I'd heard of that one, but had never seen it before.

My dad had rather more success when it was decided during the 1976 drought that they had to blow up 'the dam head' just outside town. It was actually more of a weir (on the Wear), where there'd once been a sluice off to a watermill, but the mill was long gone and water levels were so low nothing could get upriver to spawn. I think the Water Board made the decision, but delegated doing it to the council engineers department, and hence my dad. His part was solely hiring the demolition company, but he timed it so he could shoot up to school, pick up me and my sister and give us a ringside seat before the shot went off. There was rather less spattering of the audience than in Oregon.

Forty-plus years later and the local fishermen still haven't forgiven him.