Whatever you do, don't do that. Again.

Gadjo Dilo lives in Romania, and has tagged me from his irritatingly well written and eponymous blog. I wasn't go to do this one because it involves effort, which I try to avoid, but I feel I have to as penance for the terrible Romanian joke I forced my wife to listen to earlier.

Ahem:
"Are you going to Romania?"
"Nope. I'm going abroad."

Eh? EH?

*Cue rolling tumbleweed and small dust-devil in the sparse, arid land of the humour desert. *


According to the rules of Mr Dilo's tag, I must describe 10 things I've done which I wouldn't like to repeat. Mr Dilo only did 5, and so I will continue this mutation until it becomes the standard form of this meme. That's called selection, that is, and don't knock it because without it you wouldn't have Pekingese dogs, or those bald cats, or antelope or triffids.

I reckon this is supposed to be a light-hearted, whimsical exercise, and as such should include suitably ephemeral inconveniences, rather than wailing about how you don't want to get HIV again, or lose another family in the escalator accident. No-one wants to hear about that.

Mind you, the first one I'm thinking of is medical, and there is also, according to my consultant, a high chance of it happening again. He's not an optimistic sort, that doctor. So, to kick off, I give you:

One.
Ureteric colic. Or kidney stones. A strange experience, where an unexplained pain in your back spreads to your front and, over the next couple of hours, gets worse and worse until it's the worst pain you've ever had. And then gets worse! And to top it off, it starts to affect parts of your anatomy that it really doesn't need to.

Tip of penis pain?

Now that's just plain wrong. And apparently, only half of patients get that. Presumably the half with penises.

I was expecting the CT scan to show a stalagmite (or maybe stalactite) of sharpened chalk piercing my innards like a miffed narwhal's tusk, so you can imagine my surprise when they told me the culprit was only three millimetres across. Three? I've had lumps of earwax bigger than that. Admittedly not up my penis because that sort of practise is best left to the French.

The consultant took great delight in telling me how the sharp, shark tooth-like edges of the tiny stone were puncturing the walls of my ureter scoring jagged lacerations down the length of it, hence the pain, and gleefully reiterated that it was likely to re-occur.

Happily, a few days later, I forced it out in a manful, impressive, dray-horse-after-a-bucket-of-beer sort of way, and caught it in a tea-strainer my wife now refuses to use. In fact, I've still got it. Let me go and take a piccy:


There. Something for your entertainment that I made myself, out of calcium oxalate. Can't really get a scale on that. Bear with me:


There ya go. Titchy innit, and yet that made me stagger into A&E like Quasimodo with the runs. Apparently, I should now avoid asparagus and rhubarb, which isn't the most life-changing of medical advice one can receive, so I shouldn't complain.

Two.
Had grapefruit for breakfast. I mean, seriously, who came up with the idea that those damn things are even edible, let alone good breakfast material. They literally, literally*, turn my face inside-out. I would be less affected were I to empty a car battery onto my morning Weetos before eating them with a scalpel. Horrid things. My wife disagrees, and points out that whilst I enjoy foods spicy enough to scald a Mexican, I can't do tart and have been known to complain that ripe strawberries are too tangy.

Three.
Bought some Bloc sunglasses. They were useless. Well, half of them were useless. The side containing the lens which didn't fall out, even after being sent back to them for repair worked perfectly. It was the other side that I had issues with. Every now and then, the right lens (my right, not yours, unless you're wearing them, then it's your right, not mine. Right?) would make like a salmon and leap away from my face, twirling melodramatically in the sunshine like the flipped coin of a gambling assassin, when he's choosing whether to use the silencer or not. Only the coin would be caught in a grizzled hand and then returned to it's pocket, whereas my lens would invariably land in some dog shit, leaving me the decision as to the worth of retrieving it or not.

Being mean, I usually did, making the "Ew! Ew! Ew!" face as I did so. You know the one I mean.

I now sport some RayBan Aviators which are nice and retro, and make me look exactly like Tom Cruise off of Top Gun. After extensive burns and a failed skin graft following a dodgy landing.

Four.
Bought a pedometer.

Pointless, pointless bits of kit. Twelve quid for something that tells me I've done three steps, when I'm half a mile from the house, and I'm just not that tall. It now resides in a tin shaped like R2D2 off of a fillum called Star Battles, or Space Wars or something, and is destined never to be worn again.

Hmm, only one of these has so far involved my penis, which I find surprising. I shall remedy that now.

Five.
Caught my willy in my zip. Once, and I was seven, yet I still remember it vividly. My Dad told me he would count to three and yank the zip down, and then went "One . . ." YANK, and thus was I released from my torment. This was undoubtedly the way to go about removing my boyhood from it's torment, but we never spoke again.


It would probably be very, very easy to continue this theme on for ten things I don't want to do again, and maybe carry it on into the hundreds, but I have a sort of life outside this blog, and so do, I assume, my readers. For that reason, I'll leave it at five.

I've tagged a few people recently and I get the feeling that, should I do it again so soon, I'd make a name for myself as a pest. Tempting though that is, I shall refrain and simply offer this one out to all of you to consider, unless you've never made a mistake.

In which case, you're not a proper blogger.

Now get out there and make some mistakes!


*And by literally, I mean not really.