The Rollercoaster

It was all because of that post Christmassy blues phase.

You know the sort?

When the house looks devoid of all character and charm, having taken down the decs. All the Christmas smells have gone, and it all feels a bit empty. You feel a bit full of food. The cupboards are empty. The bank accounts are crying out to be fed.....

So, I bought a nice candle.

It was a very nice candle actually. Came from a local craft centre and was handmade.

I put it in the dining room. That is the dining room that is really a dining room, but is currently pretending to be an office, as the office that was, has taken on the identity of a bedroom in the flat next door. So the dining room, which was the only clear and tidy room in the house, is now hugely untidy, full of papers and has the computer in it. It was once referred to on my blog as the dark room...

We lit it.

It smelt lovely.

The candle.

And, the next morning the smell of essential oils around the house was so strong that it nearly reached burning point. Or hold on, let me rephrase that. It did reach burning point. I realised that when I woke up and smelt ........... essence of ...........burn.

Hubby ran downstairs and just caught the candle as the wax had completely melted away and the flame had ignited. The office desk has a nice designer char mark on it now as a result, but otherwise no damage was done. Fortunately the flames didn't meet their friends, the paper.

This was very fortunate really, as not only did we not smoke or burn out the tenant in the flat, just one room away, we also didn't go up in flames as an entire family. The possible consequences just cannot be thought about.

We can also not think about the fact that last month we changed bank account, and very stupidly. Very very very stupidly forgot to tell our insurance company. As such, they didn't get a direct debit payment in December. They wrote to us of course. In December. Round about 23rd or 24th December. I can't think why we might have missed the importance of the letter. But we did. So their next letter was yesterday, telling us that as they had no payment in December, they had cancelled the policy from 31st December. This VERY VERY large insurance company which has merged with millions of other insurance companies over the last twenty years, and changed its name as often, has been our insurers for 20 years.

Sadly though, they do not appear to have any telephones.

Had the house gone up in flames, and we had survived, we would not have had any money to rebuild it.

Life on the rollercoaster can be quite scary at times.