A compilation of fire
In chronological order:
1) Filling a water pressure rocket (one of the bike pump jobs) with petrol, then launching it down a garden after putting a lit rag behind it. Very big fireball gets blown back up the garden towards us. I escape with singed hair, my mate was wearing wellies and bermuda shorts (?), he had a bit of trouble explaining how he got 2 burnt knees to his mum.

2) Parents go out for dinner, a friend and I start throwing handfuls of things from the kitchen on the fire. Salt... nothing, flour.... rubbish, Icing sugar... whooomph! 10 minutes later a roaring sound is coming from the fire. I glance up the chimney to find a tunnel of flame that looks like the entrance to hell (but going up, instead of down). Go outside and have a look, the top of the chimney looks like an afterburner. Call parents and fire brigade. Turns out the chimney pipe bits had been put in upside down, tarry residue had collected over the years and it could have gone up at any time... purely coincidence that it was when the folks were out.

3) Small camping gaz cannister on someone elses fire. Doesn't sound too impressive and didn't make a big bang, but did make a nice mushroom cloud of flame, which I hadn't seen before or since. Shame about the overhead telephone wires.

4) An unhealthy interest in making explosives is discovered by the parents. Mum, being a science teacher decides the best approach is the educational one. I manage to balance all the equations, work out the right quantities of ingredients to use, sift out the flame suppresant and start mixing (ery, very gently). The trial one was a kind of sad chemistry lesson pop. Not very imressive, and was swiftly followed by a "Well now that you know" kind of speach from mum, which in turn was followed by some swift "you'll never guess what" phonecalls to my freinds. We were on "study" leave at the time, in a month we managed to:
-Launch a piece of scaffolding accross some heathland, it went so far we never found it.
-Destroy a shed
-inflict many shrapnel wounds on each other
-Contribute to an elderly neighbours tinittus (at least they didn't have a heart condition). That was when we thought it might be time to stop.

Somehow the headmaster at our school had caught wind of our activities. So when some Sodium went missing from the science labs I was put in a blame or be blamed position. Being the hardcore 15 year old I was (ahem), I didn't fess up. Someone else flushed it down the toilets, it stunk and I had alibis.

Sorted.

In your face Mr Lizard / Larry Grayson headmaster twunt, bounce that on your nylon slack clad knees.

I don't burn much anymore.... but I do make long posts here, and am not going to make any apologies.
(ralphseviltwin, Fri 4 Nov 2005, 10:52, Reply)