Fire balls and Buckets

I was 15. Dad was in the Congo or the Sudan or Ethiopia. Mom was upstairs in her bedroom on the double bed chatting to Inge Neilson, our neighbour. The twins were at the front driveway playing with Jeanette and Tom and Joe and I was at the back, in the garden, feeling rather bored and destructive.

I decided to light the barbecue and get it ready for lunch. I could cook something. Why not? But I wouldn't tell anyone until the barbecue was lit. I'd have to hurry because they were going to start getting lunch ready soon. 

I found an open sack of charcoal and poured it out rustling onto the large metal pan. I took the newspaper - The Daily Nation - and then I tore it and rolled it up - 4 double page spreads - into firelighters. I stuffed them into the coals and lit the wads.

The sun was bright. It was around 11.30 am, and I couldn't see the flames. Perhaps the fire hadn't taken, so I went looking for something more flammable: fire lighters, paraffin, methylated spirits - something to get it going quickly.

I couldn't find anything. I looked around the garden and saw the gallon can of petrol that usually went at the back of the Landrover. There couldn't be too much difference between petrol and paraffin, could there? They were both flammable liquids. Surely, petrol would work just as well as paraffin, though it might smell different?

I screwed opened the cap of the green metal can and took it in both hands. It was heavy, and so in order to slosh petrol onto the coals I had to hold the can by its metal handle and also at the bottom and swing it. The petrol didn't come out and so I swung harder.  I still couldn't see any flames on the barbecue. After my third swing a big slosh of petrol left the can wetting my hand at the top and hit the barbecue.

A flame 15 feet high exploded into the air and reached the second story of the house were Mom and Inge saw it through the window. I dropped the can and looked at my hand. It was on fire, burning like a candle. Mom rushed downstairs and I showed her my hand wrapped in a stinging blue flame which guttered and went out.

"What did you do?" she shouted running past to look. "I threw petrol on the barbecue." "Idiot!" she retorted.

She ignored me and ran for a bucket. Inge rushed to phone for the fire brigade. I showed her my hand and whimpered. "Look". I said, but she just whacked me over the back of my head with the bucket as she ran past me to the bathroom tap.

They were throwing water onto the can of petrol which was still alight and it wasn't going out. The flames were still leaping up. After a few minutes the fire brigade came down the drive with lights flashing. Andy and Chris felt important very important directing them to our door with their lights flashing. All their friends were jealous.

"The fire is at our house. Over here."

The firemen stomped through the house and looked at the can, which was still burning and they threw sackfulls of sand on it until it went out. "Don't throw water on a petrol fire" they advised, "because it keeps burning."

"But my hand", I said to Mom, "it's really sore."

"I don't care," said Mom. "you nearly blew us all up."

But she looked at my hand after a while, washed it and put antiseptic cream on it.

If I look at it now I can still see a very faint and faded mark between my thumb and my forefinger where the skin peeled off.

Chris and Andy remember that day as great fun.  But Mom exaggerated when she told the story, she said she hit me with the empty bucket - "....like this...Whop!" - every time she ran past me.

Actually, she only hit me once.