Petrol

In a pre-emptive strike, here is an obituary of petrol.

Discovered in the mid 1840s by the explorer Peter Rollings [later Lord Peter Rollings] who forced his name on it, Petrol was initially thought to be a disinfectant of some kind and was in fact popular with many Victorian maids and housekeepers who mainly used it to wash clothes which [inevitably] led to variable results.

Because, as can be seen in all pictures of the time, the Victorian era was in Black and White, Petrol also came in that colour. Being the conservative blend of chemicals and molecules that it is, Petrol saw no need to change it's colour to fit into 'some fad' (which by now now modern historians refer to as "The Twentieth Century") and kept to its original black. Though life is by now in full colour (exploited in a most ugly and insulting way by the '1980s'), High Definition and Surround Sound, Petrol does not see the need to change it's colour. Some have remarked how this is quintessential of Petrol's stubborness whilst others see it as an integral part of it's loyal character.

Petrol's lighter side can be seen in the myriad of family pictures left after it. One particular one shows it pushing its favourite child BioDiesel on a swing. It is not certain whether or not Petrol may or may not have beaten its children. Despite this fact and/or fiction, clearly Petrol was at its happiest when with the things he loved. Some have misunderstood Petrol's constant strangling of the environment [albeit indirectly] as a hate for the countryside but nay, this was never the case. In fact, when there wasn't [and isn't] enough Petrol to go around it is in the countryside you will often find it having buried itself deep into the ground. Rather amusingly, so deep had its hiding place become, it could often take days to find it.

Petrol will almost always be remembered as the inventor of the "Pump". Monuments to Petrol's Pump have been raised across the world. It is a daily ritual for many to visit these pumps and pay homage having taken their fill of this glorious invention. Despite it's conservative ways, Petrol's influence and inspiration was far reaching stretching as far as the humble Shoe as proven here in the image on the right.
Poets waxed lyrical about Petrol not the least of which was Oscar Wilde. His thoughts are eloquently set down here in his famous poem for Petrol "Silenitum Amoris"

AS oftentimes the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.
And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which was its only instrument of song,
So my too stormy passions work me wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.
But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show
Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go,
Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,
And I to nurse the barren memory
Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

Despite Wilde's poetic skill, in closing, none have said it better than Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron: "Who knows where Petrol is now. Surely it is Dead. I rode my bike to work. You?"

Petrol [1844-2036]