Not a pyro myself, but I was in the climbing club at school, and a couple of them were predictably short of the gene that tells the rest of us "uh, are you sure that's a good idea...?" An unsupervised trip to the school cottage in Yorkshire, in company with a large amount of (underage) alcohol, various preprepared sparkly-and-bangy things, and climbing and caving gear, was particularly memorable. So much so that I'm amazed nothing went too badly wrong. The wall above the fireplace finished off black with various stuff thrown/sprayed on the fire.

The only actual injury was to me though, and it was the lowest-tech thing you can imagine. One of the guys heated up a coin on the fire to orange heat, then put it on a bit of rolled-up newspaper and showed it to another guy. This bloke thought he was being threatened with it, so he kicked the newspaper, and the coin flew with absolute precision straight down the neck-hole of my shirt! With unusual presence of mind, I didn't bother trying to get it out but simply leaned right forward to get it away from my skin. In the 2-3 seconds while I was figuring out what to do next, the coin solved the problem by burning its way out Alien-wise through my T-shirt and sweatshirt, then dropping onto the carpet and burning through that to the stone floor. I had a neat round burn scar on my chest for a few years after that.

This was the same trip where two of the guys (the pyros, unsuprisingly) went abseiling from the Ribblehead Viaduct at night, and when asked where they'd tied the ropes off, they said "around the rails". Their main concern was getting a good anchor, and the possible flaw in their plan simply hadn't occurred to them - thank goodness British Rail didn't run night trains on that line.

For fire-related action, a particularly dim lad at school deserves a special mention. This was in the mid-80s when nylon tents were just starting to take off but weren't yet flameproofed. In defiance of rules he decided to use his Trangia inside his tent, and then he had a moment of curiosity and wondered what a lit Trangia burner looked like from below. For those who don't know, a Trangia is a meths stove which is designed to draw its air through a perforated panel in the base, so lift it up and suddenly you've got a whole lot more air reaching the burner. Witnesses said that it was very impressive to watch. The tent burned so fast that he was completely unscathed - the fire just flashed straight round him and burned the whole tent in a couple of seconds, leaving him sitting stunned in the open air as bits of tent ash dropped round him.

Graham.