Joy

[avevale_intelligencer]

I filled the car up yesterday. This afternoon I was alerted by my neighbours to the fact that forty quid's worth of fuel was currently adorning the Queen's highway, some of it in intriguingly skiffyish piles on account of being frozen. Hellooooo, ruptured fuel line.

The fire brigade came with commendable promptitude, put down lots of sand, and said I'd need to siphon off the tank and had I got anything to put the remaining quarter tankful in. I said no. We stood around for a while. Another fireman asked me the same question. I said no. Another Pinteresque pause. After a few more goes round I volunteered to walk to the nearest garage and get a fuel can or two, and this suggestion met with general approval, so off I trogged.

Returning with three 5 litre fuel cans, I saw the fire engine disappearing down the road. The car was no longer leaking. There was no note. None of the neighbours, who had all been watching with a combination of apprehension and avidity, knew what if anything they had done before they left, but one of them offered me a lift back to the garage to return the now apparently surplus fuel cans. (We kept one, just in case. They're useful things to have.)

So...did someone offer a fuel can after I had left? Did brownies make away with the remainder of the tank? Were they just getting me out of the way before carrying out some arcane Fire Brigade secret protocol? Were they called away to something more urgent and the fuel dried up on its own? We may never know.

Not how I'd planned to spend my Sunday afternoon. It's just a mercy I wasn't, you know, having fun at a filkcon or anything. That would have been really depressing.

Comments

[jahura.livejournal.com]

I didn't know one should call the fire department for a fuel line leak. Good to know. Better to know you didn't find out when you started your car! Eek!

I'm just glad you're okay.

[raphil.livejournal.com]

So....Did your fuel disappear? I would have given the fire station itself a call and asked what was going on.

Glad you are ok though. When I was young and silly (now I am just not young) I had a car in which the fuel tank had rusted through to the boot about the size of a pea. Whenever I had a full fuel tank, the smell of fuel filled the car, and I would just drive along with the window down. I tried putting some sort of putty stuff on the boot, but that didn't work. Then I would only fill the car to half way to try and stop the smell - and my parents nearly had a fit when they found out I was driving a car around like that.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Eep! =8o{ [HUGS]

It's even more of a mercy you weren't halfway to the filkcon when the rupture occurred, of course.

Useful tip: When rupturing a fuel line, try to make it the one at the very top of the engine, so that the fuel just very gradually evaporates away (unless the engine's started), rather than the one down the bottom where it all runs away. That way instead of tackling an immediate crisis, you can spend two whole months puting off dealing with it, during which time the brakes rust solid and battery dies. Umm, OK, please insert the words "Not Very" at the beginning of the this paragraph. =:o\

[HUGS AGAIN] We missed you. But between us, Dave W and I and the nMC managed to fake something up to partially fill the void, and thus the universe remains intact, ready for the day when you will filk again!

[DOES ARCANE NUMEROLOGICAL CALCULATIONS, STOPPING OCCASIONALLY TO SQUINT AT A STAR CHART AND CROSS-REFERENCE IT WITH AN AA ROAD MAP]

[MARKS CALCULATED DATE IN DIARY]

[GOES OFF TO BRIEF THE ACOLYTES]

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Car all fixed now. Remaining fuel still there. Confused (but relieved) Zander.

MOT booked for Friday.

[alyramoondancer.livejournal.com]

Yes, my first thought was, not what you would have wanted to have happen while on the road to or from a filkcon (or anywhere else), and if your weather's anything like ours (which it might be approaching, since the fuel did in fact freeze), especially not what you would want to have happen while on the road at all. (We've been in single digits -- Fahrenheit. With snow. And I realize that sentence was kind of mangled and redundant and not terribly clear -- the brain is freezing my cold. I mean... never mind. I'll try again when I thaw out.)