If you don't want to know the answer to this then don't read this yet.
So the three options I gave you were these:
1. I melted all my toe nails and burnt my feet while walking on hot coals incorrectly.
2. I was once in an episode of Gardeners World where I talked about seed trays and pumpkins.
3. Years ago I abseiled down the side of the Birmingham Hippodrome to raise money for charity.
The coals were laid out and before we walked across we had a lesson from the instructor. This involved walked the same distance as the length of coals and placing out feet down as we would on the coals, and also walking at the correct speed. We must have done this about thirty odd times before he told us the "secret" of the coals.
"Ash doesn't conduct heat which is why it doesn't burn," he said.
"Chuh, yeah right!" came various different replies.
"It gets warm and you'll feel the heat from the hot coals underneath but the ash will not burn you as long as you walk how you've been shown."
He talked some more and convinced us this was true and then finally the time came for us to do it and even worse I was only third in the line. The man in front of the lady in front of me walked across and at the other end he turned and smiled and we all applauded. I'd winced the entire time he was walking along the coals but he'd shown no signs of pain. The lady in front of me took her turn. She "oohed" and "ahhhed" a little but at the end she jumped up and down and screamed to her applause from us.
I took a step forward and could really feel the heat coming off the coals. My foot tentatively hung over my first step and down it went on to the coals.
"Keep moving!" he shouted.
But I just stood there wondering why it was actually getting hotter given that I was told the ash shouldn't burn.
"KEEP MOVING OR YOU'LL BURN!" he shouted again, "LIKE WE PRACTISED!"
And as he said that I started running. Well not so much running but walking faster than we were shown. Not only was I going faster that I was supposed to but I wasn't putting my feet down properly either and ended up jamming my toes into the coals. I carried on running, pressing into the coals with my feet until eventually I jumped off onto the sand and soil either side of the hot path. Two people cam rushing over, one with a bucket of water, and I could hear someone else calling an ambulance. The pain was intense and my feet were black. Suffice to say I ended up in A&E and had to spend two nights in the hospital during which time time they removed my melted toe nails and bandage up my feet.
My toe nails grew back but at funny angles. Most of them grown down into my toes but my little ones grow up towards the sky and it's only been these last four or five years that they're starting to sort themselves out. I have parts of my feet that have feeling and I'm not ticklish either.
So, that story tells you that number one is true.
At the age of thirteen when we had to choose our options at school I took Rural Studies. My only two reasons for doing this was that it meant you got to go to the Royal Show every year and that Mr. Salt was the schools best teacher! One day I got called to the headmasters office, along with a few other pupils, and while waiting outside we worked out that the only think we had in common is that we were all doing Rural Studies. Finally we got called into his office and told that our teacher, Mr. Salt, had written to Gardeners World to tell them how great our gardens and projects were and he'd picked our specific projects to go ahead and be filmed when they turned up the following month. I ending up talking about how I'd started off my pumpkins in seed trays and then planted them out in the garden with various protective devices to save it from flies and insects. Hopefully at the end of the year I'd be able to determine which was the best protection. As it was I had an accident and ended up on crutches for around twenty weeks and couldn't get down to the gardens to sort them out. No one else did anything as they were too busy with their own projects and Mr. Salt was sadly too late to sort it as he thought the others were looking after it. He was very apologetic and and he was the kind of teacher that would actually feel guilty over it. In the end I passed Rural Studies with a C and I've still no idea how as I hated the subject in reality.
If number two is true then is means number three is a lie.
Well it is a lie, but only part of it.
I did do a charity abseil but it was down the side of Sandwell Hospital and not the Birmingham Hippodrome. I've also done one down a cliff in Kidderminster. I think I'm too fat (and gay) to do one now.
So there you have it. Three was the lie. Sort of.
