Tales of PGK

[pgkevet]

I've been a bit busy to update this thread recently but while I was clearing some scrub today I remembered this story and thought I'd share.

 

I'm going to call it 'experience'.

 

Way, way back in time or in the dim and distant or, for the kiddies, 'Once upon a time'..

 

I shared a flat with Tony. We were both in the University Rowing team and both fit and hungry students but also both quite naive about life and looking after ourselves.

 

One evening we heard about a party that was supposedly going to be a seriously boozy affair with game young ladies in attendance. Now we were young and inexperienced and a little shy so the bonus of booze to loosen our inhibitions and, more importantly that of the game young ladies, wasn't something to pass up.

 

We were always short of money and always training so we needed to think ahead in terms of a quick, easy cheap meal we could make after training and leave us enough cash to arrive with some booze. Aged folk will remember the classic Watney's Party Seven we could pool our funds on. But what to eat first?

 

I came up with the idea of meatballs and rice. It would be quick and simple - canned Cambell's meatballs and plain boiled - cheap, tasty and a good booze lining to get the ladies mellow while we were still 'functional'..

 

I went shopping. The meatballs were easy. I figured that the average portion sold is good for a family of four. That sort of quantity could just about be enough for the two of us but when I saw the weight on the meatball can then it was clear to this athlete that we were going to need a can each. I played safe with the rice..just one one pound bag.

 

Yes. I do know the mistake - now, but back then it looked so obvious. I put the meatballs on a low heat, chucked the pound bag of rice in another saucepan and added some water. A little while later i had to add more water - and again. Soon I had to split the rice into a second saucepan, then a third and even into the frying pan. That rice just grew and grew and grew..and grew.

 

I do admit that it looked like quite a lot of rice. When it was ready for washing through to loose the sticky it ended up filling a whole large washing up bowl and I was pushed to find room in there to stir in the two cans of meatballs.

 

'Dinner's ready, Tone!'

 

Neither of us had been brought up to leave food on a plate but it got quite difficult towards the end to shovel the last few mouthfulls down. For those that remember 'Cool Hand Luke' and the boiled eggs, well he had it easy. We were so full that breathing was getting hard which wasn't the bit we had planned on.

 

As I had said we were young and fit and within a half hour or so figured we could start to move a bit and even stand up and might not be too late for the main event - Party!

 

It was an ucomfortale trip across London's tube network to the target flat but training helped us forge ahead. It was worth it. The Party was rowdy, thoroughly wamred up at the late hour and the game young ladies looked suitable lubricated as indeed did everyone else.

 

Dancing wasn't gping to be possible and Tony's groaning wasn't going to be wingman support so I headed for a dim corner with a sofa to ease the belly cramps and sat down. Moments later an attractive young lady sat down next to me and handed me a pint. She surely matched the form of one of the game young ladies I'd heard so much about and the forward way she leant up against me with her pert pair left me unable to think of anything suitable to say: so I took a long pull on the proffered pint.

 

She must have known something in the way she gave a gently rub on my tummy and I hastily took another long gulp of beer. But that hand didnlt stay rubbing my tummy for long. I took an even bigger gulp of beer.

 

At this point perhaps we need to image quite was happens when half a pound of rice is boiled, mixed with a 16 ounce can of Cambells meatballs, placed in a huge ballon inside an abdomen and then rehydrated further with 12 ounces of beer...

 

If you haven't figured it out then what happens is you struggle to swallow, fail and vomit rice down both nostrils and sneeze it into your companions cleavage.

 

Apparently that's a passion-killer...

[PeteB]

Sweet!

 

I had a similar experience at the St Leger fair in Doncaster many years ago involving a fair ride, lots of Chili Con Carne and some ale. Those waiting to get on that ride got splattered as my chair on the waltzers came around! I snook out the back when it eventually stopped. I didn't get laid that night either!

 

Sweet story PGK, more power to your elbow!

[pgkevet]

Let's call this one 'A packet of three'

 

It was a comment by a member regarding log sales at 7.30am on a Sunday that triggered these memories.

 

In my day night duty was an extra. We worked all day and covered night emergencies ona rota as well. This was one of 'those calls'.:

 

It's 2.30 am and I was asleep. The phone rings.

 

'Parkside emergency' I answer.

'My cat needs to be seen at once. It's got fleas!'

'I'm sorry, madam, but fleas really aren't an emergency situation."

'But he's got fleas really badly' She shouted, insistent and angry.

'Well I'm sorry to hear that but really flea problems don't justify an emergency response. If you are that worried then ring my receptionist at 8.am and tell her to fit you in at ten to nine and I'll sort it out then.'

'But you don't understand', She shouted. 'They're biting me!'

'Ah.Well that's entirely different. I suggest you ring your GP immediately.'

'I couldn't ring a Doctor at this time of night! He's a busy man'

'Exactly, madam. I'll see you in the morning."

 

Next snippet.

 

Another night dity and it's about 9.30 pm. A client rings up very angry that a staff member hadn't called he back with the cat's blood results. I spoke to her at length about the reason for sampling and it was no emergency. I pointed this out and explained that i wasn't going to drive back to the clinic just to look up non-urgent blood results but i was sorry my staff had let the Practice and her down and I would personally look at the results first thing and ring her back.

 

That wasn't good enough for this lady who got terribly abusive and difficult. I finally had to hang up on her.

 

As good or bad luck would have it I ended up with a road accident emergency later that night and attended and sorted the victim out as best i could. During a lull in dealing with that patient i remmebered the earlier call and looked up the blood results. The cat's problem was trivial enough and as it happened the blood results were totally normal.

 

it was now about 4am and i couldn't resist ringing up the owner and sweetly explaining that i knew how concerned she was over the results so i'd called her at the first opportunity. And the results were normal. She was too sleepy to react much.... But it made me feel better.

 

After that triumph it seemed a very good time to call all my current bad debtors and remind them of their bills too!

 

Lastly.

 

The other foot and shoe.

 

As a student I once went on a date to visit the current girl-friends parents. She was gorgeous and they were nice but thr whole saturday was ruined by an acute attack of gut pain on my part and the need tor ush to the loo every few minutes. After a sad and sweaty afetrnoon i went home to bed.

 

aroudn 5am i had need for the loo again and to my horror passed a ten inch ascaris suum. It's wasn't helped by being a vet student and being able to accurately identify that worm and now that I'd have a further gut-full of the things wriggling inside me.

 

It's now 5.30 am on a wet Sunday Morning and I've 'lost it'. I'm out there on my moped driving around Swiss Cottage looking for a doctor. I actually and genuinely woke one architect and a lawyer before finding a doctor. It was panic and their brass plates on their doors that i didn't read before ringing bells, i blame.

 

The doc was very sympathetic and gave me the name of the drug to buy and an all night pharmacy. But it has taught me to be a tad more understanding of folks concerns.

 

The architect and lawer were less sympathetic.

[eggsarascal]

What happened to pgkevet ?

 

Used to enjoy his old tales!

[eggsarascal]

On 05/07/2011 at 17:01, eggsarascal said:

PGK, heres a story from my past told by someone you might have heard of, probably not as exciting as some of your tales but here goes.

 

As you know i go by the name of Eggsarascal on here, but the nick name Egg comes from thirty years ago when i fractured my skull in a playground accident and was re-christened Egghead.

 

 

ROBBIE Williams has lifted the lid on his life as a teenager growing up in the Potteries before he found fame and fortune with Take That.

 

In three, 30-minute audio clips, the singer remembers the friends he hung around with when he was living with his mother Jan and sister Sally at their home in Greenbank Road, Tunstall.

 

SPOOKY: Church Lawton Hall, where a young Robbie and his mates tried to contact ghosts. Below, Shelleys nightclub.

 

 

 

 

 

••••..The "Robcast" is available in full to fans who pay a £30 annual subscription to his official website. It concludes with a haunting tale about Robbie and his friends breaking into the boarded up Church Lawton Hall one night after leaving a pub in Trent Vale, near Trentham, to attempt to invoke ghostly spirits using a Ouija Board.

 

Robbie says: "I found myself face down in mud, only to raise my head to realise I'm on top of someone's last resting place – and that someone died in the 17th century.

 

"There it is, Church Lawton Hall, and movie perfect too. Mist had risen off the lake at the back and it had engulfed the whole building. You couldn't have picked a more paranormal setting.

 

"Every step we made was like being in a Cliff Richard dry ice Top Of The Pops performance."

 

Robbie's mum Jan said: "It's true what he says. I can remember him coming home – he was very scared."

 

Robbie's first audio clip is introduced to the sounds of Dream Academy's Life In A Northern Town. The final instalment ends with Take That's Never Forget.

 

He says: "I'm 16, living with my mum and sister in Greenbank Road, Tunstall.

 

"Tension was abound, mum was about to find out I hadn't done as well as I had led her to believe (at school).

 

"Things looked pretty bleak for me."

 

Robbie, who at the time was known by friends as "Will", goes on to recount tales from his early life, including falling in with "the proverbial bad lot, a draw-smoking, non-job-bothering lot", taking LSD in Shelleys nightclub, a brief spell as a door-to-door salesman in Stoke-on-Trent and spending his first pay packet in Hanley on a pair of Versace jeans.

 

Robbie also talks about auditioning and eventually winning a part in Take That, which meant he never needed to retake his GCSEs at Fenton Sixth Form College.

 

He says: "I sang a Jason Donovan song and danced like MC Hammer.

 

"Things like that (finding fame and fortune) don't happen to people from Stoke-on-Trent. In fact the only time I can remember us being on the TV is a brief mention in a Carpet Warehouse advert."

 

Jan said: "The audition for Take That was in May in Manchester. I checked the place out before we went.

 

"Coming home he was very excited about it, but we didn't hear anything for a long time.

 

"In August he got his GCSE results. He was in the garden with his friends. When he saw me he came in and said, 'I've not done very well'.

 

"I had a look and said, 'no you haven't'.

 

"He went back into the garden, then the phone rang and it was (Take That manager) Nigel Martin Smith, to say that Robbie was in the band. He was over the moon.

 

"From the disappointment in the morning, things turned out all right."

 

During his Robcast, the singer mentions a number of friends who went with him to Church Lawton Hall, including Maffer, Egghead, Flick, Dave, Coco (Paul Colclough) and Drew (Munroe).

I was searching for something else and this came up, ten years on, Maffer went round the bend on mind altering LSD, Flick is a teacher in London, Dave runs three trucks, Coco is a spark up north, his boy is a professional footballer, the last I heard Drew went to OZ.

[Rich Rule]

So you hung about with Robbie Williams.  Or was Stoke on Trent full of Eggheads?

 

I used to work with a load of lads from Stoke when I was in America.  Kept in touch for a few years and went out to see them in Colorado.

 

Sadly, I have lost touch these days.

 

One of the lads was called Paul Hough, or City to his friends and family.

 

He was born the same day in 1972 that Stoke City won the league cup.

 

His dad wanted to christen him City but ended up with Paul as his missus protested.  
 

The City name stuck though.

 

 

[eggsarascal]

7 minutes ago, Rich Rule said:

So you hung about with Robbie Williams.  Or was Stoke on Trent full of Eggheads?

 

I used to work with a load of lads from Stoke when I was in America.  Kept in touch for a few years and went out to see them in Colorado.

 

Sadly, I have lost touch these days.

 

One of the lads was called Paul Hough, or City to his friends and family.

 

He was born the same day in 1972 that Stoke City won the league cup.

 

His dad wanted to christen him City but ended up with Paul as his missus protested.  
 

The City name stuck though.

 

 

We kicked the streets together before he became famous, I drove him to Manchester in an Escort van with no road tax when he was auditioning for Take That. His farther (who went by the name Pete Conway) was a compare who worked the clubs and pubs around Stoke. I still call in on his mum, Jan, if she's home.

[Rich Rule]

6 minutes ago, eggsarascal said:

We kicked the streets together before he became famous, I drove him to Manchester in an Escort van with no road tax when he was auditioning for Take That. His farther (who went by the name Pete Conway) was a compare who worked the clubs and pubs around Stoke. I still call in on his mum, Jan, if she's home.

 

Did you ever come across the lad I mentioned.

 

City or Paul Hough (Huffy) was a painter and decorator.

 

Dylan was a plumber.  Can’t remember his surname.

 

Gid was a chippie.

 

Scott was a spark.

 

Another of their lot was called Barney, proper nut par.

 

They all went to the US in 1997 and pretty much stayed there as illegals u til they found a way to stay permanent.

 

Apart from Dylan who got pulled over for a broken tail light around 2007.  He was a bit pissed amd they breathalysed him and asked for ID.  He handed over his passport by accident.  Visa had expired and he was deported and ended up in North London.

 

They we’re all a right bunch of wreck heads.  Blagged it out of Stoke to work on a resort in Connecticut.  They just wrote some letters saying they were experienced MTB’ers and were members of the “Chorlton Wheelies”.  
 

They were put in charge of the MtB hire and were guides on the resorts.  It was hilarious as they could barely ride a bike let alone be guides/bike mechanics etc.

 

 

[eggsarascal]

12 hours ago, Rich Rule said:

 

Did you ever come across the lad I mentioned.

 

City or Paul Hough (Huffy) was a painter and decorator.

 

Dylan was a plumber.  Can’t remember his surname.

 

Gid was a chippie.

 

Scott was a spark.

 

Another of their lot was called Barney, proper nut par.

 

They all went to the US in 1997 and pretty much stayed there as illegals u til they found a way to stay permanent.

 

Apart from Dylan who got pulled over for a broken tail light around 2007.  He was a bit pissed amd they breathalysed him and asked for ID.  He handed over his passport by accident.  Visa had expired and he was deported and ended up in North London.

 

They we’re all a right bunch of wreck heads.  Blagged it out of Stoke to work on a resort in Connecticut.  They just wrote some letters saying they were experienced MTB’ers and were members of the “Chorlton Wheelies”.  
 

They were put in charge of the MtB hire and were guides on the resorts.  It was hilarious as they could barely ride a bike let alone be guides/bike mechanics etc.

 

 

No, they aren't names I know. I do recall me and another lad missed from that name check, Yoka, driving to Harwich to get the ferry to Holland to go and see Take That in The Hague, LuLu and Eternal were backing them, we had backstage passes, Yoka and the now Louise Rednap had a lovely evening of it... so I was lead to believe.

[HuntingHicap]

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