The Dangers Of Pickle Defusing
Budgerigar Happenstance is probably the UK’s leading exponent of the almost lost art of pickle defusing. After all, today’s mostly harmless range of mass-manufactured pickles are – usually – quite safe to approach. There is none of the danger, or the excitement, associated with approaching, say a pickled onion, as there was back when pickles were mainly homemade.
For, as recently as the late 1950s, it was necessary to evacuate Rotherham, for example, when a home-pickled onion went critical on a cold buffet plate at a Christmas Eve party.
It was then necessary to call out the country’s most famous pickle defuser, Budgerigar Happenstance to the scene to make the onion safe. It was also necessary for him safely dispose of a piece of pork pie that had become contaminated by its proximity to the pickled onion on the plate.
Of course, commercial pickling did not mean that there was no longer any need or demand for the pickle defusers. After all, there was a famous incident out on the newly built Wolverhampton ring road in the late 1960s. There, a commercial pickle lorry overturned when the lights turning green surprised the driver. This was an unusual occurrence on the Wolverhampton Ring Road then as it is now. The accident spread a piccalilli slick across all the lanes of the ring road, bringing traffic to even more of a halt than usual.
It was Budgerigar Happenstance’s job to make sure that the piccalilli didn’t – as it threatened to – overwhelm the town’s nascent anti-pickle defences. The town council built these anti-pickle defences after a particularly dangerous pickle-related incident during the earlier building of the Wulfrun Centre. There, construction workers on the site discovered an unopened jar of WWII-era pickled beetroot. As a precaution, they evacuated the whole town – for a five-mile radius – around the volatile jar.
It took three years to declare the area finally completely pickle free, during which time the building work was postponed and the police imposed a night-time curfew in the danger zone. The West Midlands police Anti-pickle squad was on full alert during the emergency.
However, despite a gherkin warning that turned out to be a false alarm, they discovered no more wartime pickles. Despite this, the local council made a promise to erect the UK’s first anti-pickle urban defences. They were – consequently – re-elected on a landslide poll with an almost unbelievable 27 people turning out to vote in a local election in one Wolverhampton ward. Despite – or because of – Wolves having a home match that night.
Budgerigar Happenstance retired from pickle defusing in the late 1980s. The Queen knighted him, on behalf of a grateful nation, for all he had done – often against overwhelming odds – to make this country safe from the dangers of over-volatile pickles. For that, we should always remember Budgerigar Happenstance and be grateful to him for making this country as relatively pickle-safe as it is today.
