Fire!We were all in my aunt's kitchen at the back of her huge rambling Victorian house. I was only small and had wandered off to go to the loo, but given up after finding the hall full of smoke. "That was quick," my mum said after a few minutes. "Yes - it's all smoky," I replied.
I've never seen adults move so fast.
So, like my cousin who'd managed to set fire to the roof, tell us your fire stories.
(
chthonic, Thu 3 Nov 2005, 9:11)
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My fire story, a long one too...It all started one Monday morning. I was a dole scrounger at the time so I was enjoying a lie in. In my half awake/half asleep state I could hearing crackling and smell smoke, but I assumed it was somebody outside having a bonfire. I could also hear my family downstairs, going about their usual monday morning business, so I assumed all was well..
...Until the crackling got louder. So I leaned over, and without getting out of bed, poked my head out of the door to see what was going on.
The airing cupboard was on fire, and I mean a proper fire, with two foot flames leaping out the side of the door.
Cue me, flying out of bed as fast as I've ever done in my life, while shouting something along the lines of 'Oh mother dear... there appears to be a conflagration in our airing cupboard'. I didn't even get dressed properly, so I had to wait for the firemen with nothing on my feet, a pair of paint ridden jogging bottoms, and a moth-eaten old lumberjack shirt. I looked a right twat.
Five minutes later, the firemen turned up, and then spent another five minutes messing about before they decided to enter the house. Eventually they had the fire out, but that wasn't enough, oh no. They had to open all the upstairs doors and windows, put a huuuge fan at the front door and blow all the smoke out of the house. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but it left a right fucking mess upstairs.
The bathroom was the worst hit, everything had turned the same shade of grey, and I mean everything. You know that episode of Mr Bean, where he decorates by blowing up a can of paint? Well it was like that... but grey.
Half an hour later, some nosey journo and a photographer turn up from the local rag, and photograph me and my sister looking glum next to the smouldering remains of the airing cupboard. Never made it into the paper though.
In the afternoon, our insurance company sent round a cleaning company to start sorting out the damage, which was nice. They took away my PC, and decided that the smoke had damaged it beyond repair, so the insurance company coughed up and I got a shit hot new one, which was also quite nice.
Oh, and the reason for the fire? At first, faulty electrics were blamed, but it later emerged that some ten minutes before the fire, my old mum was reading the meter in the airing cupboard. Now, I know for a fact that the daft old mare read the meter with a lighter, bless her. No, we didn't have gas at all in the house, but some six inches above said meter is a rack full of towels. It doesn't take Columbo to figure out what the fuck happened.
I bought her a torch soon afterwards.
No apologies for length. You love it.
(, Mon 7 Nov 2005, 16:36, Reply)
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