The Wind That Burns

Have you ever had the experience of letting rip a huge fart, smiling to yourself at the fantastic sound it made and feeling of relief that releasing it into the wild gave you and chuckling at the thought of how it would undoubtedly leave anyone unfortunate enough to be down wind of it gagging, then idiotically turned around and walked back into it?  It just happened to me.  I swear that it was so evil smelling that it left me gasping for breath and my eyes stinging.  Only seconds earlier I'd been proudly contemplating how it had reverberated around the kitchen as I'd let fly.  I mean, I was on my own in my own house, so I felt I had a right to let out a postern blast.  After all, if we can't break wind without inhibitions or regard for social convention in the privacy of our own homes, where can we?  It's one of the great secret pleasures of life, isn't it?  There's something, I don't know, therapeutic perhaps, about it.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who obsessively sniffs their own farts for pleasure.  You know the sort - they like nothing better than letting rip a huge fart in bed, then wafting the covers up and down so as to ensure getting a full nose full of their own stench.  No, I just enjoy the simple pleasure of being able to break wind without inhibition in private.

Anyway, this eye watering close encounter with my own fart left me, once I'd recovered, thinking nostalgically of previous fart-related incidents in my life.  Most spectacular, as I recall, was the fart-lighting craze which gripped many of my acquaintances in our teens.  It provided simple, yet highly amusing entertainment, requiring only a naked flame and a full gaseous load.  Obviously, it was important to only attempt lighting one's emissions through the fabric of trousers or underwear.  I'm sure that we've all heard the cautionary (and probably apocryphal) tales of those foolish enough to try bare arsed fart lighting, resulting in their bum hair or pubes bursting into flame, leaving them with serious - not to mention embarrassing to explain to the hospital - burns.  But, even filtered through trousers, a fart lighting session could produce some truly spectacular blue flames shooting out of one's backside.  Mind you, even with trousers on, there was a risk.  I once lit a fart whilst wearing a pair of trousers with a frayed and ragged hole in the crutch - the frayed material was left smouldering after one especially powerful rear end explosion was ignited. 

But, despite the thrills provided by fart lighting, perhaps my most satisfying fart-related memory is that of the time I used my effusions to defeat school bullies.  Said bullies - actually they were a pretty pathetic bunch who were semi-good at sports combined with a sense of social superiority engendered through having pretentious middle class parents - habitually loitered at the back of morning assembly and liked to demonstrate their 'superiority' by poking, kicking and hissing threats and abuse at those in front of them.  One morning in assembly, I had the pleasure of letting rip, for virtually the entire assembly, a series of 'Silent But Deadly' farts, which silenced them completely.  In fact, the farts were apparently so evil smelling that the bullying bastards were left gagging and incapable of carrying out any of their usual antics, Insisting on standing at the back, as they did, they found themselves trapped, unable to escape the horrific stench.  I'm sure the UN would have condemned me for use of chemical weapons in my war against bullying, but my faux mustard gas attack had a long lasting effect, with the little shits backing off from their bullying activities in morning assembly.