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The weirdest thing that's EVER happened to me IRL:
2014 I lived in Tilbury Town (Essex, South-east). I left my house one rainy morning & got on the C2C trainline to Chafford Hundred for a day of drinking alone at The Old Orleans in Lakeside (don't judge, I'm 5 years sober)...
2014 I lived in Tilbury Town (Essex, South-east). I left my house one rainy morning & got on the C2C trainline to Chafford Hundred for a day of drinking alone at The Old Orleans in Lakeside (don't judge, I'm 5 years sober)...
After several hours, I dragged myself back aboard the C2C and returned to Tilbury Town... except it *wasn't* Tilbury. It was *Grimsby* (Lincolshire, East Midlands.)
I was drunk, sure. But there's NO way I'd accidentally gotten on *several* wrong connecting trains. Not to mention drunkenly purchasing a ticket. No. I was DEFINITELY "home". But my "home" was now Grimsby.
Now... everything was "the same" but different. "Tilbury Fried Chicken" was now "Grimsby Fried Chicken". The local shops were all in the same place, the road names were mostly the same. But everything was grottier, grimier, and basically destroyed.
Now... Tilbury was a grotty place at the best of times. But this was like a warzone. Upturned cars, burning bins, couches and mattresses in the street etc...
It was like I'd either gone BACK in time ("Life On Mars" style) OR FORWARD in time after a tribe of Grimsbians had rolled into town ("Mad Max" style) and claimed Tilbury for the East Midlands.
These were my top theories:
1. I was dreaming.
2. I had reached some new level of drunk that comes with hallucinations.
3. I had accidentally wished I'd never been born and this was a "Christmas Carol" scenario where I was seeing what that would look like if it happened...
1. I was dreaming.
2. I had reached some new level of drunk that comes with hallucinations.
3. I had accidentally wished I'd never been born and this was a "Christmas Carol" scenario where I was seeing what that would look like if it happened...
4. I had genuinely been reading/pronouncing "Tilbury" wrong the whole time I'd lived there and this was all just normal...
I made my way from "Grimsby Station" to where my house should be. It was there! But this is where it got VERY odd. Surrounding my house (I couldn't reach the front door!) were huge shiny black oblongs, as big as coaches, and totally out of place against the surrounding warzone.
Real talk: they looked like alien ships 
Yes I was drunk but these things were NOT normal.
My mind was racing. I got legit scared and wandered back to the station to double check that I really WAS in Grimsby and that this was just going to be my life from now on...
Yes I was drunk but these things were NOT normal.My mind was racing. I got legit scared and wandered back to the station to double check that I really WAS in Grimsby and that this was just going to be my life from now on...
On the verge of an absolute nervous breakdown - wtf! - I saw SACHA BARON COHEN (Borat, Bruno etc) on the station overpass! I knew in that moment that I HAD to be dreaming... But no...
Because Sacha was shooting his 2016 movie "The Brothers Grimsby" in my town! (turns out Tilbury is aesthetically more "grim'" than Grimsby itself). The design team had spent the entire day transforming the highstreet while I was away, incl. replacing all the shop names! 
Those spaceships outside my house? Luxury movie trailers for the A-list cast. I spent the next couple of days trying to sneak a peek at Borat through my bedroom window. PTSD aside, I will never forget the day I left Tilbury in morning & returned to Grimsby that night. 
Update: turns out this little thread o' mine is having a bit of moment on Twitter I wonder if I should have tagged @SachaBaronCohen 
I wonder if I should have tagged @SachaBaronCohen
