‘Cool’ things you have done!

[Chelsea26]

Today DP and I took our 4 kids up to London to the theatre.

After, we had a walk round a few sights and he flashed his warrant card and we were able to walk down and take a picture outside Number 10 Downing Street (not that I like anyone in there but still… quite cool)

We walked on a little further and went past the HoP, in my youth I was part of a film crew that went up ‘Big Ben’ and stayed up there for a few hours (also cool), and then, as I was the only woman on the crew, I got to wind the clock!

So as we were walking past today, I casually told the kids that I had wound that clock and I am probably one of very few people alive that have done so

and I was cool for about five minutes

What ‘cool’ things have you done?

Photographed for the Face and I-D magazine in the early/ mid 80’s

Not very wow or cool but I was in the audience of Top of the Pops in the 90s and You've Been Framed at uni 😂😂

I also won a 50cc motorbike from CD:UK when I was 18. (Ant and Dec didn't read my name out the next week which I still have a grudge against them for haha.) I didn't have my licence so it stayed in our garage for ages and then our neighbour said I could keep it in a hangar at the military base where he worked, so he used to take me up there to try to learn to ride it and he took me for spins on the military bikes too.

It turned out I wasn't very good at balancing by myself so I ended up selling the bike and went on holiday to France to go watch the Le Mans 24 hour race.

I've also hung out with a few of the guys from Jackass back in the day (Steve-O was a creep and groped me , Ryan Dunn was lovely and smelled so good, Dimitry was sweet as anything, Preston didn't want anything to do with us and apparently only liked the younger women/teens around him.)

Experienced a plane landing, and later take-off, on a beach that doubles as a runway.

Not massively 'cool', but interviewed Rosalind Franklin's PhD student (who was then in his 80s!) and Sacha Baron Cohen's cousin who is a renowned scientist.

I have a computer game character named after me (a long long time ago).

Love everyone's stories. Everyone has a little 'cool' inside them.

Was that on one of the Scottish isles @ChipsRoastOrBoiled?

I once went on a date to a Christmas carol service at Kings College chapel and got to sit right at the front next to the choir because he was a fellow. Then went for a posh ‘fellows’ meal. I was a bit out of my depth but he was an engineer so not too intellectual…the conversation was normal!

Had another date with a St John’s College fellow (amazing who you find on POF!) and he had a master key and took me a tour of the college in the evening.

Fantastic! Well done x

I attended a human dissection at 16 and held a man's spleen.

It was an honours anatomy and physiology class at high school (not in UK).

We had spent the year dissecting all kinds of things, and that was our final field trip.

Lots of kids who took that class went into medicine. I eventually moved here and became a civil servant.

Very cool. Are you comfortable saying how you got it?

I danced at the royal albert hall (i was about 10 and it was a girls brigade event, we had chiffon scarves and depicted the sea 😂)

saw three young tigers bring down a deer in india

saw a wild jaguar on the banks of a river in brazil

my DH was hugged by a wild gorilla in uganda

Slept (illegally) on the Great Wall of China back in the '90s. Didn't properly realise how amazing it was (in fact I remember regretting the decision to even do it as we trekked freakin miles in the pitch black to get there) at the time - though even my uncultured 20 something self could appreciate how incredibly cool it was watching the sun rise whilst sat on one of the Great Wonders of the World.

I've represented my country in two different sports.

Had a paper published in a leading academic journal while still an undergraduate - at the time, I was only the third person ever to have done that.

Worked as a gaucha / polo work rider on an Argentinian estancia.

Worked as a commercial HGV driver.

Lived and worked in Tokyo and Seoul while speaking the embarrassingly bare minimum of Japanese / Korean.

Helped to develop a data analysis system that is now the global industry standard (that one probably isn't 'cool' in the traditional sense of the word, but I'm very proud of it!).

I also briefly went out with the lead singer of a very well-known Scottish indie band, and when his ex (also a famous musician) found out, she threatened to beat me up.

I was not particularly scared by this, to be honest.

The coolest things I have experienced in my life are flying in a helicopter over the Golden Gate Bridge before flying back underneath it ( that was amazing) and on a holiday in Florida going to the launch site to watch a space shuttle lift off.

Another cool experience that has stayed with me my whole life was travelling on an overnight sleeper train between Leningrad and Moscow in 1989 when I was 18.

I've done something that I thought was going to be cool. I've swum in the Dead Sea. I had all these images of how cool it would be, but truth is it is not at all cool, and I was just one huge,muddy mess. The salt makes your boobs float, so I was just two giant floating tits with a small body attached. Those photos will never see the light of day!

I've done the overnight sleeper there too, though not during Soviet times. Was nice though, quite different from my experience of sleeper trains elsewhere, with a guard in each carriage, and caviar in the restaurant car.

@Natsku I've never done a sleeper train anywhere else. Don't remember any caviar or restaurant car but I remember the lovely lady coming round at bedtime with hot sweet tea served in glasses in ornate silver holders. I remember waking up because the train had stopped and looking out to see nothing but snow for as far as I could see. So memorable.

I travelled on an overnight sleeper to Leningrad from Helsinki in 1976 when the USSR was very much behind the iron curtain @AngelsWithSilverWings.

At the border the guards were more interested in the teen magazine I was reading than anything else. It might have had something to do with the fashion pages showing lots of girls in bikinis.

Once got to ask Gene Simmons a question at a Kiss press conference.

*not a journalist, never have been.

Got fined for jumping in the Trevi fountain
Met Britney Spears
I own a piece of coal from the Titanic (purchased at exhibition)
I've addressed a jury
I've seen a "guilty" murder verdict - famous trial in Scotland
Been to a post-mortem

At age 50 I went to an Ultra music festival (on a blind date to top it off), and I am pretty sure we were the oldest folk there 😂. Had a blast and the youngsters were quite OK about allowing the oldies to the front row, where I incidentally, got caked...

My teens thought that very cool.

As a youngster I backpacked for 6 years. I did have some hairy moments, but it was one of the coolest things I think I have done.

It didn't compare to flying a fighter jet though...

Oh yes, been the jury person who conveyed the verdicts to the judge. Enormously satisfying to say, "Guilty. Guilty. Guilty".