Back in 2001 (or 2002, honestly can't remember), I legged it out of my secondary school after fifth year as fast as my legs would carry me. This was not actually due to any wish to escape the education system, on the contrary...I was an informational sponge back in those days and enjoyed few things more than learning. I was on really good terms with the vast majority of the staff. In fact I spent more time during lunch etc chatting with the staff in the main staff room or helping the technicians set up/maintain our IT system than I ever spent in the company of my peers.
Said peers were the reason for the hasty exit. We lived in a rural area where attitudes towards anything even vaguely out of the ordinary take a long time to change...so not being "one of the crowd" in school wasn't something that went down well. Fitting in with the crowd isn't something I've ever been very good at...and a group of probably half a dozen or so guys basically decided that this was essentially a bull's eye on my forehead, and that they were going to do everything in their power to make my life difficult.
Somehow (I'm still not quite sure how), said bunch of idiots never actually got wind of the fact that I'm gay. While that's something I played very close to my chest back then, it still surprises me they never got wind of that as a rumour they could have used as ammunition.
What they did get hold of (courtesy of one particularly clever individual among them who really needed to find a healthier use for his 180+ IQ level, stalking me online) was that I had in my latter days there associated myself with the Furry Fandom. These days (not without a few metaphorical black eyes along the way) Furries are generally seen these days as a slightly odd but mostly harmless bunch who are actually a force for good in the world. This reputation has been hard won however, with a number of the earliest higher profile encounters with popular media painting us in a less than tasteful light. No matter how inaccurate that portrayal may have been - first impressions are lasting impressions, so it took a long, long time before we were taken seriously and seen by the general populace as something not to be avoided.
Back then however it wasn't something you'd generally mention in casual conversation... especially in a secondary school in a rural farming town where views are generally hugely conservative.
We had the usual name calling, stickers on the back, normal sort of nonsense you expect to hear from bullies in their mid to late teens. It became far more serious for me during the changeover between school and university as two distinct things happened there. Firstly was that they got physical. While they'd tried to give me a beating at school that had never worked out for them. Firstly I could run faster than any of them, I was far sneakier, oh...and I had a skeleton key to all the school service corridors, trap doors and utility cupboards...so they never once caught me. However then they started to make a habit of vandalising my car every weekend (got through seven sets of number plates one month), egging the house every other night, prank phone calls...that was bad. Around the same time (can't remember exactly when but it was in the last year in school at some point), the biggest impact on me was that they followed me online, essentially into "my world" where previously I had felt safe and secure among the community I spoke to day to day...I suddenly was seeing shadows around every metaphorical corner...and found that anything I did or said could wind up as the wallpaper on the library computers in the school the following morning.
The combination of this lot all did drive me pretty close to the edge - I made it to about 6" from tossing myself off the roof of the five story tower at the school on probably half a dozen occasions.
It felt like I'd escaped to some extent when I got to university as at least I wasn't coming face to face with them every day, even if the vandalism to my property continued - which actually became more of a serious problem than an inconvenience as I needed the car then to commute to uni! Turned out it was a wasted year though...I was really not ready for university fresh out of S5...I really needed that extra year and additional maths class. This meant I dropped out of uni after a year, instead dropping into a HND course at Aberdeen College. By that point they had started to lose interest somewhat at least, and at the very least had stopped the online stalking as they had nothing to do with anything they gleaned I guess.
Yeah...you can imagine my "joy" when I walked face-first into one three of them as I walked out of a class less than a fortnight into my course there. I seem to recall my response after they'd had a good laugh about seeing me again was to stand bashing my head against the wall.
Thankfully their nonsense did drop off in intensity somewhat there, I'm guessing just because they were busy...and mercifully my schedules meant I rarely actually saw them...so the "ignore them and shrug it off" generally worked. By the time I got to the end of the course they'd mostly took to leaving me alone... I'm guessing because they were busy and had figured out by that point that they weren't going to get me into the physical fight they'd been itching for since 1998.
Finally as I moved into the working world (having done about as well in college as Uni - the four to six hours a day commuting definitely didn't help my grades) it felt I was properly leaving that bunch of idiots behind. Especially as less than a year in to that I moved out of my folks' place and into a city centre flat with a friend - so that was finally an end to the vandalism and nuisance there. That would have been 2005...never seen or heard from any of them since (save for Facebook making a couple of friend suggestions). Good riddance.
Until 02:05 last night when the phone rang showing unknown number. Now my Nan has been having a rough time of it health wise lately, she's 91 and I'm by far her closest family member. Her number shows as unknown... otherwise it would probably have been ignored.
Silence on the other end until I attempted a half awake "Hello?" - approximately two milliseconds later my eardrums were just about blown out as I received one of their favourite slurs from back in the day at great volume. Obviously drunk off their heads. I hung up.
Five further calls within a couple of minutes until I put the phone into airplane mode.
Haven't heard anything further today...so hoping that they were sufficiently drunk at the time that they've forgotten the idea by now. Have checked with my phone provider today and it appears they were using a VoIP system of some kind to spoof the caller ID as each of the calls came from totally different numbers...so not much they can do. That to be honestly is more than they probably had to tell me, and they were honestly trying to be helpful. Following other folks' advice I did speak to the police... unsurprisingly they're utterly disinterested...so I'm just going to cross my fingers at this stage and hope I don't hear anything further.
On the plus side? There's 400+ miles between me and that lot now at least...so hopefully I won't wake up to find the front of the house floured and egged, discover they've urinated through the letter box or that the number plates have been nicked off all my cars again in the morning...
Just cannot quite believe that after a 15-ish year hiatus that the demons of my past have returned to haunt me! Granted, telling folks that I hang around with a bunch of people who like to dress up as brightly coloured fluffy animal characters and bounce around like loonies having fun despite all the ills in the world these days is rather less likely to cause me major issues these days! People seem to rather remember more the positives like the hundreds of thousands of pounds we've raised for charity around the world over the last few years, us making a bunch of Ukrainian refugee kids who wound up housed in the same hotel in Canada as a major convention a couple of years back end up having the weekend of their lives rather than be terrified of being in a foreign country under horrendous circumstances, the couple of million dollars the bigger conventions in the US bring in to their respective areas every year...you get the idea. We're better liked these days.
Best bit for me that brought that home? Closing ceremony at Scotiacon (little convention we make a pilgrimage to every November, 250 attendees roughly) featured a brief appearance from the hotel manager. Now we were hard work...they struggled to keep the bar stocked, the restaurant staff were run off their feet... we'd also confetti bombed the main function room several times...yes we cleaned it up, but I still reckon they'll be finding it for years! Her words were simple.
"We do a lot of functions here. Most of them make us a lot more money than you guys, and are definitely less work. You know what? I - and everyone else I've spoken to - really wish you were here every other 51 weeks of the year. We can't wait to see you next year."
That felt quite special. Especially given I remember having to explain to a slightly stunned looking waitress back in 2015 what was going on...I seem to recall my initial greeting being "Don't worry. We're all a bit mad but we're mostly harmless." Before going into more depth when asked. If my sources are correct she's now very much one of our number too.
So not sure what they expect to gain by phoning me up at 2 am and shouting obscenities in my ear...
...In the same breath, this lot generally didn't have two brain cells to rub together and couldn't plan their way out of a paper bag. How on earth did they manage to keep tabs on my phone number for 15 years?!?
Yes...I do still have the same phone number that I got with my first mobile in 1998 or 9. Still have the phone too actually...so I'm not about to change it unless it's a last resort.
Sorry...very long mostly pointless (probably a bit badly written with the odd bit of autocorrect madness in there as this has been typed on my phone!) ramble here...but it messed with my head a bit and needed to say this lot to someone I think.
Has also really reminded me that I really need to finish up the "debrief" I started to put together following my getting to my first convention, which massively changed my expectations of the community involved to be honest...that might be a job for the weekend. That's being done on an actual computer with a physical keyboard though!
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Here's the actual car related update for the evening.
Was out? and about today so only had five minutes for car stuff I'm afraid.
One occasional gremlin I've found in th?e van is a rattle and whistle from the nearside lower corner of the windscreen. No idea what could be causing th...oh...yeah?, that would d?o it.
Looking closer?, the trim s?trip which covers the join between the cab and the coachbuilt body is also sitting about an inch off the bo?dy.?
That won?'t have helped the whistling either.
I had tried to stick the bottom of the rubber windscreen pillar trim down before with sticky pads, however it obviously hasn't worked. The windscreen trims are very important to the look of the T1 van, so it's important they're properly fitted and not all wibbly-wobbly. They take quite an aerodynamic battering too so need to be firmly attached.
No sticky pads this time. Cleaned up the area beneath it and stuck the trim down with a liberal dose of Sikaflex...it ain't coming off again. ?
Note to self...replace that broken aerial already!
Also refitted???? the trim above the door...this is a bit ugly just now, but I've got a cleaner which seems to shift the residue left by this pretty effectively so I'll tidy it up shortly. Was going fine until I got some on one of my hand?s which I'd not noticed, so wound up with fingerprints all over the shop. This strip is also now firmly screwed to the cab now...it ha?d pulled all the original skinny screws out, so chunkier ones are now in there - though the bond with that sealant should be strong enough that they'll be irrelevant once it's cured fully anyhow.
Having? a closer look at the offside one revealed it too coming away at the base, albeit not as badly...so it got the same treatment.
I need to???? do t?he same to the trim strip above the door on this side as well, though I'll need to move the van? and do that tomorrow as there's currently a? hedge in the way.
Be curious? to see if it's made a noticeable difference to the wind noise - which isn't actually had fo?r a van to be honest a?nyhow. ??
Question to the greater???? all-knowing hive mind that is this forum...most of the panel joints have a putty like substance under them. Well, save for th?ose which have been refitted with bathroom sealant anyway. I don't have much of this in stock, and it definitely seems to have a maximum lifespan on the vehicle. Quite a few of these strips need to come off so I can renew it, that's generally how water finds its way into coachbuilt vans. Is there any reasons I shouldn't ?use (obviously white to reduce the potential for making so much mess) Sikaflex/Tigerseal instead? Yes it's a bit ?more expensive, but in my experience it's very, very good at what it does and doesn't really "wear out" when exposed to the elements. Sure it could make getting panels apart trickier...but realistically doing everything I can with modern sealants to kee?p water (and therefore rot) out should make sure I don't need to do that!
So...do I use the "correct" joint mastic or do I go with my instinct and use Sikaflex. Or is that overkill? I usually li?ke overkill, especially where weather proofing is concerned.
I really need to get a good video of the exhaust ?note on this thing...It is utterly ridiculous and makes me grin like a five year old. Well driving the van (heck...even sitting in it) makes me grin like a five year old too...but now it goes ?BrrrrrraaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAM every time m?y foot goes anywhere beyond 10% throttle.
? I'm mature and sensible me...No, really! ?
? Oh...you know me better than that do you...okay fine ??then! ?
