Pet Peeves

[Anvil]

Tonight I was sat outside reading and I noticed a small group of kids throwing balls at an elderly lady windows who lives down the road and running away when she came to the window or the door.  She is a widow, and not in great health.  They then went back lifted the balls from her garden and threw them again.  Youngest kid was probably 5 or 6 and actually lives beside her.

I hate getting involved in anything (long story) and hoped they would stop, or one of their parents would notice what they were up to. Don't know how many times they did it before I noticed them but they did it quite a few times after.  Toyed with phoning the PSNI but then I finally couldn't sit with my finger up my ass any longer and asked them to stop doing it, telling them if they didn't I would phone the police or go tell their parents. Thankfully they did stop.

Pet peeve is I didn't step in sooner, even just walking down to her house and sitting on her wall would have stopped them, wouldn't have had to say anything and everyone could have admired my Deathwish At the Edge of Damnation t-shirt. Might even have got a cup of tea and a biscuit.  Really, really annoyed with myself now.

Half expecting a knock on the door and a why did you tell my child this or that rant now.

[astfgyl]

Aye. I know a few lads on the fire brigade here and the shut they've gone through is unreal. Not just putting out fires, but going to car crashes, opening houses where someone's died inside, suicides, pulling bodies out of the water etc. Gruesome, tough going.

Yep my uncle was a fireman as well and fuck me do they see some shit. Tough bastards so they are.

Have a bit of a story to go with that actually....

So back in the day when I was like 17 or 18 and I was on the yokes but there was no session on and I couldn't go home so I decided to head to the next town over but it's like 9 miles so I stuck out the thumb and fuckin happy days the first car picks me up. Well a lad in a van looked like deliveries or something twas about 5 in the morning wintertime.

Anyway that's grand I'm talking the head off the lad doing my best to make him feel sorry he ever picked me up but whatever. So we're halfway there and this little fuckin micra or fiesta shit passes us at great speed. "Jaysus someone's in a hurry" says us but when we went round the bend that car was upside down on the wrong side of the road with like bits of car smashed around the road so fuck pull up quick.

Well I ran over and there was a girl hanging out the passenger window but she was the driver because there was no-one else so I ran back to the lad and says "fuck man there's someone hurt" and the lad says have I a phone? Yeah says I, so the cunt drives off and leaves me there without even finding out if the young one is alive or dead.

Fuck sake. So here I am on a bastard country road in North Tipp off me shitter wondering if yer wan was dead or not she did look very deaf tbf but no there was a bit of breathing going on there thank fuck.

Well bollix I knew I'd have to ring the fire brigade and the ambulance and worst of all the fuckers would surely bring the fuckin guards and all and here was me fuckin buzzed out of it. Fuck fuck. So obviously I rang the emergency services and sat with the unconscious bird hanging out of the upside down car until the cavalry came a calling and who was first up on the scene...? Yeah, the mother's brother and I was pure fucked and he knew it and he wanted to kill me but because of the situation he said he wouldn't snitch on me but he was like raging and trying to praise me for not like moving the bird and yknow breaking her back or some shit so lo and behold the guards had all the traffic stopped so I just hop in to the first truck in the queue and he was sound enough to bring me on to the session I was aiming for in the other town in the first place fair play.

There's actually an epilogue to this but fuck it I'm sick of typing I'll finish it tomorrow even though nobody actually asked for the story in the first place.

[son of the Morrigan]

Nothing but respect for the fire brigade people myself, luckily I've never required their services and I hope I never do.

I was walking home from the pub, completely fucking bombed, years ago. Its a narrow bog road, no verges, and 12 - 14 foot deep drains both sides, its lethal.
Its a bright night and I spot where a car is after going off the road. Looking over the edge I can see a car wedged upside-down half way down below in the drain. "Fuck me I better go down and see if there's someone in it" thinks I, so I climbed down into the drain through a sheet of briars destroying myself with thorns.
Turns out anyway whatever poor creature was in it is gone and I've to try and get out of this cunting drain.
I'm standing on the bottom of the car and I must have braced myself on the wheel to steady myself, the wheel turned as wheels tend to do and I went head first into a foot of briars, followed by a foot of water, followed by a foot of muck and then had to crawl up the whole depth of the drain through the briars again. Then I had the joy of walking another 3 miles home, drowned wet and covered in muck and blood.
I was a week rooting thorns out of my hands and arms, there was thorns in my face and ya couldn't tell where one scrape ended and another began all over me.

Thus ends another story nobody asked for.

[91/30]

Can't beat those stories!  I pulled up on a wet night at a car crash on a steep section of the Bruce Highway years ago (BTW can you believe that the Aussies have a Highway called 'Bruce')

I'm a trained first aider and as the ambulance and peelers hadn't turned up as yet we're legally required to provide first aid and so on. 

I parked on the verge, got out and started walking up the hill towards the crash site, as I did this a car on the side of the road started coming down the hill in reverse then curved in front of me and went over the embankment.  All you could see was the headlights pointing up into the sky.  There was no one in it, it must have belonged to some poor divil who was attending the crash up the hill, jumped out and forgot the hand brake

[Thorn]

Some great reading there lads, fair play.

[astfgyl]

Aye so the epilogue to my one was that about 10 months later I was after quitting college and getting a bus back to tipp in disgrace but the bus only went to a different town so I had to thumb the rest of the way. Anyway after standing in the pissing rain for around an hour a lad eventuality pulls up to give me a lift. Jaysus thanks lad I says I thought I'd never get a lift and yer man said he doesn't usually pick up the lads thumbing but he recognised me. I told him i didn't have a clue who he was did he know the father maybe but no he said he remembered me from being out in the middle of nowhere at 6 in the morning with the crashed car. Turns out he was the ambulance driver! So there was a bit of luck for me troubles after it. Turned out the girl in the car was fine as well so yeah cool bit of a happy ending there

[Thorn]

Ah there's the Universe at work eh, payin' ye your dues.

[Ollkiller]

I worked for the fire service for 11 years taking 999 calls. Apart from the shift work it was a great job in fairness. If you're trained properly you can make a huge difference to someone's life. Heard some mad shit in that job. Off the top of my head I got the call for the traffic incident in donegal where 9 people died. Narly. Worst call was where a 6 year old kid died in an elevator in galway library when the life malfunctioned and crushed the kid. Got a lot of people threatening suicide and the likes on the call. One fella in galway jumped off a 40 foot pier into 2 foot of water breaking both legs. Also had a lady with a car fire. She said I'm going into the car to get my bosses laptop. I told her to step away from the car as I couldn't hear her properly (I could hear her fine, just wanted her away from the car). She moved away and the petrol tank exploded. In fairness people don't think rationally in these situations.

The only calls firefighters really hate is car crashes and anything involving kids. House fires are no bother to them. Most of their job is chimney fires and automatic fire alarms. But you'd see the 1000 stare when they'd come back from a bad crash. They deserve every penny they get.

[Carnage]

Two bads ones a friend was at: one a double fatality involving pedestrians and a decapitation, the other one was the guy who went the wrong way on the motorway and ploughed into a car with a family in it, including a baby. He also found his own cousin hanged on his farm. He was on the verge of quitting both times but kept at it, as numbers are well down.

[Anvil]

When I was young a fella who lived down the road was part time in the fire service.  You'd hear the fire siren and then hear his car starting and he'd be racing away to the fire station. A few minutes later you'd hear the engines leaving the station. Fair play to him.  Just reading this thread reminded me of the old fire sirens, don't miss hearing those. 

[nukeabuse]

My brother was driving home on Xmas morning about 1am a few years back. Good straight road, newly built bypass job. Horse had broken out onto the road, he hit it going about 70. Horse had been looking straight up the road so thankfully he hit direct on from behind, took the legs from under it so it slide up the bonnet straight through the car so it's ass was in the boot and it's front legs out the windshield. My brother said he came round looked over and the horses head was beside him on the passenger seat, the horse did a neigh and died. Had peeled the roof back on the car like a tin of sardines. Was lucky the horse wasnt a few inches to the right or he'd be a goner. Somehow only had a few minors scrapes from glass.

Was round at my mates a few days later and one of our mates who's a cop was showing us a pic of some mad crash his buddy went to the scene of, was the horse in the car.

Worst was couldn't get anyone to move the car for days as was over xmas. Recovery boys wouldn't touch it till the horse was taken out of the car said it was a council job. The council wouldn't touch it cuz as technically the horse was inside the the car it was on private property. So the car sat up a lane with the horse still in it for a few days till everything opened up again.

[Thorn]

Bloody hell, you couldn't write this stuff!

[Eoin McLove]

  that's incredible and yet I choose to believe. Allelujiah!

[John Kimble]

2 completely unrelated peeves for today...

1. Blackout tattoos (I think this is what they're referred to)...tattoos are great, I have two crappy tattoos myself which I want to get sorted or covered up. Get a tattoo, get a full sleeve, get whatever the fuck you want but just colouring in your arms black? Why? Just go at yourself with a permanent marker. These are shite.

2. Czechia. I wasn't even aware this was a thing. Apparently it was introduced a few years ago, but it seems that only this year RTE have decided to use it in the Euros coverage. It sounds wrong. Just call it the Czech Republic like everyone else. Or has everyone been calling it this for the last few years and it's only now I've noticed? Please tell.

[Bürggermeister]

You've been away from this planet too long, John. Czechia is now. Czech Republic is last decade.

Welcome back.