P for prepare, party and petrol

Preparation
With Pav's 40th birthday party themed as anything starting with the letter 'P' Kerry had the idea to go as Pav himself in face-mask form. Either everyone thought it was such a great idea or they were too lazy to get an outfit themselves so we made 7 masks on Friday night. Unfortunately I only had a couple of photos of Pav in high resolution so had to lift them from Facebook. We ended up with 6 identical DJ pose Pavs and one 'teethy goon' Pav. Kerry's printer served well with the output glued to cardboard then some chopsticks sawn in half taped to the back.

Party
Pav's party itself, hosted at the Clapham's Artesian Well was a great laugh. The birthday boy had punked himself up whereas there were a fair share of police, pirates, more punks, a Playboy bunny, a couple of priests (special mention to Jake for his Father Ted outfit), oh and a pimp. The winner of the competition was a Primadonna but slightly confused by Pav's speech to say there was a second prize but never announced it or awarded a prize. Thanks to great Blue Peter style trick I created a flash diffuser from a plastic milk carton with quite pleasing results though kept losing it whilst jigging about. Kerry had picked up a friendly stranger called Paddy whilst outside smoking. In fact everyone at the party knew him from night. Whilst he was digging a hole (conversational) about chatting her up we saw some biker get nicked by the real police outside at the traffic lights.

Petrol
We left before 3am sharing a taxi with Trev and new Thai lady, Pom to collect the car at Kev and Karol's then gave them a lift back at Coulsdon. Driving back to Trev's was no problem but knew we had to refuel for diesel before the last leg to Brighton as we only had 20 miles of diesel. We stopped at a BP and I instantly used the pump next to the Unleaded. After £20 worth I immediately realised my mistake. The nozzle I had picked up was in fact Ultimate Unleaded not diesel! Luckily I hadn't started the engine so left the car as it was next to pump and told anyone who came up behind me. Kerry took quite well but was more concerned at needing the toilet which the petrol station guy wouldn't let us in. We rang the RAC and at first would only tow us upto 10 miles as it was driver fault. A second call asked if they could recover us for an extra cost which they did for £150. The petrol station assistant took pity on Kerry (or me) and let her in to use the loo but she had to hide from other customers until they went.

Peckham
An hour later and the recovery lorry collects us. Incredibly the recovery guy says he had to drive from Peckham as he was the only operator in the area then moaned that he wouldn't make his bonus or get overtime for the job. He also had a permanent limp which turned on the guilt. We got back about 6am. The recovery driver told me that it was quite a common thing to happen with the wrong fuel especially with men and even more common with ambulance drivers and the Police.

Pain (in wallet)
After a few hours kip I looked up what type of damage I could expect. Garage fees ranged from £150 to £400, if the engine had started and unleaded used even more, a lot more! I managed to contact my dad, who knows a thing or two about cars. He'd done the same thing himself but had driven the van over 100 miles with the wrong fuel. His tip was to add a litre of oil to the tank (as diesel acts as a lubricant as well) then fill the rest with diesel. Since I hadn't started the car there was still diesel in the pump and a nearest station was 0.5 mile away. I had to drive another 50 miles at low revs to check if it was ok. A few jiggy moments and stalling when braking for junctions but otherwise it went well. Another few hundred miles topping up the tank will sort it out.