| 3:44p |
Local Gossip
With all the personal excitement of last week, I forgot about the local community excitement. It's probably a good thing, as I managed to get more details on this today from Phil at church.
I think I need to start with a little explanation of the setup of our road and the ones nearby. You see, many houses don't have driveways and so there are little blocks of garages nearby to server residents with no obvious parking place. Our garden gate is only accessible by walking up the driveway that leads to the garages for our road, one of which belongs to us. Our road is a horseshoe shape, and the road that it backs onto also has a set of garages, which is roughly opposite the top entrance to our road. It is these garages in question that all the excitement revolves around.
It was Wednesday night and I was asleep. The bedroom door was opened by Rat and he said something that I cannot for the life of me remember but I have been informed was something along the lines of "there's a fire". I rolled over and went back to sleep.
I suppose it would be easier if Rat posted this as he was the one who saw, but since this is my journal, I'll give you my account of his account. He'd heard a noise he suspected was rain (rain sounds very loud in our house) but after a while looked out the window. To his right he could see a big plume of black smoke, and the flicker of flames. The sound he had heard was the crackling of the fire. It seemed to be coming from somewhere down the road, and he hung up to phone the fire brigade but on seeing that people were running up the road towards it realised that the fire brigade were most likely on their way. Eventually he went to bed and it wasn't until his journey to work that he saw where the fire had been. It was in said garages at the top of the other road - a fair distance from the house, which means that the fire must have been bloody huge to have been seen from here.
Talking to Phil, who lives two next door but one from the garages, said that the flames where humongous (he was out there, almost ready to get a neighbour's hose when the firemen turned up). It was so hot, and the flames where so high, that they totally melted the satellite dish that sat on the eaves of the house behind it. He said he was worried because the flames had gotten incredibly close the the eaves of the house - which would not only have meant a fire in the roof of his neighbour's house, but also his own since they are semi-detached.
He's also friends with the people who own the garage, which had recently been used for storage of furniture and other belongings while the owners were having their loft refurbished. A lot of memories, irreplaceable items have been lost. And why? Well, there is no certain answer, but arson is suspected. Kids hang around these garages, and only a few weeks ago the garage two doors away was broken into (I actually saw someone putting a new door on it today). We live in one of the nicest areas of the city, and yet still, these things happen.
It's certainly been an eventful week. I just hope next week is much smoother, for everyone all around.
And while I'm here I just want to thank all the lovely people who keep commenting on my journal, especially while I've been depressed about the whole work thing. I really appreciate the comments even if I don't respond. I haven't felt much like responding to anything. |