The day I nearly got exploded

Strangely enough, for someone who really CANNOT COOK AT ALL, I seem to have this knack (read: passion) for cooking and eating pizzas. It all came about a few years ago when my parents built an outdoor entertainment area at their place and decided to add a woodfired pizza oven. This was a brilliant move for quite a few reasons:

- It gave me an excuse to burn things
- Woodfired pizza without some smug fuck dumping lettuce, artichokes and sundried tomatoes on your pizza.





"Excuse me waiter, what the fuck is this?"




While I’m at it, I would like to point out that I have absolutely nothing to do with the slice of SHIT pictured at the top of this post. I took that photo at Cooney’s one night. I can tell why their pizza is free.

Anyway I digress. The pizza oven was built with a gas system included (I really don’t know why, it’s a WOODFIRED OVEN) and this was pretty fun for a while when I learned that I could yank on a lever and have an Xbox-huge jet of burning death engulf the inside of the oven. I did this for a few months until one day when I was peering inside watching the flame, and the flame sucked back in on itself.

Now, I don’t trust gas systems in the slightest. I’d never seen the flame retreat in on itself. The very next thing I remember is a loud BANG and getting knocked on my ass a few metres back from where I was standing. Seems that there was a small leak in one of the connections and it allowed gas to collect underneath the oven. Eventually it got a spark and the whole pocket of gas exploded. It blew the front of the cupboard in half and the explosion took off a lot of hair from my legs. The oven itself was unharmed (Resilient things those woodfired ovens). I was fairly lucky that I had instinctively leaned away when the flame disappeared because I was usually poking my head pretty close to the oven. Apart from a few slight burns, the stench of burnt hair and a few grazes from where I slid across the concrete, I was okay.

We don’t use the gas system anymore.