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The Spam Fritter thought it had claimed this blog forever, but ve haf vays ov rescuing blogs (sometimes), so I'm going to resubmit it again (it has been hidden away in the 'processing clinic').

Last night (Thursday (several Thursdays ago now)) was Bonfire Night. It was supposed to be Saturday (High schoolers are home then) but plans change on Coll with the weather, and the weather forecasts. When we aren't talking about the weather we are talking about weather forecast sites; we are complete weather freaks! Anyway, all the best Coll events have back-up (or forward-up dates). However, for burger van drivers it meant a more drastic change of plan, as I was due to flit back to my other pub on Saturday and wasn't expecting to be there at all. So defrosting rolls and checking the ketchup was easy, but a tyre had gone flat so that meant a trip to the village to borrow a compressor. Half an hour later (and a cup of tea) I left with a foot pump; the compressor was needed to remove the back chassis on a landrover. On the plus side the foot pump was lighter and easier to set up, and it had a handy guage telling me when there was enough air in the tyre. Also it might increase my heart rate in a healthy way and if I counted twenty pumps with each foot it would help my arithmetic, except it kept falling over on pump 16. At 25 psi there was an audible hissing from the tyre. Not a good sign! A quick visual inspection and my untrained eye (and hand) discovered the sidewall of the tyre was badly split and chucking out air quicker than my foot could pump it in. However, plan B included using the spare, which had a shiny new cross ply tyre on (I thought they were obsolete, wrong again). Never buy a burger van trailer on price, if you go for a cheap model it will irritate endlessly. So to change the wheel, first deflate the tyre, otherwise it won't tilt sideways enough to come free. Out comes all the fresh hard-pumped-in-air and off comes the wheel. Then deflate the spare, this is OK, it was pumped up in Oban by someone else, but once it is 'persuaded' on it is back on the footpump again. I put in an 'acceptable' amount of air, and promised the tyre it could have the rest courtesy of the petrol station compressor (left full out of hours - but diesel is 拢1.57).
So down in the village at the bonfire, that is, parked at the bottom of a big rock with the action above, I was terribly popular until I admitted to not enough burgers. Or rolls. Or to not having any water for tea and hot chocolate, fortunately the generator came to my rescue and ran out of petrol (拢1.3?) so I had nothing of anything left.
The fireworks were noisy, bits were colourful, but to get the best out of fireworks they are best not watched (or at least, not seen) from inside a burger van; next year I am going to rent it out to under-fives who would rather be not so close to the action. Back at the top of the rock the bonfire had slumped to a very hot glowing pile. A significant part had been the old 'Climbing frame/Pirate ship' from the play park and as it reached the glowing charcoal stage it was easy to see the number of nails needed in construction - they were the dark straight lines in the multi-oranged glowing heap. (In construction I am a screw fan, preferably stainless)
And from the rock, looking down over the village, I offered my opinion that the village looked quite large; with all the lights on I thought it looked a prosperous optimistic place. However, from an Isle of Man view-point, it is still small.