» Have you ever started a fire?

The Terror of Tealights
Apologies in advance for length....

Last summer I was camping with a few mates up in Scotland. One campsite couldn't provide us with an electricity supply so we couldn't use our trusty cage lamp.

Not wanting to sit in the tent playing cards in the dark and cold, off my mate popped to the local Tescos returning with a crate of beer and a bag of tealights.

We artfully arranged the tealights on a plastic dinner plate, placed it in the porch of the tent and lit it. Cue about an hour of happy warm and lit card playing.

The trouble started when a squadron of suicidal crane-flies entered the tent and began to dive head first into the tealights, thus causing a wick effect allowing the flames from adjacent tealights to amalgamate into small infernos.

Now molten candle wax doesn't burn at the normal sort of temperatures you find in your average tealight, but the aforementioned infernos generated enough heat to get the wax burning. This caused flames about a foot high (in a tent porch about 5 feet high). Noticing this, and the fact that we were all sat the wrong side of our raging fire to get to the exit, we decided to put the flames out the most logical way - by pouring Tennents on them!

This was a serious mistake resulting in 4 foot high flames - remember the tent roof is 5 feet high - of course we'd forgotten about the chip pan effect of pouring water on fat fires. After about 2 seconds of frenzied swearing I forcefully booted the plate, flames and all, out the door and onto the grass where it burned peacefully.

Close inspection of the scene after it had all gone quiet revealed a hole the size of a tealight in the centre of the plastic plate, several tealights moulded to the plate and a fair few holes in the groundsheet.

Just for laughs, the next night we assembled as many tealights as possible on a disposable barbeque and lit it. Outside the tent. The tealights burned hot enough to weld their little metal casings to the metal grill of the barbeque, which became decidedly bent in several places!

I now have a (quite rational I feel) fear of tealights.
(Wed 3rd Mar 2004, 19:25, More)

» Slang Survey

My girlfriend's mate..
..uses the word 'seen' to mean good, yes, OK, sorted, cool etc.

Makes no sense to me!

Edit: I know it's similar to other posts, but I use the slight variation "furriest of muff" to mean fair enough.

I've also been known to refer to coke (the drink) as "juicy" as in "big and juicy cock", cock=coke. Pass us a juicy mate.
(Sun 1st Feb 2004, 16:36, More)

» Irrational Fears

milk
I can't stand the idea of drinking milk on its own. It's fine in coffee, cooking, etc. and even on cereal, but if someone is drinking milk out of a glass I have to look away, and the idea of me doing that...urgh!
(Tue 27th Jan 2004, 19:41, More)

» Worst Record Ever

Update on Phil Keaggy
Extensive research reveals that Phil is apparently a shit hot guitarist, who's only not big cos he's very christian, and Survivor is a pro-life song about someone who survives an attempted abortion (hence the "take away my life" bit).

However I don't remember hearing any shit hot guitar playing on it, so maybe he's just shit. The song certainly is.

Sadly over 2 hours of clicking on the "Search More" button in Kazaa has not found it - I heard it on my mate's MP3 player a while back but he hasn't got internet at the moment and lives in Exeter which is bloody miles away.

EDIT: and no he can't remember why he has that tune on his MP3 player, apparently it just "appeared" there one day!

EDIT 2: Kazaa finally hits paydirt, MP3 on the way!
(Thu 4th Dec 2003, 18:36, More)

» Worst Record Ever

survivor
Not the Destiny's Child song, but the one by christian pop rocker Phil Keaggy. If you've heard it you'll know it cos it goes "and they take away my life" and is probably the most cliched classic rock song ever written.

Oh dear.....
(Thu 4th Dec 2003, 2:15, More)