Triforce! - YoGPoD 14: Xephos' War Stories

Episode Date: August 5, 2009

Electrocution, hitting people with axes and holding your poo for a week are in today's exciting new episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please play responsibly. I'm going to pat my belly. That's better. Okay. It's almost believable that I need my belly to be patted at certain times during the day, otherwise I get really ill. It's like, oh, it's time for Simon's belly patting. Can you imagine that? We're in a pub somewhere and it's time for my belly patting and I have to lie down on the floor in the busy bar and you have to just pat my belly for me

oh my god I cannot wait for this day I cannot wait for this day you have to explain to people oh it's alright it won't take long I've just got to pat his belly it won't take long I like the way that's the first thing you explain to them.

Like, sorry, we're taking up your time here, not trying to explain anything like why you have to do it. You know, there's no embarrassment there. You have to be matter of fact about these things. Simon,

he just needs his belly patting. Just hang on hang on There we go Hello and welcome to TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT

TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT TTTT Yorkpod Yorkpod

This is the Yorkpod Hello, this is the Yorkpod Honeydew's about to tell us At the time he got electrocuted I've been electrocuted But you can go first Okay, so I was at a pal's house who um he he's called james actually it's different james to the other james i've mentioned are all your friends called james yes yes except well there's

jimmy and jimbo and jim bob we were born in a time when there were a lot of Jameses. I remember there were at least four Jameses in my class when I was at school. When I was born, I was actually called James. Right. But I had to change my name by default to Simon. Okay, I was at a friend's house and it was a really old building in the countryside. It was like hundreds of years old. Electricity was put

in in like the 50s and it hadn't been updated since then. So it's got really shitty wiring in a really old house that wasn't built to have wiring in it. And it was the middle of the night. We were sat around. We might have taken some substances that affect how your mind works, let's just say. Oh, God. How old were you? I was thinking you were about 13. No, no, no. I was in my 20s, certainly. Early 20s.

Oh, God. So you're about my age. You're not in your early 20s Are you? You're in your mid 20s Shut up So At this pal's house Might have

Smoked something Was it just you and him Smoking weed? No no There was quite a few people We'd had bacon sandwiches And stuff After being

After going to the pub. We had a few more drinks and a smoke. We were sitting around in a very bright kitchen. Sitting around? Yeah, sitting around. The electricity wasn't working in a lot of the rest of the house. Why do people always sit

in kitchens at parties? Have you noticed how people always tend to stand around in the kitchen it's a cool place to be it's where the dream is kept so like people just follow other people there so there was there was a problem with the like the electricity and the lighting in some rooms of the house that hadn't been fixed and i wander off on my own to find the toilet and I was a little bit unfamiliar with this house and I'm wandering around in the dark upstairs trying to find the loo.

And it was a really spooky room because it had stuffed animals in it and it was dark and you could just see the outlines of a stuffed beaver and stuff. With its little eyes staring at you. Let me set the scene. It's about midnight or probably about one in the morning.

Probably about two. Probably about two in the morning. You come back from the pub with James and some of your mates. No attractive girls there obviously. You're standing around sitting around in the kitchen smoking a joint you're getting around you need to have a pee so you head upstairs in the dark you know fumbling around you're a bit paranoid because of the weed and the alcohol

and you're a bit tired and you're a bit sort of you've obviously it's been quite a distance to get up the sort of rickety old stairs at this old house to the to the bathroom you're not quite sure where you are you've stumbled into some room with some some stuffed animals in it floorboards creak the stuffed animals staring at me you can no longer see this you know or hear that the sounds of your friends at the kitchen exactly it was the wind dark whistles under the door and i'm like walking through this this this room seemed just so long it just seemed to go on forever and it was a bit i was almost tripping over some old rugs that were lying down on the floorboard you were tripping i was tripping there were these weird stuffed animals just fucking everywhere like on the walls it's weird

nailed to the walls i can see i can see like an outline ahead of me a rectangular outline that seems darker than the rest of the darkness around me and I can see, you know, that's clearly a room and that's probably the toilet so I'm heading towards that

that pitch black outline ahead of me. And I reach it and it's now very, very, very dark. I can't see fucking anything at all. And I've got like a hand on the door frame and I'm trying to find the light switch. Okay, we're coming close to the moment. This is before the days of mobile phones. When people would just use their mobile phone as a flashlight.

Obviously, your mobile phone was probably about the size of a small suitcase back then. No, that was the battery. The battery was the suitcase. You had to carry that around with the phone. So I've got my hand on the doorframe, and I'm fumbling, trying to find where the light switch is because I'm assuming that it's outside of the toilet. So I'm looking for this light

switch and suddenly somebody grasps my hand in the darkness and puts their hand someone puts their hand tightly around my fingers and they're gripping on really hard And I'm struggling to get my hand away

But I can't They've got it gripped really tight And I'm panicking I'm not saying anything I'm just too scared to say a word I don't know who this is Who's got me gripped in this It's just so weird and scary

And I manage to wrestle my hand away. And I'm like... I'm wildly looking around and not really reacting. I'm sweating and I'm clammy. I don't know what the fuck's going on. And

I manage to find where the light switch is. And I flick it on. And I see, outside, next to the door frame, a hole in the wall with wires coming out of it. That was what had gripped my hand. I put my hand into this hole, touching the bare wires that electrocuted me, and it felt like someone was holding me. That's terrifying Simon.

Isn't that horrible? That's terrifying, oh my god. I've got a much better story than that. Have you? Not quite as nightmarishly terrifying though. Bloody hell. This was when I was about 20 living in a student house We had one bathroom

That was downstairs And the lightbulb Went in it It's always the fucking bathroom isn't it It's always the bathroom Right So the lightbulb had gone in it So obviously like students

We just sort of didn't do anything about it We replaced the lightbulb But but it didn't make any difference. So we went for about two weeks having candles in there, so you know, taking a dump by candlelight. It's kind of pretty weird. That's so romantic. That's pretty weird.

Anyway, it came time... Your girlfriend's there, holding your hand. She's not taking a shit. She's sat in a shit. She's like sat in a bath. She's sat in a bath with all these oils and this foam and she's holding your hand. You didn't have a bath.

This is just shower. She'd be standing in the shower holding my hand. Standing in the shower holding your hand whilst you're on the toilet having a dump. Anyway, because we didn't have a lock on our bathroom door either, because previously we'd managed to lock the bathroom

door from the other side and couldn't get in. It was really weird how we managed to do it, because it was like a... I don't know how we did it, in fact, but it was locked and we couldn't get in, so we had to bash the door down. So the door was kind of slightly off its hinges anyway. So you've got a shared bathroom in a student house.

It's always candlelit with no lock on the door. That is so weird. But the door was kind of slightly off its hinges. So you just had to lift the door back into position when you went in the bathroom. Jesus Christ. Wouldn't it be easier just to go into the back garden and take his shit like on the lawn or something anyway we went in the bathroom to the door of its hinges got like a stool from the kitchen and I was like fiddling around with the light fixture obviously because the light had be turned on and off at switch so many

times we weren't quite sure what where the light bulb was on or off so when I was fiddling with the electrics I thought it would be dangerous to have it on so we want to make sure it's off. So we looked at the other light switches in the house to see which way is off. Obviously because that's how it works isn't it. So we switched it to the off setting. I was fiddling around with the wires and I realised one of the wires had come loose. So I reconnected it and got a massive jolt of mains electricity whatever

it is 240 volts got blown off the stall i was standing on like crashed into the door and fell onto the floor holy shit and i like passed out but it was a weird sensation because i've been electrocuted a few times in my life like one time when we were on duke of edinburgh i was climbing over an electric fence, and I didn't realise it was an electric fence, because I touched it, right, and it wasn't electric. It didn't electrocute me, so I was like, oh, that's fine. So I touched it again, and I was like, oh, it can't be electric.

So I started to climb over it. But electric fences don't have continuous electricity. They have pulsing. So they only pulse, like, once every second or something. So if you just touch it and let it go, it won't electrocute you. So I got about halfway over the fence and suddenly i felt this massive jolt of electricity in my like leg and then like completely wouldn't it be horrible balls for like touching it and it shocked you in the ball well it was it was my upper leg and i got one in the

upper leg like one on my arm one on my hand as i I pushed myself off it. Oh, it was awful. But the thing is, every time that happens, I sort of felt my heart, like... Oh, my God. Like, the pain in my heart a little bit. And it was the same thing I felt when I got blown off the chair when I was fucking with my bathroom mic fixer. I've had the same sensation as well.

On 9-11. My heart felt like it stopped. I felt such pain in my heart, Lewis, such pain. Well, there is a sort of phenomenon, isn't there, when something really like shock, you see something really shocking or or something happens really quick or you get shocked your heart does like suddenly pound in your chest doesn't it it's that sort of reaction but i think it was more to do with electricity the thing i felt but it might not be it might have just been this the awareness of me that i'd just been electrocuted and that that shock rather than it should have been stoned at the time when you were electrocuted.

I mean, I wasn't affected by it at all. I was just so sedated at the time that it had no effect on me whatsoever. Or did it? It hits you pretty hard. Maybe I was normal before. It hits you bloody hard.

Well, it's an old house, so it might not have been the strongest electricity You know what I've been like Really old electricity From the 1950s That's just been humming around the house For 50 odd years The ghost of electricity

Yeah The ghost of electricity Really old electricity It was weird though I did feel like I couldn't let go It just gripped me It goes to electricity. Really old electricity. It was weird though because it... I did feel like I couldn't let go. It just gripped me. And sometimes apparently that's what it's like.

You just can't let go. I guess because, you know... It fucks with your muscles, doesn't it? It causes them to spasm and stuff. Yeah. I guess that's probably why I lost my... Well, I probably didn't get thrown off the chair. I think I just

in my shock and fear did you shit yourself no I didn't you're like I did like black out for a few minutes

and I didn't realise where I was did someone find you they're like oh my friends were there with me they just didn't catch me when I fell off the chair

they were like observing my progress they laughed at you when you told them about it it's like the same thing like with the electric fence. Once I'd gone over the electric fence,

I had to get back over that electric fence because the other three people I was watching Comedian Bra with had seen me spasm, like jerking over the fence. And they went,

we're not coming over. I was like, oh, for fuck's sake. You should have said, it's fine. Really. Really, guys. It's fine. You you know as you're crying

and as it feels like you're having a heart attack heart's pounding away have you ever been tasered no i haven't been tasered why would i have been tasered why have you been tasered what were you doing a few times one of my friends he's dave he's got a taser and he's got like a caution all sorts of dangerous weapons are you fucking kidding no what you've got a mate called dave yeah got a taser and he's got a caution and all sorts of dangerous weapons. Are you fucking kidding? No. What? You've got a mate called Dave who has a taser and he likes to shock you with it. Wow, it's really quite

painful. He tasered me in the leg. My god, it hurt. And then he tasered me in the arm. What? I must admit though. Was this like in the pub or something? I'll tell you what hurt the most. I'll tell you what hurt guys you never guess what i got i'll tell you what hurt the most you're like drinking your pint the actual tasering itself

isn't so bad but the thing is a taser has these two like sharp barbs on it and they like dig in oh yeah so that's what actually hurt because he poked me with this fucking taser the two sharp barbs like dug into my leg like bruised me and then he like hit the tase button and i mean that was that was pretty bad but it was like ow those barbs like you know they kind of hurt afterwards as well what the fuck you got a crazy friend who tasers you is he called crazy dave no he's just just called Dave Does he sell things out the back of his car? Everyone knows someone called Dave, don't they? He's got very large speakers in the back of his car

He probably couldn't fit anything to sell in I recommend everyone should try it What else have I had done to me? Have you been pepper sprayed before? I've been pepper sprayed No! What the fuck? Is this your friend Dave again?

No, no, I was on, um, when I was in cadets, army cadets at school. What else? So that you know the effects of it. It's like how, if you're in the army, you have to sit in a hut, tear gas going off. Yeah, yeah. One of the things I did was,

I went on a camp called SASas camp which stands for special air service and they're the kind of elite units of the british army and we were trained by some of them and this this camp was like pretty rare i think it was once only every once every couple of years and it was very hard notorious for being very tough anyway and i was reading this article in like telegraph recently it was by this chap who was in in afghanistan he was like a platoon commander or something he was only about my age 25 or something and he recently died and they published some of his pages from his journal um and he obviously hadn't been out there long he'd been out there a couple of weeks and they were talking about he was it was all sort of an

army lingo with all acronyms and talking about certain types of things and i recognized quite a lot from my time in cadets and one of the things i recognized there's two types of biscuits you get given as part of the rations when you're in army um if you're out on maneuvers and things and they're called biscuit brown and biscuit fruit okay yes so biscuit brown is anal blockage which basically means you don't shit and biscuit fruit is laxative um and obviously you can have a lot of fun with new people who don't know this but uh that's you know i remember being on exercise and like just eating nothing but biscuit brown for a week and then like coming back home and just... What the fuck? Sitting on the toilet for about... an hour. Man, but...

By candlelight. Oh, man. Why were you eating them for a week? I mean, what the fuck? Because we didn't have access to any toilets when we were out in the wild. Well, for a week. No, we were on exercise for a week.

Couldn't you have just gone into, like... Well, it depends, doesn't it? I mean no we were on exercise we just gone into like well it depends doesn't it i mean we were out that if you know when you're coming back you can usually stay you can usually survive for a certain amount of days without taking a shit so i mean that was i mean it's pretty odd that that's all you ate for a week Did you not think of going to get some fish and chips or a nice curry? I did have some other stuff, but really not very much at all, actually. You could be a great leader of men one day, Lewis. You could be Prime Minister. There were good times, you know, when I was in cadets and stuff.

Looking back at it, it was really good for me. But when I was actually doing it it was the worst thing in the world this made you the man that you are today now fuck me have i ever told you about the time i went laughing because oh my god it was awful it was awful have i ever told you about this? Did you dress up? Yeah, of course I did. I was Zephos. I felt, when I saw you the other week, I felt like you were laughing,

being like an Essex boy twat. Those sunglasses you had on. My God. Dude, they're awesome. My Oakleys are awesome. Don't diss the Oakleys, mate. Oh, dear. It was like Geordie LaForge's visor, but made into a pair of sunglasses.

They are great, those sunglasses. I've had them for like three years. They're great. Okay, LARPing. Let's talk about your LARPing. Now, people who... I guess a lot of people don't know what LARPing is for a start. And a lot of people have misconceptions for what it is.

And I didn't really know what to expect, okay, when I went LARPing. And I went with a couple of my friends that I met when I was at uni. So I went with them, because they were quite regular guys. What is LARPing, Lewis? You tell me what it is. I've never heard of LARPing before. You tell me. LARPing is live action roleplaying.

It's a bit like Dungeons and Dragons, but instead of sitting in someone's basement rolling dice, you're actually out in the wild, like in woods or somewhere outside, and you're dressed in character,

and you're acting in character and you're acting in character the whole time. Precisely. Now everyone's seen this stuff on TV and movies of like people doing it and being really really embarrassing. Like nerds holding

embarrassing swords and just being embarrassing. Like wooden swords and shields and oh they're dressed up like they would be at like a comic con some kind of like convention and fantasy stuff now they're dressed up like someone out of that i feel that i with my cadet army training with doing all this stupid shit that I did when I was in sixth form and stuff and when I I paintballed quite a lot as well so I'm you know I'm not bad I'm not a bad shot I'm not a bad I don't I'm not bad at maneuvering and running around

in the forest I'm quite fit I thought you know LARPing how hard can it be right LARPing what I found it was a bit like paintball, but instead of being hit by painful paintballs, you get hit by painful swords. Because the way we did it when we went LARPing was everyone had these polystyrene swords that were custom... Well, not custom made, but specially made, so you can hit someone with it very hard and not do any serious damage. But you can cause them quite a bit of pain, okay?

Now, I was, like, dueling some of the people that I went with, because they had, like, their own little legion of people, which was... I can't remember what they were called, but the banner was, like, a black banner with a red fist on it. And I was, like, I went in at like level one. Okay, like the lowest level. And I had to create my character and stuff beforehand and send it off. And they sent me back some like laminated cards. Hang on. How can you, so that you're a level one, how does that affect you having a sword fight with someone?

I'm not sure how that works. The way it works is like this. If I'm a level one, I can train a certain amount of skills. So, for example i can have armor now and i can train certain weapon skills and they will allow me to carry certain items but you have to carry the equivalent item and you have to actually carry it so for example if i wanted to say i'm wearing plate mail you have to wear plate mail and if you wanted to wear plate mail it's not actually god damn yes it's like cardboard no this in this case it was replica plate mail i'm not kidding yes right

no it was heavy as as all kind of shit you're actually wearing metal there were people who had plate mail there and they were mental mental. They looked like medieval knights. They looked like they'd come out of some sort of reenactment. I swear to God, they were slow, big, huge, clankering monsters of people. Right? It was mad. Do people have, like, potions? Do they have, like, health potions?

Hold on! There's so much to tell you here. there's so much to tell you here there's so much to tell you where to begin there's so much to tell you this is so exciting amazing right anyway sorry so for example okay let's just go with the example that i am a level one and i had um ring mail okay so i had the basic armor ring mail which meant i had to wear ring mail and Okay, what class were you? So I had the basic armour ring mail, which meant I had to wear ring mail. And my friend had a set of ring mail, so I wore it. My God.

Of course you did. This thing weighs about 20 kilos. I swear to Christ. Here, Lewis, buy my set of ring mail. He had a set of ring mail. I didn't buy it. I just borrowed it. It was really rusty.

What the fuck? Ring mail? It was like... Oh, you didn't look after it. Anyway, this thing, right? So he gave it to me? Ring mail? It was like... Oh, you didn't look after it. Anyway, this thing, right? So he gave it to me in like about five Marks and Spencers plastic bags that were reinforced, okay? So, because obviously if you put it in one Marks and Spencer bag... Reinforced bag?

If you put it in one plastic bag... You should have worn those. If you put it in one plastic bag, the plastic bag wouldn't have supported it. You should have worn... You had to have it in several plastic bags. You should have worn an outfit made of reinforced plastic bags. For Marks and Spencer. Okay, so...

Ringmail. So I bought this set of ringmail. Oh my god. It was heavy as fuck. Right. But it reduced all damage to me done by two. So if someone hit me, I took two less damage. You had a certain amount of hit points. I had four hit points. Not very much, obviously. I went to level one. And I've got two armour or something.

I think it was two. Maybe I only had one, actually. I think I actually only had one armor. I think my ring mail only gave me one. Anyway, I think you could get... Chain mail was two and plate was like three. Anyway, what you could do is... You could also have a weapon skill, which would allow you to carry a certain weapon. So you could have one-handed axe, two-handed axe,

one-handed sword, two-handed sword, whatever. Katana, whatever. What weapon did you have? I borrowed my friend's one-handed axe, two-handed sword, whatever. Katana, whatever. What weapon did you have? I borrowed my friend's one-handed axe. Okay? Oh, wow. And that's all I had. I didn't have a shield, I just had one one-handed axe. Okay? And this axe was about the size

of a spade. Like a spade that you make sandcastles with? No, like a garden spade that you dig up in the garden with. It came up to about my waist okay so the handle was about my waist right so this was one-handed axe and it was quite wow light because it was obviously made of what it's made of is it's like a metal center okay and then it's got a coating of like polystyrene around it but it's not really polystyrene it's like toughened polystyrene and

uh it's all it's all painted and it looks quite realistic um and what you have to do is when you actually go to the place you have to hand in your weapon and they check that the metal bit isn't like jumping out anywhere and won't do any damage to anyone if you hit someone with it bloody hard okay so they actually have to inspect your weapons before you go to the place they inspect your weapons and you also have to sign several insurance waivers and stuff so it's like pretty serious so it's like like when you go to paintball you know you have to sign these forms before you go and play paintball i can imagine this camp guy this camp captain just stood there and he's played mail and he's got's got a little clipboard and a pen,

and he's going, I'm here to check your weapons. Let's see that chopper of yours, Lewis. Except, what was your character name? Zephos. So everyone called me Zephos for a week, which was pretty bad. Anyway, so I had one-handed axe, and I did

one damage with my axe, okay? So I could hit someone with my axe, and if I actually managed to hit them on their body, somewhere, with the axe, I would say one when I hit them, and that would mean it would be one damage to them, okay? Right. The ringmail that you're wearing reduces damage by

two. No, I think it only reduces damage by one. So, I couldn't be damaged by shitty people. So, if somebody is wearing... If someone's wearing ringmail and you're hitting them for one damage, then it's reduced by one, you're doing no damage to them.

Yeah, precisely. There's no way they can hurt me. However, obviously there's different things like if you enchant your weapon you can get it to like 2 to enchant your weapon you have to like

what do they do what do they do to show that a weapon is enchanted do they like spray it with green paint no no no what they do is they get like a laminated card which is is with a fluorescent yellow on it, and it gets glued to the sword.

Wow. Yeah. So that shows that it's like a... It's like a lammy. It's called a lammy. A lammy. That's terrible. Did you have to wear tights and a codpiece

No I didn't But I wore sort of dark jeans And a t-shirt And then I put my armour on My ring mail So every morning it was freezing Igla's always freezing Whenever you go camping

It's bloody freezing So we woke up about 7 You put your t-shirt on, you put your rusty ringmail on, which weighs an absolute ton. Ready yourself for battle. I swear to God, I had totally bruised shoulders because

just from wearing the ringmail around all day it was that heavy. And when you actually go into combat with people, it's like the apocalypse has just dawned, and I remember this very vividly. There was Captain What's-His-Face with his plate mail, and all the top people got together and banded together, and they decided um attack this fort

that some other people were defending you know all of us were like ducking around in the forest outside this fort like saying you know get ready get ready it was all like really tense and we were gonna run in and we were gonna hack them all to pieces that was the plan so we ran at this fucking fort of this wooden fortification like the alamo and they were all defending over the walls anyway we broke into the fort and, like the Alamo. Jesus. And they were all defending over the walls. Anyway, we broke into the fort, and we, like, started having this just... There was kind of a line of us and a line of them, OK?

And we were just, like, hacking at each other in, like, just this weird sort of Braveheart-style melee with two lines of us. And I got, like, thumped on the head and knocked on the ground, and other people were, like, getting punched in the face with stuff. Someone had, like, a bleeding nose. And then...

Jesus Christ. It was ridiculous. It was really, like... It was so... It was really scary. It must be pretty scary, actually. Because people really get into it. I was really scared.

Because everyone was yelling. People were smashing each other with these things. Oh, it was astonishing. And then then right in the middle of it someone yelled, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. And the two sides split apart, the two lines broke apart. And this guy in the middle yelled, I've dropped my glasses, I've dropped my glasses. So the whole battle stopped for a second and this guy fumbled around. I've got them, I've got them. And they just raced towards each other.

Yeah. I remember that so clearly. That's amazing. Because that was the moment I just shook my head in disbelief. That is amazing. Now that's a good story. That's probably the best story you've ever told.

Oh man. That's it. It's all downhill from here. They eat like boar and stuff. It had an apple in its mouth. Like roast boar. I really didn't come prepared. boar and stuff. It had an apple in its mouth. Like roast boar. I really didn't come prepared because I didn't think it was going to be quite as... They've got a massive turkey drumstick

and they're just like tearing at it with their teeth. People brought boiling bag meals and cooked them on fires and stuff. Whereas I didn't bring any of that shit with me. I brought two packets of Pringles and four packets of Jammy Dodgers and that's about it whereas I didn't bring any of that shit with me. I bought, like, two packets of Pringles and four packets of Jammy Dodgers, and that's about it.

I didn't realise that there wasn't going to be any fucking food in this whole place. I thought it was going to be like going to Paintball. You know? You can stop after a while and go to McDonald's or whatever. You're like a barbarian. You're a barbarian going into battle. And all I had was, like,

four packets of Jammy dodges and like some ready salted Pringles. Some guy's got a roast boar strapped to his back. You've got like a little Tesco bag with Pringles. that's all for this week tune in next time and goodbye