Oooh speaking of explosives....again from my husbands youth not mine, I was sooo good. *BG*

His friend Bob, who was a dutiful newspaper carrier, was constantly the recipient of verbal abuse from the local neighbourhood crank. It seems that some of the younger kids in the area habitually made a short cut with their bikes across the corner of the angry man's yard, compressing the roots of his rose buhes and the man decided Bob was the culprit.

Bob eventually tired of the false accusations and being a bright spark got busy with some old bits of a transistor radio, explosives and a radio transmitter. He carefully buried the products of his fertile mind in the man's yard and waited until one afternoon when the fellow was out in his front garden. When Bob passed by on his bicycle on his paper route, the man started his usual tirade, whereupon Bob hit the switch on the transmitter in the front carrier of his bike and the rose bushes in contention, along with a large quantity of soil flew ten feet in air, while Bob quietly pedalled on.

Another of my husband's school friends was deeply into rocketry. They decided that a rocket powered canoe seemed like a good project and tested their theories one Saturday morning in an area of Esquimalt Harbour. They attached the home constructed rockets to either side of the canoe and my husband's young friend set off across the harbour on a test run. All went well until one of the rockets disattached from the side of the craft and my husband's friend was left spinning in circles in the middle of the harbour until the fuel was spent, while the detatched projectile shot across the bay and fortunately lodged itself in a log boom.

Our daughter recently made an animated film of the hubris of mankind regarding technology, which she based upon the event. She won an award for best animated short for her endeavour. Maybe she should do a cartoon of the rose bush incident as well.