Thursday, January 18, 2007

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.

12 comments:

sallywrites said...

Hi Everyone!

It seems I have an intruder on my site, so as such I have enabled the word identification tool. I also seem unable to delte this comment from dear old ACGSTAR. It keeps throwing me out of my blog every time I try. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I should do it?

Sally

Anonymous said...

Bloody hell! That was a pretty close call wasn't it? Right now I'm sitting here watching the wind blowing all the trees around and wondering whether the landlord's insurance will cover us if one falls through the roof. Sadly my car is only 3rd party, fire and theft so I'm screwed if a tree falls through that!

Bloody spammers get on my nerves. Don't blame you for upping the security, though I'm afraid I don't know how to delete the comment sadly :(

Anonymous said...

Funny this should happen to you after xmas. As I remember many christmasses where one of my homemade candleholders (I was in preschool) went up in flames... usually in the living room while we were in the dining room having a lovely dinner. As a kid I thought it was pretty exciting, now it would scare me....

ChrisB said...

Gosh I'm glad you discovered this in time. It's easy to forget to notify everyone when changes are made. So we know what's top of your agenda now.

FH said...

Thank GOD you are all safe and sound!!Be careful next time Sally!

On my side here,I said it's warm winter a little too early!:)It's snowing here today,beautiful everywhere!

Beccy said...

That must have been a bit frightening Sally, glad not too much damage was done.

Anonymous said...

aaaah!
my recurring nightmares of a house fire from when i was eleven to thirteen coming back!
painful memories of singeing my waistlength hair at christingle, aged ten!
how DID u manage that, mum?!
at least it wasn't that thick whitey diamanteish one from B + S last xmas that you lit-that would have created a proper fire cos there's no glass bit!
im scared now!
aaaaaaaaaaaah!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

p.s. thank got years of children-full nights have made you such a light sleeper!there WAS a silver lining to that 16-year-long sleepless cloud!

sallywrites said...

Thank you everyone!! Been away from the blog all day, and have just come back to lots of comments! Nice when they build up!!!

Citizen_Stu said...

Candles are dangerous. Last Christmas my Dad had his feet up on the table to close to a candle and set his jeans alight. He was fine though. We got it out quick enough.

enidd said...

enid was sure she'd commented (something about how awful insurance companies were) but she can't see her comment anywhere - the internet gremlins must have eaten it. at least if your house had burnt down, you'd have had a free $5000 gift card from acgstar. that would be a real consolation, enid would think.

Anonymous said...

ACGSTAR is obviously an agent of Abercrombie Fitch so lets all send them some large junk mail. And include in it a link to the offending commenter. It wont do much but it makes you feel a little better!

sallywrites said...

Wow invader Stu. That's a bit scary. I'm glad your Dad was O.K.

Enid - the thought of the $5000 gift card makes me feel so much better!!! Interestingly I'm having another battle with an insurance company - different one, different matter - at the moment too. I think we can safely say that they would be ranked close to banks (for clarity everyone else, see enid's blog earlier this month for details, and my first ever entry on 17th October), in yours and my estimation!!!

Good idea Meredic!