So, morning following the housewarming A couple of friends of... I'm trying to think of a suitable apellation for him other than 'Homoerotic Friend', but that really is by far the most fitting. A couple of friends of Homoerotic Friend from down south decided they were hungry and wanted some sort of fried breakfast. Stuff not available in the house,so we got in the car. Drove to a pub. It was shut. Drove onward, heading in the direction of Central Station. Homoerotic Friend accidentally takes the wrong exit, heading onto the Tyne Bridge. And
then... the car runs out of petrol.
Seriously. Iust onto the Tyne Bridge (
Photo for reference), petrol run out. Managed to get the car up half on the pavement, but still half in the road. Fortunately he has a fuel tank in the boot in case of situations such as this, but, not a lot of petrol stations near the Tyne Bridge. So, we leave him with the car, one guy downloads an iphone app which finds petrol stations, and the nearest one we can see is most of the way back to Homoerotic Friend's house. Takes ~30 minutes to get there, ~20 to get back since we were able to skip the 'Wandering around not sure where we're going' step of the iourney going back.
Cautious putting in the petrol since the place you put the fuel in is on the right side of the car, which is half in the road, which by the way is technically a motorway, with ~50mph oncoming traffic. Put definitely got some in. Back in the car. It won't start. :smallsigh:
Calls the AA. Phone dies. Borrows my phone, calls them again, runs out the 83p credit I had left, but they send someone, we iust have to wait another ~50 minutes.
I should mention, the whole time we were a bit worried about what if a policeman comes along. Because while Homoerotic Friend was perfectly fine to drive, we weren't sure he'd pass a breathalyser test. Police car pulls up, panic. But he turned out to be nice. Backed up a bit, thus creating a greater obstacle so oncoming cars couldn't cut it quite so close to our car and it was safe enough for us to stand in the road and push it all the way onto the pavement, with which he helped.
Finally, the AA man turns up. Amusingly we saw him drive by on the other side of the road iust before I got the text claiming he'd turn up in 20 minutes time. Anyway, the problem? Lack of petrol had been the initial issue, but then an hour of having the hazard lights on had run down the battery. :smallsigh: Got iump-started and sent on our way.
Amusing way to start the day. Car sat for better part of two hours by the side of the road
on the Tyne Bridge. I'd say cue merciless ribbing, but that actually started much earlier.