Comments on: Things I’ve done that you (probably) haven’t

By: Dave Finbow

Dave Finbow — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 16:47:19 +0000

Astounding list! I can relate to some things directly and other parts leave me struck with awe and wonder… The blog is an inspiration to keep writing. And to keep going.

thanks and best wishes
Dave F.

By: Justine

Justine — Sun, 05 Nov 2023 21:21:06 +0000

I have just discovered this post and read the accompanying articles. When I graduated from university I went off back-packing in east Africa for eight weeks and simply left my mother a poste restate address in Namibia. I remember being on the back of a truck and kids waving and jumping up and down in their excitement at seeing someone foreign. I loved it and have been travelling as far and as often as I can ever since. But I miss those early days. Travel is too easy now. It’s lost that sense of adventure where you don’t know where you’re stopping for the night or what you’ll find to eat and negotiations are done with hand waving, pointing and a stick in the sand. I’m sure it’s still there at the edges, but maybe I’ve stopped looking?

By: Ragged Clown

Ragged Clown — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 14:48:44 +0000

In reply to Norma Jean.

Mrs Clown does a lot ‘tv extras’ work, appearing in movies and TV shows as ‘passerby #3’ or ‘2nd assistant nurse’.

She had one call to appear in a show that was set on an estate and she went all dressed in fancy clothes because she thought estates were where the rich people lived. Nope. Estates are where the poor people live.

By: Ragged Clown

Ragged Clown — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 05:42:21 +0000

In reply to Norma Jean. A housing project. Government-provided social housing.

By: Norma Jean

Norma Jean — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 03:57:28 +0000

Glad you three got together after so long. Probably good you didn’t continue getting together frequently over the decades, as it didn’t sound as though you and Matt were the best possible influences on ea. other, at least if you wanted to survive beyond adolescence.

Okay, for benefit of us colonists, what’s a council estate?

By: Ragged Clown

Ragged Clown — Sun, 12 Jun 2022 16:01:30 +0000

My step brother and sister, Matt & Ellie, visited yesterday. We established that Matt was implicated in no less than six of these crazy things and we thought of at least 5 more things that should have been on my list. Growing up on a council estate was fun!

By: Ragged Clown

Ragged Clown — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 08:53:03 +0000

In reply to Norma Jean.

Welcome to the House of the Clowns, Norma Jean. Lovely to see you!

I also did the escape training for submariners. Ours was 100 feet deep… Everything else was exactly as you described it. One fun fact: if you have to do an escape for reals on an actual submarine, they flood the escape tower so quickly that your eardrums burst and you arrive at the surface happy to be alive, but deaf!

The shrimp that your husband heard are known as “snapping shrimp”, he probably heard carpenter fish (sound like someone sawing wood) and underwater pigs (dolphins) too. The occasional whale song is quite magical!

One of the blessings of being on a nuclear submarine is that it doesn’t stink of diesel. Another is the almost endless quantities of hot, fresh water for showers etc. I was told by my diesel boat colleagues that no one is allowed to wash except (occasionally) hands and face while on patrol. Also no water for washing plates so, after eating, you would wipe your plate clean with bread before giving it to the next person.

By: Norma Jean

Norma Jean — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 23:57:25 +0000

Couldn’t figure out how to subscribe. (As you know, I’m not technically inclined). Hope this will do it. I’m a woman who’s been aboard a submarine. Okay, just once. My ex- was a submarine officer initially assigned to a diesel fast attack sub out of Groton, CT. Unlike the fleet ballistic missle subs, they were at sea ALL the time unless docked for repair, so there was no telling when they’d surface. Older officer’s wives (the Capt. was 32!) said to keep the wardrobe door closed and if you missed your husband to just open the door and sniff, as laundering did not remove the stench of deisel fuel on khaki uniforms). When in port, they died up next to the sub tender which, for one thing, did their laundry. Without ever having seen it for himself, my husband confidently told me that 3 pieces of equipment were used in this process. One snatched all the buttons off of shirts. One ate one of ea. pr. of socks. (I forget what the 3rd one did.)
Once while in port the wives of the 5 officers were invited aboard, one at a time, to see where it was our spouses spent the majority of their time. I was duly impressed to see that some of the enlisted men’s hammocks were slung under and around torpedos. Although the Capt. had his own cabin, the 4 other officers all slept on shelves in a single cabin, the shelves so close together that it was not possible to stretch out full length and with bend knees one could not turn over. Only one could be out of bed at a time. Since my husband was sonar officer he had to be awakened every time there was some noise detected, much of which apparently was made by shrimp) or some message recv’d. He said he never slept as long as 4 hr. And as luck would have it he didn’t get seasick as did the other 3 ossifers. They were in the No. Atlantic in winter and, as a deisel, riding on the surface most of the time.
They’d strap his binocs to him over his heavy duty sea gear, shove him out into the conning tower and close him in up there w/ the waves crashing down over him. He not infrequently got to enjoy multiple consecutive shifts of this since everyone else was down below barfing.
In my tour, I got to see the various compartment doors that would be consecutively closed in a fire or when the sub had been hit and was taking water or on the ocean floor, w/ the men told to lie down and breathe slowly (yeah, right…..), to apparently maximize the time until everyone in every compartment suffocated. It did not give me a warm fuzzy feeling but did make very real what we ossifers’ wives had been told in an initial briefing when we arrived at the base for our husbands to attend officers school (part of which involved an underwater ascent within a water-filled tower which everyone dreaded; they were to take in a lung full of air within a chamber at the bottom and then slowly ascend, rotating in a circle, slowly blowing out bubbles all the way; in chambers up the sides divers were stationed who would rush out and punch the trainee in the gut if he ever stopped blowing bubbles). This all seemed bad enough, given the ht. of the tower and how long that one inhalation had to support the slow bubble-blowing exhalation before they surfaced and passed that test. But in the same lecture we were told about the sinking of one of our subs in which everyone aboard did what they were told, closing off compartments and lying on the floor, where they all died, as the sub was below the depth where a rescue vessel, even if one were close by, could descend to dock w/ them and rescue the crew. That depth was well below what our husbands had had to prove they could ascend.
I was served coffee that had circulated many times through the percolator and all I could taste besides the extreme bitterness was all I could smell as well, deisel fuel. My husband raved that to keep morale high they ate like kings, steak and eggs, lobster, etc. (with large amounts of the leftovers being jettisoned before they came into port, having been dumped into the sanitary tank and blasted out w/ all the accumulated human waste and shower drainage from that deployment, at taxpayer expense). I imagined the only way they’d know they were eating steak or lobster was by visual confirmation, as it seemed likely that their senses would be saturated by deisel fuel as were mine).
One visit on my part was sufficient.

By: Aaron Rhodes

Aaron Rhodes — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:00:55 +0000

I hope to have a list as grandiose as yours someday. I have done well for myself, but you set a high bar.

By: Ragged Clown

Ragged Clown — Mon, 30 May 2022 08:10:23 +0000

I added a new thing that you have (probably) not done. I danced naked in a shopping centre with 40 of my closest friends.