Tales of the Unexpected

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mickthemaverick
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Tales of the Unexpected

Post by mickthemaverick »

As the more observant will notice this thread title is not what you might call an original idea, however I think it might be amusing to post up the stories of events which haven't quite worked out as you expected or which caused reactions like "I didn't expect that!" or "I didn't see that coming" or "that wasn't meant to happen" etc.

To get the ball rolling I will tell the tale of one of my cousin's birthday presents to me for my 21st birthday. Just a bit of background: I came from a large family on my Mother's side and as a result grew up with 14 cousins my age as well as some both older and younger. In the early days the whole family would gather for Christmas with often 30+ people sleeping on the floor wherever you could find a space. As you can imagine a fair amount of 'prankstership' was practiced and as we grew older it didn't go away. It became the norm to send each other weird, crazy, useless or just downright daft birthday presents each year so we could compare and contrast at Christmas. It became an unwritten custom that you dropped out of this process once you left school so I dropped out at 16 having elected an apprenticeship rather than university at that stage. The practice carried on but dwindled over the next few years as the generation left school. The sole remaining member of school age decided to have his final fling and set about a grand finale. So when the doorbell rang on my 21st birthday I went down to greet the postman, opened the door and jumped back in terror. No sign of anyone moving but standing in front of me with a horrendous scowl on his face was
Spoiler: show
a six foot grizzly bear!! My cousin's final prank had certainly got me!!
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Re: Tales of the Unexpected

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Need a theme tune Mick, here's one from of Ron Grainer Mick, him of Doctor Who theme fame. and a small amount of "I didn't expect that" for me....never knew it was Roald Dahl's "Tales of the Unexpected" with Mr Dahl introducing many of the "tales" himself.

Every episode of series one, eight episodes of series two, and one episode of series three were based on short stories by Roald Dahl collected in the books Tales of the Unexpected, Kiss Kiss, and Someone Like You.
Later series featured different writers and Dahl no longer did the intro's


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_ ... TV_series)



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Re: Tales of the Unexpected

Post by mickthemaverick »

We are great fans of the show as you can see, we currently have 25 episodes recorded to work our way through when nothing else takes our fancy:
Own work
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Re: Tales of the Unexpected

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Maybe not but you may get a "didnt expect that moment" from the one I have selected for On Tv here

viewtopic.php?p=670774#p670774

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Re: Tales of the Unexpected

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

I was having a trip down the Thames today courtesy of "look at Life".

Gave this one the full watch

Followed by this


Couple of relevant snapshots...one the Police Launches from 1959 and the Second "The Pacific Envoy"
temp1.png
and the

"tale of the unexpected", the "I didn't expect that!" moment was provided immediately on reading the name of that ship. It was a "ship in a bottle" souvenir brought back by Uncle Jim as a souvenir of his "passage to America" aboard the "Pacific Envoy" on his retirement trip to the USA in the 1960's. What are the chances of that happening!

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Re: Tales of the Unexpected

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

I'll just store this discussion from a ship nostalgia forum about the Pacific Envoy here. It had an interesting regular run over to the west Coast of the USA and Canada...I remember Uncle Jim did go through the Panama Canal and visited Los Angeles and San Francisco.

One of the comments from a former crew member.
"It was a fantastic run - as you say mostly whisky but I also recall fancy sports cars, and for some reason cases of Robertson's jam come to mind.. all sorts of stuff. On the return apart from lumber we had oranges and apples." .

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Re: Tales of the Unexpected

Post by mickthemaverick »

Watched both of those Neil and enjoyed them very much. Interestingly they bracketed my trip on which I took the picture of the launch which was in 1962. I did notice at 5.03 in the 1963 film this launch which I believe to be a sister of the one in my photo:
BFTW
BFTW
I can confirm that my information about the boat comes from my memory of the commentary on our trip. We were told that *********** is one of four similar launches operated by the Port of London Authority and generally referred to as Superintendant's Launches!!
I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure!
I used to ride on two wheels, but now I need all four!
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