Summer Holiday Petrol Japes
Ah, the long summer holidays as kids, weeks and weeks with nothing to do but bask in the sun, pester our parents for food and drink and watch Why Don't You.... God we were bored.
Luckily my Uncle had a petrol mower, and a tin of petrol to fill it with. So what else were we going to do when everyone was out and we were left to our own devices? It was only natural to start making fires with pools of petrol.
At first we were very careful, small spot of petrol on the patio, put the tin in the garage, light the petrol, admire the flames, job done. But we wanted more, much more, so the small spot became a small puddle, then a bigger puddle, then we covered a whole flag stone and got a bit lazy with the tin.... it was inevitable what would happen in the end.
We covered 2 large patio flags with petrol, put the tin casually to the side and lit the pool. The resultant blaze was momentarily out of control, then we realised, far too late, that we'd left a trail of petrol leading to the tin.
We watched in horror as the trail of flame shot up the side of the tin and then one of us had the bright idea of kicking the tin over to stop the flames going into it (of course we hadn't put the top back on.)
Flames literally shot out of the top of the tin to a height of about 10 feet. We were thinking that only Red Adair would be able to put them out, they were that high. God knows how we managed to control it, but we got the fire out on the tin, leaving a small fire in the soil that would not go out for ages, no matter how much water we put on it (the petrol must have really soaked in around there.)
We tidied up as best we could, put the tin of petrol back in the garage, cleaned the scorched patio, and then ran off to hide. When my Aunt came home it took her all of 5 seconds to realise what had happened - the whole house reeked of petrol. Then she looked at us and laughed. We all had singed hair, eyebrows and eyelashes - we hadn't realised. We got away reasonably lightly, although my eyebrows still have patches missing, over 20 years later, but looking back it could have been a whole lot worse. Happy Days!
Length? Longer than my eyelashes!
(jrabrfc, Tue 17 Feb 2009, 8:50, 1 reply)

it didn't go out
with the water, as water won't extinguish petrol fires - petrol floats on top
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Tue 17 Feb 2009, 14:18, closed)