Sunday 1 August 2010

So, this bloke right...

Look, I daren't actually name this bloke, because he lives in a small village in the English East Midlands and his name is so distinctive - it would be unfair. And he's not even a mate. So...

'Bob' lived in a nearby village. He had an oxy-acetylene torch and a confused attitude to health and safety. When his five-foot oxygen cylinder ran out he found that the brass regulator on his spare was damaged. He didn’t like the look of it, gas welding can be dangerous, and with a perfectly good regulator on the empty cylinder, well, why not swap them over?

So, he lay the full cylinder on the lawn in the back garden, and, propped up at an angle for easy access, Bob straddled the cylinder and started to unscrew the regulator. Now, he wasn’t stupid, he knew that the swap would have to be really flippin' quick to avoid losing too much gas, so he had the good regulator right there ready by his side. He loosened the regulator with a spanner, then started to unscrew slowly by hand.

The following happened in a split second: Bob never knew just how many turns were left before 2500psi blew the regulator clean off the bottle. It fired, like an angular brass cannonball, through his Land Rover’s tailgate, continued through the driver’s seat and buried itself in the dashboard. Meanwhile, the torpedo-shaped steel cylinder shot up the garden, through two brick walls and into the kitchen. On its way, to add injury to insult, it crossed a gravel path and blasted the still-crouching Bob in the back like a shotgun. We can only imagine this scenario being retold many times in the hospital as Bob lay face-down biting a pillow, gravel pinged into a stainless steel kidney dish and assembled medical staff bit their sleeves in desperate attempts to stifle laughter. MP

9 comments:

TheBlueFox said...

Did you... I mean "Bob"... finish the swap?

grant said...

oh dear .....=)

EricB said...

Haha....Blasted with some gravel up the A..!!Brilliant.

Sideburn Magazine said...

Mick I'm not going to bother using an alias, this is a true story about gas my own stupidity...

Once upon a time I went in to my girlfriends kitchen to cook us dinner. I turned on the olden days gas oven which need a few seconds of flow before you would flick a match towards the primitive outlet at the back. But the matchbox was empty
"Josie! got any more matches Love?" I shouted through the wall into the living room -50 seconds & counting have now passed, & that's already more than necessary for start-up. (You can guess where this story is going can't you?).
"Try under the sink!"
"Err No! where else?" - 2 minutes & counting
"Oh try in the toilet then!" (No I dont / have never ignited a fart) - 4 minutes, tick, tick, tick
Ah yes a fresh box of matches. Now assume the position, crouched with head forward. Strike match. Open door & -
*KA-BOOM*
I was blown back across the kitchen into the wall. All the windows in the house shook in their frames (but didn't shatter). Eyebrows, nasal hair, & fringe, all singed.

BP

Mick P said...

Look you lot, 'Bob' is not an alias for 'me'. This is not one of those 'I've got this friend, right...' stories. I'd actually be proud to have the skills to own oxy-acetylene welding kit. That's not to say I haven't done plenty of things just as stupid as... Bob. Maybe I'll get round telling about the time I napalmed the kitchen.

Ogri said...

Just wondering why 'Bob' didn't turn the valve off at the neck of the bottle and change the reg over normally...

mp said...

I did this exact same thing with my fuel tap on my bike the other day. I needed to remave the tap to clean it. Figured I could quickly whip it out and shove a funnel under the opening to catch the fuel.Exept I forgot to open the lid on the can to catch the fuel. Cock up big time. River of fuel cascading down the street. full tank emptied over the bike and road. nightmare. one cigarrete but away from an inferno.

daws said...

I'm with Ogri on this one, why didn't "Bob" turn off the valve located just below the regulator, it's a G-size gas cylinder, not a camping-gaz bottle!

Funny story all the same.

Mick P said...

I think you might be thinking a bit too hard about this. Certainly harder than Bob ever did.