For some reason, this BBC story reminded me of an investigation I became involved in decades ago. I don't know why because there may be genuine concerns behind the story, but there we are. Yes, even though it is a BBC story there could be something in it. Memory sometimes makes strange links though.
Decades ago I became involved in the scientific investigation of a complaint made to the local authority by a middle-aged woman who lived alone. She complained that she had been sitting on the toilet having a quiet smoke, had flipped her cigarette end into the toilet and immediately a small explosion blew her off the toilet onto the floor.
Smiles all round of course, but there are always concerns about such things as methane seeping into properties, so the protect your back approach was adopted by the bureaucrat dealing with it. If I remember rightly, I was involved in the atmospheric gas analysis.
Of course, after lots of sampling and analysis we didn't find anything. We weren't surprised either, because the person making the complaint was obviously a trifle nutty. That became pretty clear as soon as we turned up at her house with van loads of equipment.
Anyhow, nothing came of it, somebody wrote her a reassuring letter and as a young and impressionable chap it taught me a valuable lesson. Loons consume an enormous amount of time, effort and resource.
8 comments:
I wish I had learnt earlier how to spot and deal with time-wasting loons and all the other objectionable people one is likely to find crossing one's path. There are the perpetual complainers, those who want help with mild mental issues, those who want to boss you around, to name but a few. I'm better at it now, and can avoid them if I want to, being retired and relatively free. It would help if organisations could build up some sort of expertise in spotting and evading them.
The latest sort is the green loon. The Sussex variety is always female (though occasionally has infected her admiring husband) middle class, talkative, and in her late fifties to seventies. The main trait is presumptuousness. Yes, I do care about the environment in the sense that I volunteer to pick litter in one of the local lanes. But why do they then assume that I am a full-on Greta-obsessed doomster?
I wondered why the term, 'Flash in the pan' really came from...
So it didn't have anything to do with a flintlock rifle then!
(There might have been a bit at the end of the story, with the ambulance men laughing so much, they dropped the stretcher and broke both her legs...)!
Scrobs, the Israeli exploding toilet case and the injured man falling off the stretcher was in the early nineties, I remember the story and one could not help but laugh, but despite toilets exploding for a variety of reasons that story has a dubious provenance and has recurred on many occasions in slightly different guises.
Even worse is the exploding sewer, a neighbour of mine when we lived in Suffolk was note, despite being wealthy for an aversion to spending money and when his toilets blocked he was out there with the rods looking for the blockage, he then asked if hecould lift the cover in next doors front garden and rod from there, which he did and was confronted by a ten foot geyser of the brown stuff which covered him from head to toe, I sadly missed the event but my wife saw it and the neighbour told me what had happened later, fom a safe distance.
Remember Father Ted and the shit tanker!
And if lighting farts, it's best to do it when not sitting on the toilet - dropping a fag end under your arse is a fundamental error which might crack you up!
Sam - "The main trait is presumptuousness." Spot on, I come across that too. The only thing to be is a full-on doomster or there is something weird or a little unprincipled about you.
Scrobs - modern ambulance men would probably tell her off for smoking.
Wiggia - I'd like to have seen that geyser of brown stuff. Ever after he'd be known as Mr Brown.
Ed - I think she made it up from something she'd read or heard about. A joke heard in the pub even.
This reminds me of a true story which appeared in Private Eye. They had a series entitled True Stories.
An American brought his motorcycle into the house to work on it. When he finished the job he briefly started it up, as the back wheel was raised he dropped it into gear. The bike fell, crashed into him and broke one of his legs. Wife called the ambulance which carted him off to hospital. While he was away the wife started to clear up the mess. She used paper towels to clear some oil and petrol spillage, flushing them down the toilet. (See where this is going? Stick with it to the end.) Bubbly came home, leg in plaster. Went to the toilet, dropped cigarette butt into the pan. Whoosh! He suffered serious burns to his rear. Wife called the ambulance, it was the same crew who picked him up earlier. As they carried him off they were laughing so much they tipped him off the stretcher, breaking his other leg.
Andy - that's the trouble, things like that are always happening with motorcycles.
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