Another day’s slog at the datacentre today. The usual sort of stuff – building and racking boxes, fixing this and that. All was going swimmingly well until I was leaning through a cabinet to install a rail kit and rrrrrrrrrip… I didn’t think much of it at that precise second, and just got on with racking up the box I was working on.

It was only when I was sat at the mobile desk we’ve got down there when I noticed a certain ‘chill’ down in my deep nether regions. The aircon was blowing up icy cold air from the raised flooring – right onto my nads! My trousers had ripped right open! From half-way down the zip all the way down to my right knee! Fuck!

Now. I came down to do these few jobs down here last night, so I brought a change of t-shirt, some clean pants and socks and some toiletries. What I neglected to bring was… a spare pair of trousers or jeans. So, I’m stuck in a datacentre 100 miles from home with my balls dangling out of my trousers. Great!

There’s a shopping centre about half a mile away in Canary Wharf, but half a mile is an awful long way to walk when you’ve got half of the front of your jeans missing. I had a jumper with me, so my immediate idea was to tie it round my waist, as you do on a hot day.

There was two problems with this, a) today is not a hot day, it’s quite the opposite in fact, and b) the gaping hole is round the front, not round the back – so you have to turn the jumper around, and have the ‘back’ of it covering your genitals. This looks ridiculous, and I figure it’ll draw even more attention to the fact I’ve got a giant hole in my trousers.

So, I decide to brave it, and I finish up my work, and walk to the DLR just as I am – gash and all. To keep things in check, I have to walk a little oddly – as if I’d pissed meself. I get a few odd looks from the Docklands businesspeople, but generally am ignored. There’s no way I’m walking all the way to Canary Wharf like this, so I get on the DLR at South Quay and go the two stops down the line to Canary Wharf. Top tip – if you want to get some decent space on a packed DLR train at about 5pm – walk around the station like you’ve pissed yourself, works a treat.

There’s a bunch of menswear places in Cabot Place and Canary Place, but they’re mostly upmarket tailors – and I don’t fancy paying £60 for some emergency keks. I find a JD Sports on the shopping centre map and I make a bee-line for it. Thankfully, they have plenty of tracksuit bottoms, and I pick up a pair cheaply and run to the nearest loo to change into them. Phew!

I decamp to the Starbucks under Canary Wharf DLR and de-stress with a Strawberries and Cream Frappuccino (the only worthwhile drink Starbucks offer to a non-coffee drinker) and a New York Pastrami and Chicken panini melt thing (excellent, recommended). I’m about the only person in the shop, with it being the calm just before 5 o’clock when the entire Docklands descends on the DLR and Underground stations.

I notice a few blokes have come in, all wearing the same clothes. Tracksuits – light blue and dark blue and white. I figure they’re some sports team. It’s only when one of them passes me to go to the loo, that I see the detail on their clothes. They’re Newcastle United tracksuits. I look over at the group and I spot Stephen Carr – ex. Spurs, and whoah…that’s Michael Owen! I don’t recognise the other faces – I’m not that familiar with the Toon’s line-up. There’s 6 or 7 of them, all enjoying coffees, all dressed identically in their tracksuits.

As I said, I’m the only other person in the shop, so I can’t get the camera on the phone out without looking like a total tit. I pluck up the courage to go over to them and ask for a photo, or an autograph, but as I stride over to them my confidence disappears and instead all I manage is a mumbled, “Good luck against the Goons, fellas!” (Newcastle are playing Arsenal in the FA Cup 4th round tomorrow), which is met with a “tanks, cheers buddy” in a broad Irish lilt from Stephen Carr. It’s quite clear that they want to be left to themselves – who needs a fat geek in ill-fitting tracksuit bottoms bugging you when you’ve got Fabregas and Adebayor to deal tomorrow, anyhow? I shuffle out of the Starbucks, feeling a bit annoyed that I’d missed an opportunity to start a burgeoning career in celebrity stalking.

The train journey home seems exceptionally dull after such excitement! Thankfully, it’s a new(er) train than the 125 I came down on, so I can plug in my Mac and get some important business done… such as the relaunch of my football management career, which in Football Manager 2008, has gone decidedly pear-shaped.

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