Tales of PGK

[pgkevet]

You will figure out why this is called 'Hangover III - the prequel'

 

We are going back in time again to the late 60's.

 

It was Pat's stag party and a sophisticated affair for the era; which started with

dinner at the Leander Club in Henley-on-Thames for the crew we all rowed in.

 

I dutifully arrived in my 'student heap’, which was an Austin A30 of dubious

reliability in a powder blue colour. Any student is immensely proud of their

first car and I had nicknamed mine 'Nilgai' after the sacred blue cow of India.

 

That was before anyone could take offence at such matters and was a cross between a term of endearment and the mix of prayer and cursing that accompanied starting, driving and the inevitable concerns regarding stopping at the end of any journey.

 

But, yet again, I digress. This was winter and the Thames was running very high with lock gates open on a cold mid February night.

 

We finished dinner with the usual banter, bad and practical jokes and settled down to the serious business of becoming totally inebriated. Such was our host's organisational abilities that we had a tin bath in the middle of the room should anyone's digestive system demand immediate purging and the drinking games commenced. These also followed sophisticated rules: FizzBuzz using prime numbers and numbers divisible by thirteen. Naturally we did not remain sober long.

 

At some stage one participant suddenly made a bet of £20 for the first person across the river. Back then the £20 (or bluey in our slang) was almost 2 week's grant money. My rent at the time was £4.50 a week to give this perspective. It was a serious bet.

 

M took up the challenge but on the way down to the riverside and boating raft I suddenly decided to take the challenge too. And running down the stairs stripped off to the underpants and beat M to the dive.

 

I was a third of the way across the river when I became sober. I was halfway across the river when I realised I was going to have to swim darned hard against that current to have any chance of getting to the other side at a point I could climb out. And I was less that three-quarters across when the strength of the current ripped my remaining underwear away.

 

I emerged naked, wet and very, very cold on the opposite embankment by the

Angel hotel. It was around 2 am. Somewhat embarrassed at the thought of walking around the road bridge in nothing but skin, I saw an opportunity in a gentleman getting into his car.

 

The fellow must have been of placid nature. He hardly blinked when I tapped him on the shoulder, said 'excuse me' and he turned around to see six feet eight inches of naked male student asking for a lift to the other side!

 

His car was parked facing the river and perhaps he wasn’t as placid as I thought. He asked me to stay qui0te because he was doing a 'moonlight flit' from the hotel, engaged the wrong gear and drove his front wheels off the road!

 

I was out of the car in a flash and sitting on the boot to counter-balance the teetering motor before he joined me. Remember the scene at the end of the Italian Job? We figured out how to keep the car balanced and open the boot for him to retrieve me a pair of shorts while I shouted across the river for my pals to come round and pull his car back onto the road.

 

Somewhere in all the excitement my trousers, wallet and everything apart from a shirt had vanished - probably into the river. It was in borrowed shorts and shirt, wet hair and dripping river water from my legs that I denied all knowledge of anyone swimming the river to the enquiring policeman that someone called..

 

The best man had wisely brought spare trousers and my congenial colleagues had a whip round to help reimburse for the missing items, helped me hot-wire my own car and I drove back to my flat in North London.

 

I had a reputation for never being late. The wedding reception was at 2pm in Windsor and I woke in plenty of time, bought a new car key and was getting myself ready when I remembered, with horror, that the directions to the reception had been in my wallet. This was in the days before cell phones and all the other guests would have been away from their flats and rooms by then. I had no way of contacting anyone and just had to give the reception a miss.

 

I had ‘a liaison’ arranged for that evening with a young lady of ‘broadminded and very loose moral character’: S was a gorgeous hottie! My consolation for missing the wedding was an evening with her; a show, dinner and back to my place.

 

Unknown to me things were happening elsewhere.

 

Because of my reputation for never being late the rest of the party had been concerned at my ‘no show’ to the reception. They had sent two cars back down the M4 to see if I had broken down and then got themselves into a state wondering if I had become ill after my icy plunge. They rang my parents to see how I was. Naturally that panicked my folks. They were due to visit friends in Kent the next day and so they left early from Bedford.

 

It’s now 7am on a Sunday morning and I am still fast asleep in that glow of satisfied release with arms and legs knotted around S when the doorbell rings with the dreaded sound of Parents’ voices. To make matters worse my Parents knew S’s family, did not know here divorce was imminent and certainly neither they nor her current fiancé would be too excited at the situation. Don’t scowl. This was the 60’s.

 

I scrambled out of bed and made all the poor excuses. I was fine, the flat was a mess, I did not want to wake my flatmates, I was sorry for my brusqueness and so forth.

 

My father left muttering about a son who lives in such a pigsty he can’t even offer his Dad a coffee.

 

Dad’s parting words “You know, Son, I would have been a lot happier if you had been in bed with a girl.”

[David Goss]

absolute class pgk you should defo write a book of short stories

theres not a duffer amongst them:biggrin:

[pgkevet]

absolute class pgk you should defo write a book of short stories

theres not a duffer amongst them:biggrin:

 

Thanks for the positives...but I did once punt a fictional book I wrote.. not a sniff. It's hard to break into that world unless you're famous first. Now i just jot the odd thing down for myself and anyone it might amuse.

[Andy Collins]

Good to meet you at the show, and good on ya for having a go in the axe-throwing, another story for the life-long adventure?

[pgkevet]

Good to meet you at the show, and good on ya for having a go in the axe-throwing, another story for the life-long adventure?

 

A pleasure to meet you too..and always a pleasure to make a pratt of myself for charity:biggrin:

[pgkevet]

Holidays and Me.

 

 

 

As we all know holidays are a relaxing, pleasurable way of removing the stresses of our everyday and humdrum jobs – except for me. The following is a typical holiday experience.

 

 

 

I went skiing. I had been skiing a few times and had progressed to the point where I knew I could get down any slope even if that meant a long side-slip down iced rocks. I could weave my way down through moguls higher than my own two meters. In other words it might not always be pretty. It might not always be elegant. But I could manage a workmanlike passage down any ski-able mountainside.

 

 

 

I had gone alone. V hates snow. I may tell of some of our joint skiing holidays before this one but for the moment we shall gloss over her hysterical screaming and the abuse she hurls at me for putting her and snow together.

 

 

 

I had gone alone. The best way to meet folk and have fun is to join a ski class. Usually my first week is in a ski class and I make enough pals to ski with on the second week without classes.

 

 

 

The most notable experience of this class was the last day when the instructor took us off piste. He knew of an interesting gully and claimed the snow conditions were ideal and rare for this run. The gully was deep and narrow. The experience of hurling oneself down the first side of this, then the feeling as the skis flexed into a full ‘U’ shape at the bottom and the run up the far face? Incredible! The amount of flex and the sheer steepness of the second face left one skiing uphill with the ski tips stuck inside one’s own nostrils. Okay, that was a slight exaggeration but it paints an image and it was exhilarating.

 

 

 

A couple of days later I was free-skiing and my pals of the day had finished early with another engagement. I stayed on the mountain and then popped into a hut for a last gluhwein and slice of cake and then made my way down with the last run of the day.

 

 

 

Except.. Except that as the run passed near the off-piste track I decided that gully was too inviting to miss. So, leaving the last runners on the piste I took the side track to gully, stood at the start point and looked down that deep narrow ravine with anticipation of the bottom, the flexing and sheer upwards power – and went for it.

 

 

 

I shot down the near slope perfectly. Weight forwards, knees bent and springy and picking up speed down to the bottom for that tight flex and…

 

 

 

Slam! Straight into the other face of the gully. A cartoonist might have drawn a man-shape in the mountainside? I don’t know. I think I must have been unconscious for a while. Some time afterwards I became aware of a ringing sensation in my head and a nasty headache and started the checklist.

 

 

 

Apart from the headache nothing else hurt but I was completely blind and deaf. I felt my legs and arms and nothing was obviously broken. I felt for the skis and released them and promptly fell over into deep snow.

 

 

 

Taking stock I’m now lying in a deep gully, off-piste, where no patrol goes and it has to be some time after the last run and the lifts will have closed. And I’m blind and deaf.

 

 

 

Blind and deaf are not the best ways of walking down a mountainside in the dark when no-one else is likely to see one and come to help. That and the risk of falling right off the mountain or even walking entirely the wrong way. I figured this could be a cold, long night. Thank heavens for lightweight gortex all-in-one ski-suits.

 

 

 

I start to get organised for the long wait. I scoop snow around me to build a small cave wall and help keep the heat in and then start to shake the spare white stuff off my gear. I take the goggles off to wipe them and, bless me, I can see! Oh yes. In my groggy state I’d never realised that the goggles had become so packed with snow as I had slammed into the gully-side that they had filled up completely. A second experiment proved that my deafness was solved by digging ice out of both ears.

 

 

 

Result!

 

 

 

There was even a little dim daylight left as I made my way back to the hotel. Aren’t holidays fun?

[pgkevet]

Toby 1972 - 1984

 

Toby was the first dog that was truly my own. I had only been qualified a few months and had just started working in a new Practice running the branch surgery as a solo vet when Toby was brought in as a Road Accident stray.

 

The Practice was very basic and almost no equipment. Indeed, back then, it was just a waiting room, consulting room that got used as the operating area and a small side room which became either an x-ray room, dark room, pharmacy, general store or anything else when needed. Harry Potter stole my idea for his Room of Requirements.

 

Toby came in as a bit of a spare parts kit and under the tar, blood, mud and grit it was an exercise in guesswork what breed he might be. I patched him up and made myself a Pointer Cross. His left fore shoulder had simply been dislocated but the lower leg was fractured through the radius and ulna and he had a damaged rear leg too.

 

We had a plumber in that day fitting a new sink and he didn’t mind me emptying his bag of tools and boiling up a load of them on the gas ring. They made good enough orthopaedic stuff as a one-off but were already going rusty when I handed them back. Toby was splinted with conduit tubing.

 

He stayed as a patient for several weeks but no-one came forward to claim him. By then we had got attached to each other so I kept him.

 

That dog caused me so much trouble.

 

The first day I finally let him off a lead in the park he was sniffing and running around and then panicked that he had lost me. I was right behind him and he was too daft to look round. He ran all the way back to the clinic with me running after him shouting his name uselessly. Then he dashed over the road and got hit again.

 

This time the damage was mostly just bruising but he lost one ear. A kind passer-by came in with it. She had found it further down the road and seemed disappointed when I explained that it was now the size of a dinner plate and had been squashed out and mashed by several car tyres.

 

Toby liked my car. He always sat bolt upright on the passenger seat and watched through the front. If I put the indicators on then he leaned ready for the bend and if the lights turned red he braced himself for the brakes. If I pulled in for petrol he would sit staring forwards, ignoring the menials, like any well-chauffeured city nob.

 

Folk he had been introduced to were allowed in the car but my Boss made the mistake of trying to borrow something from it and just stayed lucky by reflexes. If I left Toby in my flat then he would bark all day so he came to work and happily sat in the car. I had a nice string of clients he was used to that would take him out into the park with their dogs and then pop him back in my car afterwards. That dog had at least ten walks a day and if I had been called to a house visit then it was a matter of ringing around to find where Toby was having tea..

 

Toby and I developed a party piece. I’d hold a crisp between my teeth and he’d take a standing jump and neatly bite it off. We won many a pint in the pub like that and I’m glad he never missed. Fifty pounds of Pointer Cross leaping at your face and snapping his teeth could be ugly. I got the beer and Toby did the round of the tables begging his rewards – a good double act.

 

I recall taking a lady friend to a riverside pub on a hot summer. We were in the pub gardens with dozens of other people. It was so crowded that most folk were sat on the grass or lying down sunning themselves. I offered M another round and she slipped Toby’s lead loop over an ankle while I battled to the bar. By the time I got the drinks M was laying down, eyes closed and half asleep. Toby was watching out for me and I couldn’t resist. I gave him a soft whistle and Toby, ankle, M, her exposed underwear and then her skirt covered head bounced across that pub garden at full enthusiastic dog speed.

 

M didn’t see the funny side of that. Odd, really, because everyone else did.

[Rich Rule]

Dogs you gotta love their characters. Nice tale. Keep them coming.

[Lorry thompson]

Haha another classic

[pgkevet]

Characters

 

There were sixty-five students in my year at Vet School. One of our number was TK. He was one of the nicest, politest chaps you could wish to meet. He was short and slim and shy-looking but that façade hid a bright fellow, albeit one with an even odder association with Lady Luck than I have.

 

Because we both had the same surname initial we ended up partnered together whenever we worked in pairs and my short tale of a pathology practical sums up “The Luck of TK”

 

We were expected to wear clean white lab coats and canny student’s had an arrangement with the cleaners to do a cheap laundry and starch job for us for cash in hand

 

That day’s exercise was some bacteriology which involved gram staining; simply staining a slide with Crystal or Gentian Violet, rinsing out any that doesn’t dye and counter staining with bright red Carbol Fuchsin.

 

The first part was fine but when it came to the Carbol Fuchsin the stopper was jammed in the bottle and I couldn’t shift it.

 

“I know a trick for that,” said T “It’s all in the way you tap the neck of the bottle on the bench.”

 

And before I could argue he gave the bottle neck a gentle tap. Now, to be fair, it was a gentle tap. T was being careful. T was always careful. His run-ins with Lady Luck had taught him that..

 

The bottle exploded. It exploded hugely and the contents spumed skywards to the lab ceiling as one ball of bright red permanent stain. Just short of the ceiling the liquid fanned out a little into a classic mushroom cloud and then gravity took over.

 

We stared up in horror. Time stood still for us, each with a leg forwards trying to run. The cloud gathered speed and stayed in its thick column of carmine terror as it slumped down to deluge us both. My lab coat was covered in the bright red dye but somehow it had managed to miss the rest of me.

 

I looked across to tell T off. There he stood without a single mark on his lab coat. It was still starched and pure white but his face, hands, feet and hair were now stained the brightest crimson and would be for 2 weeks.

 

TK was one of those guys whose metabolism couldn’t hold a drink. We found this out early in our college years when we took T out for a beer and the one pint was enough to have him staggering and throwing up and the next morning he still had a terrible hangover.

 

For the college BBQ night he had taken control of serving the spit-roast hog. I never found out who was to blame but someone had spiked his half of shandy by only putting a quarter of lemonade in the glass. T was tipsy. T was asserting himself. Instead of being the mild mannered bespectacled Cark T he was now Super T , no spectacles and giving everyone strict orders about queuing for his servings.

 

He was heard haranguing someone “Good God , Man, don’t you have any manners. You’re supposed to be British and form an orderly queue; not behave like some rude scum from uncivilised parts. Go to the back of the queue and learn to behave properly”

 

Which isn’t the most diplomatic way of speaking to the Dean of the College; whether or not you have your spectacles.

 

The Common Room in the Hall of Residence was at one end of a long corridor of student rooms. It was always a dangerous and exciting place because you never knew when someone was going to pull a prank. That might be a group carrying KM’s fiat 500 up the stairs or someone picking a lock to shove a goat in someone’s bedroom. That was only done once because we found goats eat everything from bedding to text books and it gets expensive.

 

I was sitting there reading the paper the morning after the BBQ and every hour on the hour TK would open his door, groaning and stagger to the ablutions to throw up again. He had had a second half of strong shandy after his faux pas.

 

His appearances slowed down after lunchtime and our attention was diverted by screams from LS’s room where the cleaning lady was swearing about his snakes having got loose again. They had a tendency to seek the warmth of his pillow case and she wasn’t too happy to have shaken them out. Well not all of them. The big Boa was spiraling up my leg at the time. But he was cute.

 

So we really didn’t notice that TK had stopped making his toilet trips. In fact it was a couple of days before we wondered where he was and then any attempt to knock on his door was greeted with a “Go away”. It turned out he was sulking over the BBQ affair and had decided to learn Swahili and emigrate.

 

We talked him out of emigrating but his Swahili was pretty good.