Monday. Start the week

Bonfires

Bonfires have always held a fascination for me. The lighting, the re-lighting, the coaxing and stoking, the sheer excitement of being in complete control. Lovely.

We had one a couple of years ago. I was in my armchair at the time and control was not quite complete.

I was watching the one-o’clock News and eating cheese and dry biscuits. The news was tedious. Real life is so much more exciting.

Like the thin coil of black smoke rising from the top of the set. Now, that was news and reasonably exciting.

I was alone in the house. My wife was on the bus to the city to do shopping. I wrenched the mains plug from its socket and spent perhaps one minute in trying the instinctive ways of putting fires out but to little effect, abandoned them and concentrated on the now obvious solution: getting the set outside.

Smoke does so get in your eyes. Black carbon-rich smoke from fired-up plastic is a great tear-generator. But worse was the weight of this set. It was an old cathode ray tube type and, having got hold of the thing and started lifting, I knew within seconds that gravity was winning fast. I dropped it on the stone hearth, grabbed the phone and called the Fire chaps.

The smoke was now accompanied by small drips of flaming plastic; our pale beige carpet welcomed them and joined the party.  As I ran outside I noticed that the bottom of one long curtain was well alight. Once outside and across the road I could see the thick column of black smoke rising vertically from the house and words like ‘demolition’ and ‘reconstruction’ floated across my vision.

The Fire Service arrived unbelievably quickly and its crew found me sitting on a neighbour’s low front-garden wall and being served sweet tea by the owner.

There was a charming interlude as the fire was being dealt with. Two ambulances drew up. The driver of the first one checked that I was unharmed, and left. But the other said, almost apologetically, that he had been on his way back to base after attending a little plane crash over the hill. He had heard the alarm and had just popped round to see if he could help.

They’re like that round here.

It was six months before we could return to the house. Rebuilding work had been done, with complete redecoration and refurnishing. With our daughter helping enormously and the whole family rallying round, the entire operation was handled brilliantly by my wife. Me, I tried to look helpful.

In the evening of the day it happened Barbara said, ‘You know what today is, don't you.'

I shook my head. Barbara usually knows these things.

'It was ten years ago today that we moved in.'

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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010