The day Dad discovered that he could convert
vegetable peelings into electric energy was like winning the lottery.
Suddenly we were going to live in a home powered by spuds, our car would
be driven by Sunday lunch left overs and eventually people would cross
the atlantic on an aircraft driven by huge turnip turbines.
Well, every journey starts
with the first step so I was delighted when he declared that my old soap
box go-cart would be the prototype and me the guinea pig driver. Two weeks
later my humble cart had been converted into a beast of a machine complete
with a wheelbarrow full of compost on the front, a huge copper hot water
tank to the rear and twenty heavy duty lorry batteries along with their
dynamos, strapped to the chasis. The whole thing looked ridiculous and
must of weighed over half a ton.
The first run was pitiful. I drove the cart as the power was being generated,
the result being that I crawled along at less than half a mile an hour.
So Dad figured that we needed to build up a head of stored energy before
I sat off. Thirty minutes later the rear boiler was glowing red, the dynamos
were spinning like Catherine wheels and the whole cart was buried under
a pungent smog of rotting veg.
As our neighbours looked on, the road ahead became clear and Dad gave me the signal to go. I enthusiastically engaged the drive shaft expecting nothing more than a brisk roll forward, instead the rubber wheels bit into the tarmac and threw myself and the spud cart forward like a pebble from a catapult. Within 4 jaw juddering seconds I had reached the end of our road and as fought with the steering wheel to turn out of the junction, the wheels screeched in pain as I rounded the corner and flew out into the Old Kent Road. Unfortunately, the hot water tank became separated from the cart and carried on going across the road eventually ending up going through the front window of Burtons Menswear, totally dismantling their Autumn collection in the process
Continued....
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