Risk averted

Something unspeakably terrible almost happened this morning.

It was so horrifying that I still go cold thinking about it even now.

We set the chimney on fire.

It was not on fire very much, just a tiny bit. Mark took the ash pan out to empty it, which sent a huge draught roaring ups the chimney, and some soot caught fire.

There was not very much soot because it is not long since we swept it, and so the fire went out almost as quickly as it had started, with a few puffs of excitingly sparkly smoke, and then nothing.

The thing is that I am not in the least worried about chimney fires. In my younger days we used to consider them to be the most efficient way of cleaning the chimney. They don’t go anywhere, or do any damage. They burn off all the soot, and then go out.

The truly dreadful thing is that Windermere Fire Brigade think differently.

There have a legal right of entry to your house, and if they think there might be a fire in your house then they can come in and look if they feel like it.

A few years ago we had a fire in the chimney, and despite the fact that it had gone out, and they knew it had gone out, they still knocked a hole in the side of the chimney, pulled half a dozen tiles off the roof, sawed through the ridge pole of the house and trampled dog poo and broken glass into every single carpet. They stayed for five hours. The fire did no damage at all. The fire brigade were threatening, scary and trashed the place.

I am very frightened indeed of the fire brigade.

Today Mark stopped the air going up the chimney and the fire went out in about two minutes. When we looked from the road there was no more smoke.

The fire brigade, who had been called by some interfering nuisance in the street, turned up anyway.

To my massive relief it was a different fireman in charge. There is one fireman-in-charge who is truly awful. He is rude and bullying, and insists on his right to march in and inspect your house even if you explain that it is not on fire and that you do not need the fire brigade. I would truly rather my house burned to the ground than have him in it, but of course you do not have any choice. If you do not let the fire brigade come in when they want to they will have the police come and arrest you.

It is even more illegal than going to Scotland.

This fireman was unexpectedly nice.

He did not make a single threat or force his way past me at the front door.

I could have wept with relief.

He was polite and friendly. He looked at the chimney with no smoke coming out, and agreed that it did not look as if there was an inferno inside it. Then he went into the house with Mark and ran his heat gun over the fireplace  and went away again.

That was it.

That was the whole thing.

When they had gone I felt exhausted with the shock of it.

I sat down and had a cup of tea and tried to encourage my heart to slow down.

I could have coped with a fire. It is the fire brigade who strike fear into my very soul.

It did not matter. It was all right. They went away, and they have not come back.

After that I seem to have spent much of the day making sausage rolls.

I have made loads of them. There would be some justification for this if we planned to have sausage rolls for Christmas dinner, but we don’t, because of the Indian restaurant in such usefully close proximity.

I expect they will come in handy if we have any garden parties over Christmas.

The other thing that we have done was to turn the conservatory into a Christmas Grotto.

It does not have Father Christmas in the corner. I am sorry to say that he is not allowed in due to being in Tier Four. This is entirely his own fault for selling out to the capitalist profiteers and making a guest appearance in Harrods last week. If he tries to get back to the North Pole now he will be stopped on the motorway and put in prison.

Let him ignore Boris at his peril.

This has been a handy explanation to present to Lucy and Oliver, who still persist in their belief in Father Christmas, despite one of them being a police officer and the other doing his GCSEs. Father Christmas is not going to come this year because of bat flu. He is locked down in London and queueing outside Waitrose in the hope of bagging the last punnet of strawberries.

Oh brave new world.

I have attached a picture of the conservatory. The thing is that now all of the tomato plants have gone, it feels terribly cold and bare. Obviously it is not cold, because of having under-floor heating and also a handy electric fire in the corner that we have borrowed from the Peppers.

They do not know that we have borrowed it, but it does not matter because they are not there. If they do not come home before we put it back they will never notice.

We are going to have our Christmas dinner in there. It is quiet and warm and dark and feels like Christmas.

It will be lovely.