Explosions in the pool
During the school holidays it became a bit passé to merely use our to time to watch tv and throw tennis balls at the dog while it attempted to poo on the lawn. No, we were warriors on a quest and we need to blow things up to quench our bloodthirsty desires. A short trip to the shop and a relatively painless exchange of cash and we were now the proud owners of a box of crackers - mini sticks of dynamite if you will.

Obtaining the crackers was the easy bit, but challenging yourself to use them imaginatively was proving more difficult. We blew up flowers, bits of fruit, threw them at the dog while he poo'ed (In later years I realised we may have traumatised him somewhat during our school holidays) however the biggest challenge yet was posed by our swimming pool. It became apparent that you would need a mixture of both skill and courage to make the cracker hit the water at the exact moment it exploded and cause a perfect little crater of water to form around it. Too soon and the fuse would go out. Too late and it was a worthless explosion above the surface. Courage was required because you needed to hold it in your fingers for just long enough to allow the fuse to burn and then let go to time its trajectory to the water to perfection. This took a few burnt fingers to get right, but over time our accuracy improved.

Accuracy, however, wasn't the only thing that increased. Our neighbours rage was also on the up. He was semi-retired man who obviously wasn't in the school of thought that if you weren't happy with something you should nip it in the bud. He must have been steadily stewing in his own rage for much of the afternoon over our noisy antics. So much so that by the time he near enough collapsed our fence to confront us he was an incomprehensible mumbling wreck who we surmised wasn't happy. I do recall the words 'belt' and 'arse' being used as he recklessly whipped his large leather belt against the nearby wall.

A short one-to-one with my brain later and the conclusion was reached that perhaps we should curtail the afternoons activities by the pool. Did we feel defeated? Hell no! So my brother and I retired to the toilet inside to continue our nobel prize winning experiment.

Fortunately by the time my mom arrived home the smell of gun powder that had earlier pervaded the entire house had gone. It was a little harder than I anticipated to convince her that the toilet had 'just cracked' when my brother had sat on it, but I think we just about got away with it by removing all evidence of the explosions inside the toilet.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 13:24, 3 replies)

I discovered this yesterday...
I've since taken it a lesson to not play with fireworks

revolver.ported-valhalla.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/idiot.jpg (NSFW)

"A bloke in the US (why doesn’t that surprise me?!) played a game of Russian-roulette with his mates.

They put a fire-cracker in their mouths and lit it up.

Then they waited to see whether they could remove it just before it went off.

The winner was supposed to be the one who waited the longest.

As it turned-out, this bloke was the loser… & (pun-intended) he was a sore-loser)!!!

He was rushed to the emergency ward where this picture was taken."
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 13:38, closed)

AA, I've seen that picture before...
It was called "motorcycle.jpg" then and was supposed to be a guy who'd fallen off a Harley while wearing an open-face helmet.

I'm still trying to find out whether it's even a real photo - even snopes can't say for sure...
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 13:54, closed)

@Kenny
Wouldn't suprise me if it was fake.

Ah well, still a good way to laugh at Americans!
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 14:00, closed)