Fire

Of course we took photos! We had the best seats on the block! The morning started off well enough with the wind behaving brilliantly...but it just took a careless comment about 'how lucky we are about the wind' to switch it to our direction, bringing with it plumes of evil smoke. Our house stood up quite well and didn't smell too smoky...but it was a long day and by the end of it my nerves were shot and I was convinced we'd need professional cleaners to come in and 'de-smoke' our house. I think we need professional cleaners, but they need to clean the outside of our house which is definitely worse for wear after all the smoke, water and ash. The fire service have already offered to send in cleaners, so I'm not too worried, but yes, there were times in the day when I was ranting and raving and venting about this and that to Ben, who was calm and bemused. No wonder he's a bloody paramedic - calm in the face of calamity and chaos. Me? I'm excitable. I'm a designer - I get excited about how a bit of paper is folded! So yes, I did freak out a tad when the smoke was billowing our way. I was the one bounding out of the house demanding the fireman put up more hoses to fend away the smoke. (It works!). I took Josh out just as it got exciting and went for a walk into town to get some random things done. Unfortunately it wasn't all over when I got back. Indeed, they were just beginning on the house directly in front of us (there were 2 houses on the property) (there will be 3 eventually - joy.) The fireman presented me with a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates at the end of the day - I think they could tell it was a bit too close for comfort. They were thrilled about their day's work, which was filmed (using our electricity - hence the chocolates, I think) and will be turned into a training video for the fire service.

I think to die in a fire would be terrible. HUNGRY. That's what it is - hungry and fierce. Brutal.