Today’s post is the final part of a trilogy of fire stories. This is one I’m slightly reluctant to tell, since it doesn’t involve me. It does, however, concern a close relation (not Mrs Tin or any of the Tinkids) who shall henceforth be known as TinFamilyRelative, or TFR.
TFR drove quite an old car, since she was young and it was her first one. It therefore had to undergo an NCT (National Car Test, our equivalent of the MOT) each year. She took the car along and, slightly to her surprise, it passed. God knows what they did while they were checking it, but two days later she was driving it along just outside the town of Ashford when smoke started billowing from under her bonnet. She stopped the car, stepped out and looked under the bonnet, to discover that her engine was on fire.
Clearly she was in need of a fire extinguisher, which she didn’t have. She thought for a few seconds, reckoned that Ashford Service Station was bound to have a fire extinguisher, so got back into the car and drove down there.
Now, nowhere in the Rules of the Road does it state (a) never get into a burning car or indeed (b) never drive a burning car into a petrol station. Perhaps some laws are simply regarded as self-evident.
Anyway, she was proven right, the Service Station did indeed have a fire extinguisher. In fact it had several, and people arrived from all directions, spraying and spraying until her car looked like a clown after a custard-pie fight. They shouted a lot at TFR, who is well able to stand up for herself, and who simply shouted back until all present agreed that yes, the fire was out, yes, the town was still in one piece and yes, one of them would drive her home.
The tales of the last three days have led me towards a theory. I reckon it was an ancestor of ours, let’s call him Tin-Ugg, who discovered fire. There were many things he could then have done. He could have used it to warm himself, he could have used it to light his cave, he could have used it to cook meat. Being related to us, though, Tin-Ugg lit one end of a stick and poked it into an inactive volcano, just to see what would happen. The massive crater in the Yucutan Peninsula in Mexico, hitherto believed to have been caused by a giant meteorite, was the result.
If my theory is correct, the Tinfamily wiped out the dinosaurs.