I shared a flat with a mate...
... who was nice but not so very worldly-wise. So, quite often the flat was full of assorted ne'er-do-wells that my Z (names changed to protect the not-so-innocent) had met in the pub and invited back to crash.

I came back from visiting my parents, went to bed on the sofabed in the living room, and was woken at 2am by three drunken revellers returning and demanding "their" room back.

"Fuck off", I suggested politely. A bit of argument and it became quite clear that I was going *nowhere*. Now, my mate had just bought an old minibus and started to turn it into a camper. "Tell you what", says my mate, "there's the camper. Why don't you go and sleep in the camper?"

This sounded like a reasonable proposition to all, so after a convivial cup of tea (we'd drunk all the beer) and a general settling-down of tempers, they buggered off to the van, my mate buggered off to bed, and I went back to sleep.

Until about 6am, when my mate came bumbling through in search of coffee. Never usually up at this time, he was worried about his van. So I get dressed, have a coffee, grab the spare keys, and we walk round to the car park where the van is. With three clearly very *very* passed-out people asleep in the back. We could smell the weed smoke from the far end of the car park.

A plan was hatched. Would they wake up if we battered the side of the van? Probably. Not fun enough. Okay, would they wake up if we unlocked it? No... Would they wake up if we opened the front doors? No... Would they wake up if we started it up? No... Would they wake up if we drove it to a supermarket about two miles away to get breakfast? No...

Hmm.

So we got back to the van with a couple of fryup packs, some rolls, some milk and a big jar of coffee. Would they wake up if we unlock it? No... Would they wake up if I pop the bonnet? No... "Tell you what, Z, let's get the bus back" Would they wake up if I remove the rotor arm from the distributor, close the bonnet, lock up and leave them to it? Not until about 3pm, apparently.

As for length, we could have gone a lot further on half a tank.
(gordonjcp, Fri 27 Feb 2009, 10:43, Reply)