Diesel spill causes me personal pain in the butt.

Sorry - no pictures, I was a bit shaken up. Around midday today I had an appointment in Cannington and took advantage of the glorious weather by scootering there. Appointment over, I rewarded myself by going to A-Mart Sports and Bunnings off Albany Highway for a bit of a good poke around. Then headed back to Albany Highway via Carden St and Liege St, because it's in the right direction for home.

As I got to behind PVS Jobfind and around the corner, the wheels just kind of slid out from under the scooter without a hope of stopping it, and next moment I'm sliding along on my left butt cheek watching poor ScrappyV precede me, spinning in lazy little circles as we both ended in the middle of the road. Two things struck me at about the same moment - one, the road was VERY slippery, I seemed to just never slow down, and two, as I was sliding along there was a thin spray of diesel oil coming from my left butt cheek.

A third, unbidden and unwanted thing also struck me about then - skidding along on your arse in a pair of cargo pants presented NO protection from all the suddenly very impressively bumpy lumps in the bitumen and the friction was making things really really HOT! I currently have a third butt cheek, in the form of a swollen abrasion on my thigh.

So then I noticed that all of one side of the road was saturated in diesel fuel oil, for as far as I could see. Someone is going to be really pissed off at losing an easy 50 to 150 litres of fuel, at today's prices. Serves them right.

I got myself and the scooter off the road just in time, as a car came around that same corner and also got a bit of a wobble up as it hit the diesel with the left wheels, and had I still been on the road he couldn't have stopped in time to prevent an accident. I counted my lucky angels and rode along the footpath and the kerb. That fuel spill ran for over a block, around a roundabout, and right up to the lights at Albany Highway. A LOT of fuel, and if it had been on a major road, there would have been dozens of incidents and perhaps even loss of life.

I looked for the number of City of Canning in the book, found the office of the Member for Tangney and called them. Conversations proceeded a bit like this:

• Tangney Representative? "Not our responsibility, but we'll call the Police."
• Police? "Oh. Here's the number for the City of Canning"
• CoC? "Umm okay will put you through to Engineering"
• CoCE? "Might call the Police or the Fire Brigade, sounds like it's a traffic hazard"

And since I was the first person to inform them of the big spill, I've had nothing but calls back wanting to know my address and shoe size and everything else - but not one of them asked if I had a complaint I wanted to take up about my accident or if I was okay or not. As it turns out - sitting gingerly on a nice soft cushion - I am okay.

C'est la vie in WA...