» Fire!

Fire in the window..
I had a friend who I'd known since I was at primary school and we lived pretty close to each other, our houses were positioned so that we could each stand at our bedroom windows and talk loudly to each other, there was a largish garden separating us.

Well in the winter it was hard to see each other and his family were pretty poor so he didn't have a bedside lamp like I had to illuminate my face..what could we do? What did they do for light in the olden days? FIRE!

Nope we didn't use a candle, in our infinite wisdom at 13 years of age we decided that it would be best to syphon off some petrol from my dads lawnmower and once the sun had set Ian (my friend) could simply pour a little bit of petrol on his window sill outside and he would be illuminated for our evening chat.

Well it worked in the sense that he was illuminated. The best part was that of course the petrol being a liquid and highly volatile it didn't stay in one place, it dripped off of the window sill as a giant roaring fireball onto the open window downstairs, with cries from his mother of "Ian what are you doing" I was peeing myself at my panic stricken friend throwing cups of water down on to the melting PVC window and his mothers apparent lack of concern in her voice.

It was okay in the end, the window was extinguished and no damage other than a slightly melted and scorched window was done.
I even drew a childish drawing at the time to serve as a reminder to that hilarious night.
(Sun 6th Nov 2005, 13:55, More)