BANG !

[daveuprite]

Funny little thing I saw this morning.

I'm filling up the car at the InterMarché supermarket unmanned diesel pump. Another car is filling up with petrol opposite me and the next guy in the queue is getting out a plastic 20 litre jerry can ready for his turn. The air smells of fuel. To our left is the big cage full of LPG/Propane/Butane gas cylinders for people to swap with their empties. The supermarket car park is busy with people.

Then a huge lorry arrives with an LPG cylinder delivery. It's an open-sided caged truck with at least 200 cylinders on board. It reverses back to the delivery point. And out of his cab jumps the driver. With a lit fag hanging out of his mouth ! He walks around his truck releasing the catches on the cages and starts unloading gas bottles - with his bloody gauloise glowing in his gob. Aaagh ! I filled up and got the hell out of there.

It's what makes living in rural France so exciting....

[zimtim]

Not so much as a bang more a damp squib

[Tramp]

Once saw maybe the drivers brother throwing a le cube propane bottle from top of lorry to the ground unloading at super U...

Damn things did bounce though being in a protective case...

[DavidS]

I thought the first thing French truckers do is have a pee against a wheel.
Maybe he was saving it in case there was a fire.

[daveuprite]

I thought the first thing French truckers do is have a pee against a wheel.
Maybe he was saving it in case there was a fire.

Yeah, perhaps that's it. The urine pompiers service...

I just couldn't believe that an Antargaz delivery driver, whose job involves visiting multiple petrol service stations loaded with enough gas cylinders to blow up a small town, does the change-overs with a fag lit in his mouth.. .

[Nigel]

A Frenchman with a Gauloise in his mouth,hmm wasn't wearing a stripey shirt with onions round his neck was he?

[DavidS]

The French always were a sophisticated lot.
Remember that here we were all going to die if your mobile phone was switched on in a garage.

Talking of H&S, the new Grand Designs is about a self build estate. H&S had been a big thing in the latter years of my architecting but this lot are terrifying. Roofing without any safety kit (I would want to be tied on). Lifting beams without enough people. Health & Safety would have a field day. Plus my bete noir, illegal staircases on finished houses with no handrails so a nice 3m drop. The one they showed this week also had cantilevered treads that flexed as you walked up.

[bowber]

My son works at a busy truck stop/services just off the M6, this week a truck pulled in to the pumps with a wheel so hot the axle was glowing and the wheel had changed colour, he was told to move his truck asap.

Steve

[sid.]

Back in 80's, i pulled into a garage to fill up, as the car in front pulled away he caught the fuel hose with the corner of his bumper and drove off leaving the nozzle in the pump and the hose gushing fuel out on thefloor, made a quick escape.

[HedgeHopper]

Drama Queen, A lit fag has a miniscule chance of igniting the sparse vapour, a static discharge when someone gets out of there car/truck whatever and grounds themselves against the bodywork is a far greater risk, but in reality it hardly ever happens