A scientific experiment

In my previous post I mentioned my friend Peter. I had two other close friends at the time (1964). Bill and Carl. I'll write about Carl in particular some other time. We were all smokers at the ripe old age of 10!

One afternoon the four of us gathered at Peter's house. I can pinpoint the day; it was Melbourne Show Day 1964 - which means it was the last Thursday in September. Windows clock only goes back as far as 1980 but we can work around that! If we apply the 28 year rule we know that each day in 1992 exactly matches the same date in 1964 so I know the date I'm remembering was September 24th 1964. Roll it forward until this year taking account of leap years if you don't believe me :-)

So there we were, on that balmy September afternoon, a public holiday, I'm not sure which of us came up with the idea (I suspect it was me) but we decided to determine what happened if one boils urine.

No sooner conceived than executed! We filled a saucepan with urine and put it on the stove! Brought it to the boil and stood around waiting. At about that time the Newman faction from across the street issued a challenge. Honour required that we respond.

Need I state that we lost track of time? I suspect not. About an hour later we discovered what happens if one boils urine and forgets that it's still boiling. I still count myself fortunate that the experiment was conducted at a friends house and not mine!

To forestall the correspondence; the saucepan boiled dry and burned the salts left behind. The saucepan was beyond redemption. For a couple of weeks so was the atmosphere in the house! My friends bum burned almost as hot for the first day or so...