[greenman43]

I shudder to recall and admit this, but I think I've done far and away the dumbest thing of anyone here. When I was young and stupid (I'm now much older, but many would say still stupid), I was fooling round with a 2-stroke dirt bike, and decided to drain the fluids. Transmission oil went into an already half-full plastic ice cream container, which I then topped up with premix (petrol / oil) from the tank. Moving the bike away, I relaised the container was now too full to move, and I didn't want to have to sit and wait for petrol to evaporate before my Dad got home (this was in the middle of his garage).

So, in a brainwave I can only look back in bewilderment and describe as a form of virtual instantaneous lobotomy, I decided to burn off the petrol and lower the level ...

Of course, the petrol caught, then the oil caught, and the plastic container melted, leaving a burning pool of oil spreading slowly across the concrete floor.

The brain somehow kicked back into gear, and I managed to beat out the flames (up around 7-8 feet as I recall) with a sack. That was not before the beams got charred, the fireproof paper of some sort under the tin roof burnt out, and my mother called the Fire Brigade.

Eventually the insurance company repaired the garage, my father's pride and joy that he built with his own sweat, and I don't think I've ever (justifiably) felt like more of an imbecile.

There has been other dumb sh.t over the years, but nothing that came even remotely close to that bit of almost-natural-selection.

Cheers in a bright shade of red,
Brian, who has learnt not to play with fire