whats the strangest thing you have carried home

[areia]

after putting a reply in a post about carrying 4x 7ft fence post on my shoulder home for a mile, i thought id put this up, excludeing influence of *ahem* drink.
what is the strangest but useful thing anyone has salvaged to use in there garden, and carried or had stuck out of there car on the way home, did anyone offer to help ? or did you just get weird looks ?
Other than the fence posts, im forever picking up stuff and taking it home to be used, my fav is still the day my mum had 5 dumper trucks dump wood off in her front garden after they had finished the sea wall down the east coast ooooo the curtains where twitching *sigh* some of those guys where realllllly nice, "ahem" anyhow now this isnt really strange, but in this day and age it would be classed as not of the norm.

[carlseawolf]

when i was in my other home we had a coal fire and used it for burning wood . At the time the local housing authority where changing kitchens and bathrooms and i spoke to the foreman about the wood from his skip and he said no problem , By the end of the contract they where dropping the wood by my door and i even had a roofer who was working for them drop of a whole roof minus tiles and felt.

[Hans Mum]

my other half

he does have his uses on the lottie

[Becca]

a bucket of broken clay tiles and 2 windows (not all at the same time I hasten to add, that would make me superwoman!) the tiles made a nice border around my pond and the windows will one day be coldframes.. always feel very manly (in a girly way) striding around with a spade on my shoulders too.. :P

[vicky]

Not for the garden but a few years ago managed to get a beautiful, huge fireplace surround and all from a Big house in Chigwell (Birds of a Feather, Footballers Wives type posh!) before it went on the skip. The builders carried it round to my car too! When I sold my house the following year the buyers fell in love with the fireplace!

[Digger-07]

I once dug up an old OXO tin box which had an assortment of ammunition in it. most of it was rounds for revolvers but there was some .22 and .303 bullets for rifles. The biggest thing was a couple of 20mm cannon shells as used in Spitfires and Hurricanes. I had a mate in the Royal Engineers who had a look at it all and he took the shells apart with a pair of pliers, pulled out the cordite and burnt it the detonated the percussion cap before putting the whole thing back together. We polished the brass casings and sold the lot at a collector's fair. It was only afterward that we found out that one of the Spitfire shells had a high explosive head on it which would have done damage to a tank let alone out shed.

[SueA]

I have walked home carrying small trees by myself & huge bags of compost, having to stop every few steps but no one has ever offered to help me, someone in a car did once 'beep' me to let me know I'd dropped my jacket which I'd been balancing over my arm under the compost!
I remember once when I was about 9 or 10 trying to carry home a big cardboard grandfather clock I'd helped to paint which had been used in the school play, it started to snow & the paint started to run, mum wasn't too happy when I got home with paint smeared all over me!

[Seahorse]

Trees and huge bags of compost here too, plus planters, greenhouses etc.

The thing that got the funniest looks though was the dismantled shop window dummy. I carried her home in a rucksack with her limbs sticking out of the top

[Waffler]

My Mother bought a shop mannequin /dressmakers dummy in a closing down sale ("How much is that?" "£5?" "Done!" went the conversation.) when I was out shopping with her. My hubby, her and I were going for dinner from town so hubby (not me!) had to carry the damn thing back to her car as she had a bad back! It was quite a long way to the car aswell!

[Waffler]

Just thought of another one!
Many moons ago whilst holidaying on Tobago (when we could afford the time and the holiday) we carried a kingfish 'home' to our holiday home, having bought it VERY cheaply straight off the boats at the other end of 'our' beach. Kind of reminds me of Doc Hollywood when everyone calls out "Nice pig!" as he walks his pig home; all the locals kept calling out on what a great fish we had! (Once again, hubby carried it!)

[zazen999]

Not gardening related; but still.

We were at a gig in London village; the band were called My Life Story; and there were about 15 of us out that night.

during the gig, the band threw a 9ft number 9 made of polystyrene into the crowd; I belive they also threw a number 4 as well. My good friend Bob disappeared and came back about 10 minutes later with the number 9. All going well so far.

As it was my birthday the next day; he decided that the number 9 was a present to me; this is where it all started to go wrong.

we had to carry the thing back home, through London, on the tube, on the train and back from chatham station to Maidstone Road Rochester and then I had to give it somewhere to live for the next x years. We took it to the pub just outside the venue; the George if I remember; down tottenham ct road tube [yes; we had the tannoy guy calling out 'come in number 9, your time is up...] through victoria stn; one of us had to look after it on the train as it had to go in the luggage section; but when we got to chatham it was myself and one lonesome friend who had the joy of carrying No 9 home. We were kerb crawled several times by the rozzers, and I have no idea how we got away with not being oiked by Medway drunkards on the way home.

[Alison C]

I had to carry a 1 m length core of peat wrapped in clingfilm in a piece of guttering into Manchester last September. I live in north Manchester and get to uni on the tram which is a 20min journey then I do a 10min walk down oxford road to my uni. I had some really strange looks off people on the tram but walking down oxford road at 8.30 in the morning was even worse. For those that dont know Manchester Oxford road at that time of day is full of business people in suits going to work. They just looked at me like I was completely offensive.
A core of peat may not sound useful but I should get a first for the data I got out of it for my dissertation, it was almost worth my mild embarressment.

[rustylady]

NEVER MIND THE CARS, THAT'S CHEATING!! My daughter and I managed to transport a rabbit hutch plus 6 foot run 2 miles on our pushbikes. Yes we did get some very funny looks and the hutch and run took up so much room we had to push our bikes, not ride them. Everything held on (sort of) with bungee straps. Got a bit hairy going over bumps when everything shifted. We made it though, and rabbit hutch/run now occupied by 3 very contented guinea pigs.

[areia]

oooooooooooooo that reminds me rusty lady i saw 3 guys cycling one had a mircowave the other had a hoover and the last guy had nowt though just trailed behind perhaps the were taking it in turns to shift the weight round,



oooo an another one was when my mum and dad bought there house dad came home one day he'd been to a hotel that was refurbishing, and he'd brought home a 3 piece bathroom suite in and on his mini cooperes she still has it 28 years later good ole enamal baths. The neighbours did find it funny, i'm sure you would get arrested now for having a bath on the roof of your car

does anyone here have the habit of skip rumaging too?

[NOG]

When the Mrs worked in London she was always coming with stuff in her Fiesta. A 5ft computer table, 2 computer chairs, a 15 draw filing cabinet, a metal filing cupboard.

She picked me up from the pub one night and told me there were some 2ft paving slabs in a skip up the road. I managed to get 10 out of the skip and into my Shogun (she was driving). When I was sober the next day i had to cut them in two so I could carry them out if the car.