Win a Hammock

Hi Overclockers,

My name's James and I'm from Outdoor Living Direct, Australia's leading online retailer of outdoor furniture.

Hammock season is upon us! We, in conjunction with Overclockers Australia, are giving away five (5) Caterina luxury hammocks. These hammocks are built from high strength, UV resistant fabric and feature crossbars to keep the hammock open and spread weight evenly. A hammock like this is absolutely the perfect remedy to any hammock deficiency you may be experiencing this coming hammock season.

What we're asking for in return is your backyard Christmas stories! In around about 200 words, what is your best, funniest, or most disastrous backyard Christmas story?

The most entertaining stories win, and will be published on our blog at http://www.outdoorlivingdirect.com.au/blog/ at the same time as we send out the aforementioned polyester reclining solutions. In publishing the winning entries we reserve the right to make minor edits such as fixing grammar or spelling, or censoring profanity - nothing that will change the substantial meaning.

We will be selecting the lucky winners on December 17.

Happy hammocking

 

It was a balmy Christmas Eve night. I was dozing in my old hammock for a couple of hours after a busy day at work. The mosquitoes started biting so I decided to go inside, I was feeling lazy so I didn't pack the hammock up.

Later that night I was awoken by loud noises in the back yard. I grabbed the torch and quietly headed to the out to investigate. The hammock had been torn from one of the trees it was attached to, and there was something caught up inside it. I heard slurred swearing. It was a drunk bloke.

I called the police and they came and questioned me briefly before taking the intruder away. He was wearing some weird red and white winter get up.

I had to throw the damaged hammock away.

We didn't get any Christmas presents that year.

 

My best/funniest Christmas story is the year that my cousin tipped a bucket of water over my dad. He has been called "drip" ever since.

 

'Twas the first Christmas with my (at the time) soon-to-be wife's family...

Drinks and lunch had been consumed and we were about to get on to the deserts. My now mother-in-law brings out a yummy looking cheesecake and as the newest addition to the family I'm given the first slice. I go and add some cream and strawberries to the top and take a bite. I think to myself 'there's something wrong here' and turn to my wife with a look on my face only to be told to just eat it. A few more slices are handed out and my then brother-in-law not being slow coming forward, says that the cheesecake tastes terrible.

The mother-in-law stops, has a taste and discovers that something has indeed gone dreadfully wrong and throws the cheesecake away. (and bonus points to me for not complaining)

Next day my wife gets a phone call from her mum to say that she'd worked out why the cheesecake tasted so bad - she'd accidentally used onion & garlic flavoured Philly in the cheesecake instead of plain.

The incident gets mentioned every now and then when cheesecakes come over and they're not on the Xmas desert menu now...

 

With the kitchen busy for a day full of feasting festivities I fired up the BBQ for my first cooking session. Due to my aforementioned inexperience I had been entrusted with only the most menial of tasks; boil some water and cook some corn.

Easy.

For most people.

As it turns out, I am not most people.

The morning began with me firing up the BBQ with a joyfully red pot of water on it. Approximately 30 seconds later I had forgotten about my cooking activities and proceeded to make a nuisance of myself in the kitchen. Thirty minutes later, when I dutifully recalled my responsibilities, I ran back outside to discover my water was gone, but a blackening pot remained.

Having learnt my lesson I added another pot of water to the BBQ and managed actually cook the corn! Now I just needed to take the pot to the kitchen...upon which the realisation hit me that a pot of boiling water was hot, and now consequently were my fingers...burning hot in fact.

After some liberal application of burn cream (and the intelligent use of a tea towel) I was able to pick up the pot, with one more snag. The open flame of the BBQ is great at boiling water, but even better at igniting tea towels. With my flaming tea towel now thrown to the wind, and the pot of corn left to the ravages of gravity, I found my arm between the ground and the boiling water.

Needless to say after burning a pot, my fingers, a tea towel, my arm, and probably the corn, I no longer help cook at Christmas.

 

Ah the memories

Mine isn't a specific story, but just a culmination of memories from when I was younger.

Each year would start with the street Christmas party on the eve. I live in the neck of two cul-de-sacs and every second house at the time had kids within 5 years of my age. We’d have a barbie, play street cricket, and yell “CAR!” whenever someone drove down. Christmas mass would be celebrated at our local church with all the children dressed as shepherds and virgin Marys.

Christmas morning would be filled with joy, seeing the biscuits and milk had been consumed by the jolly man up north. And my little brother and I would go to the neighbours’ houses to show off our gifts.

Lunch would be the standard Aussie affair. Ham in the oven, sausages on the BBQ, prawns in the fridge, and cream being whipped up on the counter for the Pavlova. My glut of a brother could eat a ¼ of the whole cake if you let him.

The food coma would signify the end of Christmas. My great uncle would fall asleep on the couch, the parents would talk gossip all evening, and us kids would still be playing outside with our toys until the sun set.

When I have a family of my own, that’s exactly how I’ll have it

 

One crazy new years party we were playing the classic, backyard cricket. Suddenly somebody drops a drink! The crash causes somebody walking through the door heading outside to jump, hitting their head on the aluminum door frame causing a cut needing stitches. My friend runs to help, cutting his foot on the broken glass from the dropped drink, also needing stitches, and because of the cut he then bumps into someone pushing them through the glass sliding door, who also then needs stitches on their arm. After working out that this all actually happened and we wern't all so drunk we were hallucinating, we called an ambulance who patched the head arm and foot of the 3 individuals.

That was one crazy night

 

Growing up in a blue-collar family, Christmas was always tough for us. But despite this, every year Santa would visit and bring my siblings and I exactly what we asked for in our letters. We always used to wonder how he did it as we had no chimney and had bars on all of the windows, but come Christmas morning there would be no questions asked; all concerns replaced with the wonderment of new toys or games from jolly ol' St. Nick.

Then one Christmas morning, we found a letter from Santa under the tree in place of a toy. That year, both my brother and I wanted the same toy; a battery powered Dinorider Tyrannosaurus Rex, complete with guns and action figures. Instead, the letter received asked us to share the one Dinorider toy because Santa had to apportion the remaining Dinoriders to other children around the world. But we didn't care, we were happy with what we had.

We did have an interesting revelation that Christmas though. It appeared that Santa had very similar handwriting to that of my mum, and his English seemed just as broken!





Thank you for reading, and Merry Christmas to all! May Santa be just as kind and generous to your children as he was to me

 

I had been invited to my soon-to-be-wife's family Christmas lunch. She warned that nanna was a bit... odd. On arrival I noticed a number of picture frames had been taken off the walls, the sun had faded the area around them. As I walked through the house there were many more missing until I found one still up.

There was nanna in all her naked glory wearing only a feather boa. And I'm not talking during her prime, no these were recent (late-50's) shots. I was advised that the missing frames were MUCH more revealing. I've never been back since even in spite of marrying into the family.

 

Christmas eve dinner, everyone sitting around the table. Christmas hats on, music on eating turkey and drinking beer. We had an idea to make a mentos/coke rocket for some fake fireworks. Out to the backyard we go, set everything up and off it goes bouncing around the backyard and slamming into my ankle creating a ripper of a bruise in the process.

 

Its not much of a story, but ill tell it because it means a fair bit to me and my history.

So many years ago I was in the army. I was a bucket driver here in South Australia (3/9th for those who know). I was a reservist and enjoyed my time.

If its one thing the army learns, its how to break stuff, and how to drink an unusual amount of alcohol.

Id just gotten out of the reserves because work was really starting to take off for me. I travelled quite a bit via contracting in the industrial realm. If it was metal, I could weld it, machine it, fix it, or just generally make it work. It worked great as a living, as it partly still does.

I had a then girl friend (which is a funny story, because I had green hair and the first words I said to her were "excuse me, theres something between your legs I want". My drink bottle was under her seat, and i had NO intention of actually trying to pick-up, but it worked, so ... awesome).
It was near to xmas and I had just finished a shutdown and was about to start yet another gig for xmas break. Us contractors make (or used to) a great income from xmas shutdown and easter break.

Im from a broken home. My mum ran away with me (or "left for better places" as she says) when I was about 4 years old. I dont remember any of it. Turns out my real dad worked in a small country town in WA that does gold mining. I had the chance to go there. I spoke to one of my sisters (again, long story, i have 1 "real" sister and like 3 (?) "other" sisters, depends on the day and which lawyer you ask) had decided to try and track down our real birth dad. Me being amused by it all said "sure thing, lets try to see if he has a business or ABN".
Well blow me down, follow the tax record, he was in that bastard little gold town in WA. What are the odds i thought ?

I rang him up, introduced myself, and something like 5 days later I was on a plane to that little dust bowl.

The first words, which i'll never forget were "hi. So, wanna beer ?". I asked how he know who I was. It was fairly simple. "you look like me, but with hair". I laughed.

We spent the next few days getting to know each other. He introduced me to civilian shooting, in which we went out and shot our first roo and goat together*, and along with the point of him owning a home-brew shop (well his then missus), we put on a brew together and spent some quality time together which I had missed out on for over 20 years, never having a father figure in my young and teenage years.

He had a hammock on his back porch which I spent some time in either relaxing with a beer and talking about all the things we had done and how similar he was, as it turns out he was a tradesman who served in the army, and many other things which we had in common.

Every time it gets to christmas I think of 2 things. Hammocks and my real dad. Ive only ever saw him one more time after that holiday.

I spent 10 days there, and my last day was xmas day. I flew back, heavily intoxicated. Even for a bucket-driver.

The one thing I'll never forget however is how he had a hammock and how relaxed it made me feel.

Im not concerned if this is longer than 200 words, Its a story I wanted to tell and a memory I will always have.
PS: I tried to make this as "front page" safe as possible. I cant really describe many of the antics we got up to as more friends than "father / son" situation. It would involve too many bad words.

* We (he) had the appropriate tags for the roo's. So shut up you damn hippies. I shouldnt have to justify myself to you.

 

We have a family tradition that gets all the extended families bringing their presents over to my Grandmother's house and putting them under the tree on Christmas eve. We have done that for as long as I can remember.

Christmas morning each family opens their own pressies at their house and then we all meet for the big one where presents are shared amongst the families.

So what could possibly go wrong ?

This year my Uncle had bought his new wife, my new Auntie, one of those 'special' gifts. You know the ones, battery powered It was, I can only assume, supposed to be opened in the privacy of their own house. However due to a mixup it ended up at Grandma's house under the tree.

All the families had arrived and all the grand kids were huddled around as it was their job to hand out the pressies when Grandma handed them over.

My Uncle had done the thoughtful thing and installed the batteries already as good husbands do. The only problem with that, was during the morning the box must have been bumped and a faint noise could just be heard from under the tree.

True to form, it was the kids who first heard it and thought it must be one of the latest greatest toys for them. They started getting excited. No one else could hear it .. yet.

Grandma kept reaching in and picking up presents to hand out and there was a bit of movement from under the tree and the sound became loud enough for even my quite deaf Grandfather to hear.

The kids squealed in delight, the source of the noise started to dawn on some of the parents faces and they hastily tried to distract the kiddies. Grandma, however was on a mission to find the present and hand it over to the kid who she assumed it was meant for.

For my Uncle, the penny finally dropped and blood drained from his face, a moment later it dawned on my Auntie ! They raced over to the tree and almost dismantled in their hectic search for the box. They came up triumphant and raced from the room with boos from the kids ... Grandma just sat there perplexed.

A Christmas to remember for all.

 

Thanks everyone for the Christmas yarns! They've been posted on our blog

The following people have won a hammock:

petercr
dr_evil6_6_6
Supplanter
Quan-Time
Malingo

Please PM me your delivery address and your preferred colour and we will send them out.

I hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas. Please try not to set yourself on fire.

 

No, I had not seen the latest message from the OP until now...

PM about to be sent - hopefully it's not too late...

 

A week after PM was sent and no response...