Dodgy mechanics
When I was a kid I lived on an estate, and with it being relatively nice by housing estate standards, we were provided with big lawns running along the length of it (this has a point). From these lawns you could see across the main road to a petrol station and a small line of shops. One day, when I was 5 or 6 and playing with a few friends on the lawns, one of the shops EXPLODED. Yes, it just exploded. We saw the lot; big boom, the front blew out, black smoke, screams from the blokes who were inside and unfortunate enough to have survived. Everyone from my flats legged it (cos estate people are generally nosey) across the road to get a better look at the carnage, not exactly caring that they were in the way of fire engines, ambulances and the air ambulance – in all it took about 5 hours to put out. It turned out the shop, which I remember had no name and didn't actually appear to be a shop at all what with net curtains in the windows, was doing cheap and rather shady fix-ups. Apparently the exact cause of the explosion was one of the men testing a motorbike in the shop and duly crashing it. What an idiot.
( Fictional Emma, Thu 3 Nov 2005, 12:06, Reply)