THE BURNT EGG INCIDENT (Thanks to Nigel Reid - added May 2007)

 

It seems that the perpetrator that resides in the States has an affinity for these oval things.

 

In 1971 being a poor and easily influenced cadet I was coerced into assisting a slightly richer EO who was made very poor because he had a fancy orange Cheetah with twin weeber carbs that drank that scarce Rhodesian/Zimbabwean commodity. An interesting source of top ups was available in the form of dregs of petrol left in the new cars which were parked on the sides of the roads down to the Zambezi waiting to be moved by Duly’s in Zambia and having no love for our neighbour at that stage there seemed to be little wrong in this. 

 

One quiet Sunday afternoon I was assisting said EO to remove certain dregs from these cars using device commonly known as a “Jonja pipe “ .The transfer tank better known as a galvanised iron bucket was full for the second time when there was a sighting of the Dulys van making its way onto the bridge from the Zambian side. Needless to say to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation we beat a hasty retreat but I was placed in charge of the nearly full receptacle. The only place to put it was to hold it on the floor between my legs in the passenger seat. 

 

When one potentially embarrassed EO and his twin weebers meet; the result is substantial acceleration which is fine till one has to change gear. Shall we say the result is a certain slip and slop when a bucket of liquid is involved. The slop part of this ended up in my lap which as we say in Aussie is “no worries mate” except when the liquid is a highly volatile substance. An initially cool sensation rapidly lights the fires and in no time at all the EO was being urged to make his weebers work harder.

 

Fortunately being in a position of authority it was not necessary to fill in  a TIP and we were sufficiently well known for the guard to open the boom in advance in response to our wild gesticulations of which mine were probably the most convincing. A long hall up to the messes is made very short with hard working weebers which probably used up the first bucket in the process. 

 

We arrived at the mess and taking care to avoid smokers I ran the tap water for the bath and remember thinking there must be some way to improve the water pressure.

 

I am happy to report that no permanent damage was done although there was little sympathy from my mess mates and the perpetrator disappeared rapidly presumably to retrieve the remainder of the bucket.  

 

This will henceforth be known as the burnt egg incident.