What Could Be Worse?

WARNING: For readers who don't like vomit and poo – STOP READING NOW!

For the rest of you …

What could be worse than pouring milk in your tea and taking a huge gulp only to discover that the milk is way past its sell by date?

What could be worse than digging in the garden, reaching into the soil and putting your fingers in a huge lump of extremely malodorous cat shit?

What could be worse than the above cat shit getting stuck in your fingernails?

What could be worse than stepping down from a chair in bare feet and landing on an upturned plug?

What could be worse than accidentally tripping up a woman carrying four dozen eggs?

What could be worse then finding a huge pile of cat vomit in the middle of your carpet?

What could be worse than failing to notice the huge pile of cat vomit in the middle of your carpet (because you may have left your glasses upstairs) and then stepping into the warm sickly substance?

What could be worse than dropping your toothbrush down the toilet and having to reach in to retrieve it?

What could be worse than being such a skinflint that you actually use the same toothbrush afterwards?

What could be worse than stepping in a huge slimy dog turd, not noticing it, and then walking it through your new girlfriend’s parents’ house the very first time you met them?

What could be worse than dropping your mobile phone down the toilet?

What could be worse than wearing a dress to see the Rocky Horror Show and then allowing your mate to send it to somebody at work so that most of the company can laugh at you?

What could be worse than trying to chat up a handsome man and then dropping your drink all over your lovely new dress?

What could be worse than taking a bite out of a sandwich and then seeing a big green piece of mould right next to the bite mark?

What could be worse than having your beloved mullet cut off because you misunderstood the hairdresser’s question?

What could be worse than using one tea bag per day to make at least five cups of tea because you are a skinflint?

What could be worse than fancying a girl so much that you drink a colossal amount of ale just to pluck up the courage to talk to her and then totally humiliating yourself while insulting her in the process?

What could be worse than screaming like a girl when you see a large spider in a foreign country?

What could be worse than buying a brand new £300 mp3 player, only to use the wrong charger to charge it the first time, completely destroying it?

What could be worse than carrying a tray of beers to a table in a pub and then dropping it on the table, pouring fresh beer on all of your mates?

What could be worse than throwing up on your mate’s lap on a bus ride home?

What could be worse than holding your young baby over your head and being rewarded for making him giggle with a torrent of vomit over your face?

What could be worse than locking yourself out of you flat wearing nothing but a small dressing gown that barely hides your arse, let alone anything else?

What could be worse than being woken up by a huge fat cat leaping down from the wardrobe and landing on that part of your stomach that causes the most air to be expelled?

What could be worse than screaming like a girl when a huge fat cat leaps from a wardrobe onto your stomach?

What could be worse than a man screaming like a girl when a mild earthquake hits Manchester in the middle of the night?

What could be worse than waking up on the concourse of Victoria Station in London next to a steaming pile of vomit?

What could be worse than putting blue food dye in a mate’s beer on his stag do?

What could be worse than throwing up all over a table in an Indian restaurant having consumed copious amounts of beer, some of which was tainted with blue food dye, leaving a huge pile of steaming blue vomit for the rest of restaurant to marvel at?

What could be worse than falling into a river because you took a short cut on a cross country run?

What could be worse than having diarrhoea in a place where the only toilet around for the next three days is totally blocked?

What could be worse than waking up to find a dismembered thrush scattered around your house?

What could be worse than warning your children not to spray sun tan cream in their face because it is dangerous and then promptly spraying sun tan cream into your own face?

What could be worse than waking up and discovering a rat has eaten all of your toilet paper?

What could be worse than a rat eating all of your toilet paper when you have diarrhoea on a boat with the only usuable toilet being the worst toilet in the world?

What could be worse than throwing a glass of coke over a mate, claiming that you did it because “there was wasp in your ear”?

What could be worse than staying at a mate’s house and, in desperation, throwing up all over his freshly washed plates?

What could be worse than putting the wrong type of petrol in your car while you have three mates watching you?

What could be worse that laughing at the guy who put the wrong type of petrol in his car and then doing it yourself sometime later?

What could be worse than having a cat drop a live mouse on you “as a gift” while you were reading in bed?

What could be worse than reversing your car off the drive and hitting a parked car on the other side of the road?

What could be worse than failing to notice that you hit a parked car on the other side of the road, moving forward and then reversing into the same parked car AGAIN!

What could be worse than a woman walking into the toilet while you are perched on the throne in all your glory?

What could be worse than vomiting all over a fruit machine that was being played by a complete stranger?

What could be worse than accidentally spilling hot coffee all over your crotch while in front of customers and then having to walk around for the rest of the day looking as if you have had an accident?

What could be worse than standing admiring a brand new light grey carpet, stepping back and accidentally knocking over a glass of blackcurrant cordial all over it?

What could be worse than suggesting that you throw blackcurrant cordial over the rest of the new carpet to your wife “in order to make the stain symmetrical”?

What could be worse than watching several gallons of home made beer flooding on your kitchen floor when you accidentally tip over the barrel?

What could be worse than standing in front of a urinal just as the water pipe above decides to spring a leak and spray water all over your crotch?

What could be worse than waking up at a strange house with a colossal hangover after a party and then stupidly confessing to the owner of the house that you had thrown up all over his TV the night before?

What could be worse than being given a lift home after a party and then throwing up all over yourself?

What could be worse than finding yourself three miles from home on a Saturday afternoon, covered in vomit, having been thrown out of a car that is also full of your vomit?

What's worse than being sea sick on a ferry and throwing up in the wind, scattering it all over the place (including on other passengers)?

What could be worse than telling the Plastic Mancunian about bad things that have happened to you over the years, only to find them mentioned in a puerile blog post about bad things that have happened to people?

What could be worse than being the Plastic Mancunian and confessing that some of the things above actually happened to you?

Exploding Children

WARNING – if you don’t like tales of vomit and poo and babies, stop reading now.

I remember, with fondness, the first time my eldest son exploded.

It was approximately 3am in the summer of 1993. My wife had just returned from the hospital with our first son and I was lying there in bed on that first night, struggling to sleep. I am a light sleeper and the sound of a third person breathing softly in our room was a little too much noise for my level of tolerance. The light breathing of my little one started to become more agitated and louder. After a minute or two, he was crying softly.

“I’ve just fed him,” said my wife. “I think his nappy needs to be changed.”

Leaping out of bed like a hero, I said. “I will do it.”

I don’t know who I thought I was – some kind of super Dad perhaps. Dressed just in underpants (a sight that was pretty dreadful even then), I crept around the bed, picked up my new son and stumbled to the bathroom. By this time, he was crying really loudly (possibly at the sight of me in underpants). I was stunned that a creature so small could make so much noise. The more I tried to soothe him the more he screamed. His face started to turn red.

I clumsily extracted him from his babygrow and lay him onto the special plastic contraption we had bought to, apparently, make changing a nappy easy. It was perched on the bath. I knelt in front of it.

For a few seconds I actually thought I knew what I was doing. My son was facing me, his little legs kicking in front of me. I pulled the tabs on the disposable nappy and opened it up to reveal a vision of hell.

The nappy was full of a green-black substance that frankly looked alien to me. And it was sticky – boy was it sticky. For a second I thought it was alive. And the odour, though not utterly revolting was deep and menacing.

Breathing in, I went for it. I carefully wiped away as much of the foul substance as I could from his bottom and disposed of the contaminated baby wipes slowly and carefully into yet another plastic contraption we had bought. I was careful to avoid getting the green substance onto any part of my skin. I placed the final baby wipe into the contraption and turned back to my son. That’s when he exploded.

First, a huge fountain of urine spurted out of his little todger, hitting me directly on my throat. I reacted the same way that any other person would do having been hit by fresh urine for the first time; I screeched and fell backwards, clawing at my throat as the foul warm liquid ran down my bare chest.

As I fell, I was aware that the fountain was not stopping. The floor, the plastic contraption, my son and I were all covered in urine. It was relentless. How could a small baby contain so much pee? I had it in my hair – MY HAIR!!

When it finally stopped, I had to set about cleaning up the mess. I carefully cleaned the baby first, then the plastic contraption. I lay down a towel and carefully placed my now happy baby onto it. He watched with interest as I mopped up. And then he exploded again – this time from the other end.

I watched in horror as another lump of green stickiness spurted out onto the towel. In panic, I picked up my son foolishly thinking that would somehow stop the mess. It didn’t. He hadn’t finished. Not by a long way. And there was more pee as well.

By the time he had finished, I was covered in urine and green poo – and so was he. And the worst part of it was that the green crap had somehow found its way to my fingernails. MY FINGERNAILS!!!

My wife, wondering what the screeching was, came and rescued me at this point. She was surprised to find that I was the one screeching, not my son. “What are you feeding him?” I wailed. “Poo shouldn’t be THIS colour!”

Since then I have had a major aversion to the substances that explode out of children. Sadly I have had to cope with such trauma on numerous occasions.

Around a year later, I was playing with my eldest son, this time unaware that my wife had just fed him. He loved being lifted into the air; he would whoop with delight as I raised him above my head and lower him back down.

I was sitting on the floor in the lounge lifting him up, lowering him down and lifting him up ad nauseam. He was giggling and I loved it. Unfortunately, I overdid it and he exploded.

A fountain of vomit spurted out of his mouth with such force that I almost fell backwards. It splashed out onto my T-shirt and ran down the inside onto my bare chest. It was warm, sticky and horrifically smelly. My wife came in to see what the screeching was (me again) and screamed at me: “Don’t let any of it go on the carpet”.

There I was holding a puking child, screeching like a banshee (both of us) and squeezing my legs together so that the unending fountain of vomit didn’t splash onto the carpet.

My final tale also involves vomit. Again, it was my eldest son. This time, we were in the park kicking a ball around. He was two and I was trying to train him to be the next George Best. After a while, he started whimpering.

“Are you OK?” I asked. He started crying. Like any caring father, I picked him up held him close to comfort him. And then he exploded. He threw up all over me. Once more, the foul substance found its way under my clothes and onto my naked skin. I screeched in disgust and this time there were plenty of people around to laugh at me. And they did – with gusto.

I ran to the car like a man possessed, kicking the ball as I went, carrying my screaming child and almost puking myself. People stared at me as if I were an alien. By the time I got back to the car, I had it in my hair, all over my coat and even running down my trousers. The car was a complete smelly mess. When I returned home, I had to clean up myself, my son and my car.

There have been many other tales of child explosion in my life and they have all been revolting. Thankfully, those episodes are now over as my children are both teenagers.

I’m looking forward to relating tales of their explosions when they have become mature adults.

I think I’ll wait until the day the get married.