Thursday 5 March .......

I thought my home was on fire last night.

Two of my children smoke. They do not smoke in the house. There are butts left around sometimes carelessly, and there have been a couple of fires in ashtrays when butts are not extinguished carefully before being tossed away. But last night was a doosy! The boy (26) fell asleep on the couch watching television, so I turned the TV off and left him there. At some point he woke, and decided that before going to bed he was going to have a smoke (nothing unusual so far). To dispose of the butt he tossed it into the old (superseded) BBQ (one of those 70’s brick models with the thick iron plate on top). When sticks from the gum trees in the back yard, fall they are often thrown into this BBQ by the offspring and at some point they are either burned or I get them out and into the compost bin. (Can you see where this is leading …. ) Ben’s cigarette set fire to the wood in the BBQ, but not with a roar he would notice, oh no, with a nice slow smoulder, which properly ignited some time later, after he had gone to bed. (Stop throwing those cigarette butts away out of your car windows people, it really causes fires) so far so bad.

When we had the back patio area covered we noticed it acted like a chimney with the old BBQ, and so we bought a new BBQ and resolved to pull the old faithful apart and dispose of it. Time marched on and we were still going to get rid of it, but had not had the time. So add a nice gentle, westerly breeze, BBQ fire, open patio glass door and at the eastern side of the house, my bedroom with its open windows to draw the breeze, and what do you get??? Heart failure when Bandit, the cat jumped on me and alerted me to the fact that it was somewhat smoky in our room. Add adrenalin, and the fact the smoke alarms (2) did not go off, and you have a recipe for a very alert rest of the night while I found out if everyone was ok, and where the bloody fire was. Why yes, I did wake the boyo up and point out to him the grey smoke all through the living areas of the house and most delightfully, my bedroom. And we were lucky, the gas bottle from the new (real) BBQ sits behind the outside chairs, right next to the old BBQ, really lucky.

I arranged for facebook to be blocked on the house computers, as a consequence, as Ben is currently out of work and spends lots of time on facebook, slumped in a chair and doing not much else. (And just because his room is nowhere near where the draft from the fire blew through the house, so he does not “get” why I was so concerned/afraid that the house place was on fire.) He did not have to have ceiling fans on to clear his bedroom out so he could sleep.

So today I smell of smoke, by bedroom smells of smoke and the house generally smells yucky. I’m glad I’m at work.

Labels: fires, kids, smoke

posted by gemma @ 2:14 pm