye) when we were in a Glossup pub with fights breaking out every 10 minutes. The man on the left walked over and asked if we were here for the Great Northern Bike Show in Manchester. he then said we could come to his corner, we'd be safe there as they 'took' it last week. They met us the next morning and led us all the way to the show.

Randoms Me in Ireland demonstrating how quiet the roads are. Me on Pendine Sands, attempting to break the land speed record, which is apparently what people do there.

Me on the left next to Keith, the man who later became (and still is) a priest. Also the man who started the fight with three blokes on the train that got me a broken nose and him a broken jaw. I loved those jeans of mine. Snow was not forecast when we set out for the rally we are at. Same rally. Keith on the left. Martin on the right sitting on his gas board blue GS750. He is also the bloke I was helping yesterday to extract a TS250 from the collapsed shed. Kevin (Wombat) on the left. Martin on the GS and behind him a bloke called Keith-Roy (a proper proper cunt). I have a picture of Keith-Roy unconscious on my garage wall right now, my only successful knock out. No skill, I missed his head when trying to punch him in the face, which jarred my shoulder joint badly, BUTt my forearm went across his throat and he fell over backwards and knocked himself out. Keith and Wombat next to my CX

The man who taught me to ride a motorbike on the left, Kevin (Wombat) with his recently bought Honda Silverwing. The bloke standing like a gonk to the right is Colin (lazy eye) the man who was in the T.A. later and persuaded me to have my bottom violated by the doctor. Also the bloke who had all his flat emptied by a vengeful wife. Colin (Lazy eye) again when we went paintballing. I believe that is actually Vandal from the scrap yard in the overalls behind him, he came along a few times.

My old girlfriend's dad in the left, the man with the racist name N***er. The man who shat his trousers and tried to walk home from Maldon in new shoes. The only picture I have of him and not a very good one either. He is standing next to a bloke who always seemed to be in trouble with the police but they could never pin anything on him. In the end he did 6 months in Pentonville for continually driving on a ban. My 1st GPz750 sitting next to N***er's dog kennel where his two Alsations lived. Had to get it there by wobbling through a gravel drive that never ever got compacted. The poxy gravel drive in front of his bungalow, his yard and garages were behind it. Next door to the right was a mobile crane yard. The bedroom window on the right was my girlfriends and one morning whilst everyone was still asleep a dopy crane driver managed to cause his driverless mobile crane to roll through the concrete fence. he managed to get in the cab and kill the engine just before it demolished the corner of the house. The grass was very torn up with deep ruts afterwards.

Found some old photos, not very good but all I have. Scrap yard pictures My boss Vandal on his spectroscope (aka Little Frank). The man who bought the sex toy then went off sick with a severed tendon. Vandal (Little Frank) annoyed that I am taking a picture when I should be working. Some bloke I took a picture of down by the river side end of the yard. No idea who he is at all Tony the yard foreman on my favourite forklift.

Used to play this with the window open when my next door neighbour's under 16 daughter was out in the garden with her drug dealer boyfriend. He was actually no trouble, it was the people who came to see him that made me move in the end.

I was on the clothes counter part of a Christmas day homeless charity thing about 10 years ago, Shelter or Crisis or similar. I was one of three, the other two were teenagers. You know in your head you think you are the same person you were in your teens, you really aren't, you do get a bit more sensible. They were nice lads, very keen, but also pretty hopeless. I'd seen them earlier filling a deep tray with water to take it to the tea urn, sloshing everywhere, whereas when it was my turn I just went and bought a large bottle of mineral water then refilled that from the tap after the first empty. Clothes on the counter we were now on were there to hand out all right, but still in black bags, exactly as donated, no one had had the time to sort them, so it was a bit hectic, you got a request and it was search like a mad thing, guessing sizes and hoping for the best. I had heard one person give her name to the next section which was doing footwear so I knew it was a lady. Unfortunately when she moved along to us she asked one of the teenagers if we had any jeans to fit her, he replied with, "Sorry mate, we are all out of men's jeans". She looked at him stonily and said, " I am a woman". He went the colour only a teenager can go and was mortified.

If you're not prepared to put the effort in you deserve to fail the entrance exam.

Yes, perhaps add a dash of excremental detail, that's what I would do.

Listen, I have a BNP councillor and the Union Jack story and that involves shit. You can get it in anywhere if you try hard enough.

4/ The Moroccan murder attempts As time went by our little team in the corner gained or lost people. Mostly there were just two of us doing our trafficy type stuff, but at the time of this story we had been joined by a lady called Jane who did our finance and a man known as Normsboy, because his last name was Tebbett. He just had nowhere else to sit. Normsboy was probably one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, he had two degrees and was doing another through the Open University, carrying out the work during his train journey in from Kent. He didn't need to work at all really, his wife was a highly paid part time QC, but he liked his job which covered lots of different areas, the most interesting being the arranging of pauper funerals as I called them. If someone died who had no relatives he would visit their homes, sort out their affairs and arrange for their burial or cremation. He would laugh at my drawings showing traffic schemes, he had a theory that any information for a construction drawing could be adequately conveyed in written form. He also taught me a few new words to add to my limited vocabulary. In those days the public could walk in and demand to meet us face to face, this usually involved someone shouting at you or poking you in the chest. In one case an old lady hit me with her walking stick. Normsboy came back from a face to face meeting and told me that he had “never met with such personal vilification before”. This meant that he had received a good slagging off. I learnt that after a quick flick through the office dictionary. I stored the word away for future use, but to be honest, this is the first time I've used it since. So one day I have just finished a good spinning session on my drawing board chair and I'm just shaking my rotring pen to get the ink flowing when I heard a commotion outside. I opened the window and stuck my head out. Down below I could see an old man, an old woman and a young heavily pregnant lady. They all looked middle eastern to me. They were all shouting and the man was waving what at first appeared to be a sword, but was actually a cane walking stick that had split and broken leaving a sort of a point. The old woman punched him repeatedly, whilst at the same time he was bashing his broken walking stick handle on her head. Then the pregnant lady pushed him over and started laying into him with some serious sandal action. Hormones will do that to you I suppose. It was at this point I saw that the old man had also been holding a small knife that was now laying on the ground. A young male appeared, running up the street like a dusky Seb Coe. He pushed the pregnant lady from behind and she goes arse over tit over the old man and ends up laying on the floor. She managed to turn over like a struggling tortoise just in time for the young man to start stamping on her belly, what an animal. I turned and shouted at Normsboy to ring the old bill quickly. By now a crowd is starting to gather on the opposite foot way and they are shouting across the road at the fighting people. Mostly encouraging, it seemed to me. Traffic had been moving slowly, drivers were looking to see what was happening, but eventually one car stopped and the driver opened his door and left his car with the engine running. He was a very big bloke, vest top and muscles, shaven head. This was unusual because it was a very cold day. There was a lorry with two men right behind him and the lorry driver started beeping his horn when he realised the car was now blocking the road. The beeping stopped suddenly when the big geezer ran to his boot, opened it and emerged carrying a baseball bat and a large carving knife. He ran at the young male who was assaulting the pregnant lady. The young male turns and runs into our public office out of my sight and the knife wielding Hulk ran in after him. Newspapers would later say that local school children watched in horror, but in fact quite a few were shouting 'stab him' across the road, little shits, all of them. A single police car pulled up and a lone police woman jumped out of the passenger door. I couldn't see the two males, but the crowd across the road obviously could because some one shouted at her to “Get back in the car you silly cow, he's got a knife”. She hopped back in for a second and then the cavalry turned up. A van screeched to a halt on the opposite carriageway and the boys in blue, wearing riot gear and carrying large round perspex shields charged en masse into our public office. 10 minutes later they carried the Hulk out by the arms and legs. He was facing down and handcuffed and wasn't going quietly, shocking language, but they bundled him into a van and took him away. The other bloke left on an ambulance stretcher covered in blood and holes. He had run into one of the interview rooms I was told later and the big bloke had followed him in and started battering and stabbing him. The odd thing was, the baseball bat was never found after the event. We all pondered on who had secreted that away and how on earth they did it. Things quietened down, although the next morning several parked cars in the street nearby had no glass left in the windows and slashed tyres, I believe they belonged to the combatants. The story I later heard was that two Moroccan families had been joined by a marriage and then had fallen out big time, resulting in the fighting I had seen. One of my colleagues, a good friend as well, knew them all, she went to the same gym as the dusky Hulk and dealt with the rest of the family on a day to day basis. She had been on the front desk when it all kicked off so was a prime witness. She was not keen to give evidence against a family of people she had to walk past every day and who had shown how they liked to settle a disagreement. When the police started to tell her she had to appear in court as a witness she spoke to her doctor who wrote to them. She had been losing weight for a while, ever since running in the London Marathon 6 months before oddly, no one could work out why. Her doctor said that additional stress could be dangerous for her health. Despite this the police or crown prosecution issued a subpoena for her to appear. She didn't go, prepared to take the legal consequences rather than face them in court. My name had helpfully been given to the old bill by Normsboy, the twat! So I got interviewed and a day in court. The police interviews and the following court case were quite an experience, I'll come back to my only appearance as one of the witnesses for the prosecution, questioned by 8 barristers (one for the prosecution and 7 for the defence) and then shuffled quickly out of the witness box. The end result was a bit weird as well.

Now, where did I put my eye bleach?

An old bloke at work had a beard and hair at the sides, the rest was bald. Standard issue if you know what I mean. One day he walked in quietly with a completely shaved head, like an egg it was. We all asked of course and he gave some story about the guard falling off the electric trimmers and once he had made a slot in his remaining hair he thought he should take it all off. It later turned out he and his brother in law had both been drunk and agreed to shave each others head. He went first, then his brother in law said he'd changed his mind and ran away. BUT, the funny thing was, we had a new young Nigerian lad, a real innocent, not long in the country and with a loud sing song voice. He walked through the door and without even slowing down as he walked past, his sing song voice went, "Hallo Kojak."