Notting Hill Carnival Misfortune No. 2:
After a few beers in the Warwick Castle, Matthew decided to give me a piggy-back down Warwick Avenue. I jumped on his back and off we went. Seconds later he lost his balance and did a spectacular face-plant on the pavement, and unfortunately I landed on his head. The damage:

• Matthew's head: deep cut on his forehead, cut on the bridge of his nose. Lots of blood
  
• My hand: grazed and bruised after being squashed under the weight of Matthew
  
• My watch: glass scratched and broken, strap broken off. It still keeps Thameslink Mean Time though.

I have visions of Matthew going in to his new job, having a high-powered meeting with John Lubbock all the while oozing blood from his head. Oh well, it'll take Matthew's mind off the bout of tonsilitis he's suffering. Get well soon, faceache.

Notting Hill Carnival Misfortune No. 1:
Walking down from Westboourne Park tube, I took my backpack off. The strap snagged my sunglasses behind my right ear and ripped them off, snapping them in two, and they fell to the ground in pieces, in full view of carnival-goers. Not a cool moment.

Paul

Airsick

I am prone to awful, and usually very immediate, airsickness, which often strikes soon after take-off.

In May 1997 I took a lengthy flight to Phoenix, Arizona, and managed bravely not to be sick the entire flight. This involved a lot of grim, earnest concentration, reflection, and swallowing of oddly nausea-inducing anti-emetic pills. After 11 hours 45 minutes the plane went in to a turbulent descent, ("unusually turbulent" to quote the pilot), which did much to shatter my intestinal sang-froid.

But I still somehow managed to keep my cool.

Then the plane landed...Safely...Usual reflex sigh of relief, and then the plane began to coast sort of sideways-backwards, and come to a gentle halt.
I instantly threw up...

The pilot announced an outdoor temperature of 104 degrees in the shade.

Possibly a rare occurence of being airsick on landing?

I had arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, not with bang but a sick bag.

My bloody hard disk has failed. An ever-increasing occurrence of Blue Screen Hell led me to suspect that it was time to back up vital stuff. Well, it died, and I've just blown 80 quid on a new hard disk. I installed it and then discovered ..... that I didn't know how to format it in DOS! It did occur to me for a few nanoseconds that I could look it up on the net but.... Oh woe.

What's more, the emergency bootable floppy supplied by Tiny, the manufacruerre of my PC, had a disk error and wouldn't boot! Now, if my computer worked, I might be abel to fix it, but guess what....?

So I've had to run backwards and forwards from work, looking things up online, running home, trying them, going back the next day.... A job that should have taken hours to sort out has taken a week!

(So I haven't updated any of my sites, natch)

One from Cris Peploe: his boyfriend Stuart was out walking Dexter the dog in Finsbury Park. Dexter went to have a dump on the grass, and Stuart, being a responsible dog owner, scooped up the poop using the inverted plastic bag manoeuver.

He then started to spin the bag to seal it up and tie a knot in it.

The bag broke, spraying dog shit in his face and hair.

It seems to be a week for loss of keys. I went to the BBC gym at Woodlands (Shepherd's Bush) on Thursday. I got there with the BBC bus. On the way back, I took the tube home, but since the barrier was open, didn't need to use my ticket. It was only once I was inside the tube system and at the barrier at Blackfriars that I realised I had in fact lost my Travelcard. The ticket inspector on duty watched me pulling my pockets and bags apart.

I simply said to her, "I'll be honest with you, I' ve lost it."
She just rolled her eyes and said, "I can't be bothered!" and let me through.

However, once I reached home, I discovered I had also lost my key! Dammit, dammit, dammit! Fortunately my landlord lives next door so I borrowed a spare set. I later worked out that, because my pockets had been uncomfortably full during the day, I had left the aforementioned vital items on my desk at work. Doh!

Monday 5th August
22:00
On Monday night I had a lovely night out at the Proms, on my way home however I had a misadventure. I just missed my train at Victoria by 1 min and had to wait half an hour for the next one.
22:38
The next train arrived, I got on, then just as the doors had closed I had a quick look in my bag and realised I had left my keys on my desk at work. It wouldn't normally matter, but I have no flatmate at the moment, so I had no way to get into the flat.
22:45
I got off at the next station, which happened to be Brixton, ran the gauntlet through the crackheads, and returned to work.... time was ticking though, I had to get back to to Victoria before 23:38 or I would have to wait another hour for the next train, tic tic tic tic
23:10
Arrived at work, but had some problems getting into my office, funnyily enough I didn't have my keys on me, finally got the keys, tic tic tic
23:25
I now had 13 mins to get from Marylebone High Street to Victoria, and decided to get a cab, some blonde bitch beat me to one cab, but managed to grab the next one...tic tic tic... arrived at Victoria @ 23:36.. I sprinted and managed to catch the train with 1 min to spare...
00:00
Finally arrived home, 1 1 /2 hours after I'd planned to, had I remebered my keys and caught the first train....

Wendy

Christmas Eve 2001

Somehow, I managed to crack my head open on a fuse box. I was standing up after locking my front door, and whacked my head against the edge of the fuse box. I fell to the ground, gushing blood.

I dragged myself off up to King's College Hospital and sat in casualty for two bloody hours wating to have my head stitched up. While I was waiting I texted Janine to let her know. She phoned up and in that supportive way unique to close friends, pissed herself laughing at me.