Our local refinery (half a mile away) had an 'accident' yesterday.
(As they've admitted it, I used their name in the heading - sorry Mods - please feel free to change if you feel like it!)
The neighbour knocked on my door, and said "have you seen what's outside. I hadn't.
There was a huge pall of sooty 'cloud' sweeping over the neighbourhood. The car was covered in hundreds of glops of oil, and the Mrs was less than pleased, as she had just put out a whole line full of washing ...
Fortunately for me, I'd just washed the car a few days before, and given it a damn good wax cost, and it was parked in the shade of the house, so the overnight 'dew' was still all over the top surfaces. Most of the oil settled on that, so I was able to squeegee it off without too much bother. But the sides are very grubby, and the windows needed a good scrub so we could see out of them.
Now the guys have offered to 'compensate' locals for the inconvenience - well, that's Mrs back at the washtub *ching*, car off for a hand-scrub at the local carwash *ching*, the pool - which looks like the Exxon Valdez came visiting - is going to need another clean *ching* ...
" ... the spray of crude oil was caused when water accidentally mixed with hot crude oil, causing pressure to increase and the safety valve to pop.
This caused a cloud of steam and oil to billow from the stack and spread over the Table View area ...
Enraged residents were found washing their cars and rewashing their laundry on Sunday afternoon.
White picket fences, pools, garden furniture, plants, roofs and walls were sprayed with the oil."
www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=14&art_i...9
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Must have been very annoying and frustrating...:-(
Just hope that the northerly winds aren't strong enough to despatch some of it to the UK..:-)
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Northerly?????????????????
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Basically, if you fly in a southerly direction from the UK, you will eventually fly over Africa...:-)
At least that's what happened the last time I did the journey to J'burg and Cape Town.
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And northerly winds will blow the stuff down to Antarctica.
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Blowing in, not from, a northerly direction...
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Ah ... but a "Northerly wind" in fact means a wind blowing from the North!
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It was meant as a bit of a cheer up type response - not part of an A-level exam answer.
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Oh yes, but haven't you read "The Joy of Pedantry"?
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'The Joys of Pedantry' perhaps?
pmh (was peter)
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We still have a lot of volcanic dust (like silica) lying around from the Mt.Pinatubo eruption 12 years ago. When we get strong winds as we do in the typhoon season this stuff gets whipped up and covers the cars with a fine abrasive coating, so care is needed in washing it off. I got used to it over the years, but it can really mess up modern soft paint if you're not careful.
Herself is also heard to mutter what appear to be imprecations in her local province dialect while having to re-wash her delicate underpinnings which were arrayed on the line.
But not oil, thankfully, at least yet. We do have a refinery about 12km away.....
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Errrrrrr How far away is the nearest Nuclear reactor?
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When weather conditions are "favourable", the UK's south coast can occasionally be hit by sand from the Sahara, some of it being red in colour.
Some years ago those of us in the North West suffered from this Sahara sand fallout for two or three days - everything was covered with a fine layer of sand which we thought, at first, had been blown in from the local beach.
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Errrrrrr How far away is the nearest Nuclear reactor?
I live in Table View.
The reactor is at Koeberg.
www.capestay.co.za/view-regions.asp?RegionID=2
Oh, and there's NO WAY that map is to scale. Try 10 miles.
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Follow up.
Took the car down to the carwash at 7:30 this morning (after getting bored with waiting yesterday!!!). There was the carwash boss checking vehicles "we get a lot of chancers, you know", and a suitably-buttkissing Caltex official there. Through the wash, then a tribe of workers descended on the car and gave it the once-over with a polishing compound. Looks very smart now, though I'll have to rewax at the weekedn (Only did it last Tuesday, so I'm a bit peeeved).
They say they are working 07h00 to 21h30 non stop buffing cars! So far the only problem they have is with canopies, which seem to absorb the oil into the glassfibre! "And no convertibles. yet. thank god..." says the Caltex man! Still, they've turned it into a bit of a PR exercise, and fair dos to them for that. The carwash owner is smiling all the way to the bank, as well ...
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Sounds like the time I put a set of hydraulic tappets in the dishwasher, how was I to know they had pockets full of oil hidden away!
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Well the wind is blowing from south today as we are apparently getting rain from Spain ! Lived in CTown for 2 years.
Nothing is interesting if you're not interested.
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