Fire

Last week during the good weather we finally got round to having another barbeque. I have always had fun with fire, as the photo shows I still like to have a bit of fun when grilling. At a young age my brother and I were always setting fire to things. A few fires got out of control and on one occasion the fire engines and police turned up. We weren’t caught and only a few trees were damaged (they carried on growing).

In my early twenties I had a close brush with a major fire in my hometown of Ilfracombe. The fire burned down several shops (in one of which the fire was reputedly to have started), several apartments and a hotel. I was the last person out of the apartment building, and the only one to get dressed. Before leaving my flat the lights went out and so I had to navigate the smoke filled corridors in the dark. I wasn’t scared, I just knew I had to vacate the building quickly, and chose to use the front exit which I had previously never used. With hindsight if I had used the other exit which I would have normally used I would have ended up as toast. So I exited into the street wearing a Mötorhead t-shirt, black bikers jacket, scruffy jeans, trainers and no socks. Apart from my portable TV and guitar that I grabbed at the last minute, these were the only possessions I had in the world, and guess who had no fire insurance.

Later that night I saw a person die at my feet and it didn’t upset me. He had foolishly re-entered the building to search for survivors. This was how it was portrayed by the media. In reality he went in to loot the place. The gas main exploded and he turned into meat. Before the ambulance arrived he was dead. There was nothing we could do, his face was gone, but we could still see he was still breathing by the blood bubbles.

But the fire was a turning point in my life. Within 9 months I was living and working in Hong Kong and my life had completely changed. It was almost as if losing everything had wiped the slate clean ready for a new start. I sometimes wonder how my life would have turned out if the fire had never happened.

So now as the nights draw in, it will be soon be time once again to fire up the wood burner in the evenings. I then get to play with fire every evening, and it’s usually more entertaining than the TV.

Technorati Tags: Fire, Marburg, Ilfracombe