It’s FIRE! Not fire…
So, The Cousin, eh, he's an odd boy. Not a bad chap by any means, just odd. Take Wednesday night as a typical example of his outstanding commitment to oddness. It was late, maybe 12.45 in the am and I was without trousers, relaxing a top the bed and watching the new season of the . If you haven't watched it you really should. This is probably my most favourite part of the day. The phone is silent, work is over, the new post is online and all is done for another day. Bliss. So you can imagine my disappointment, dare I say mild outrage (not that I am one to overreact) when my bliss was interrupted by a rather polite knock at my bedroom door.
Knock knock
Just like that, two quiet, gentle knocks. I considered pretending to be asleep but guessed he could hear the noise from the Party Down cast.
"Yeah? What you want?"
There came only muffled noises.
"What?'
More muffled noises.
"Just come the fuck in!", shouts I as I rushed to cover my shame. I was wearing my Hulk boxers. These are printed Hulk boxers as opposed to providing hulk like properties. What? Where the hell is this going? Lets move on. The Cousin, dressed only in his own, Primark bought underwear and faded t-shirt with a weeks worth of food stains, ambled in.
"What?", snaps I with my customary patience and welcoming tone.
"There's something going on outside." I assumed it was a repeat of the time he thought we were being burgled but turned out to be nothing more than squirrels arsing about or whatever the hell they do at night.
"Something? Something like what? Men? Are there men outside? Because I gotta tell you, I had a big dinner tonight and I'm not fit for fighting."
"No, it's not men. I think there's a fire", says The Cousin with all the enthusiasm of somebody reading out the Channel Five TV listings for the 1 to 5am period.
"There's a fire? Outside? Outside our house? Can you see flames?"
"Yeah, there's loads of them."
Adopting a more urgent and to be honest panicked tone I shouted, "Dude, are you fucking telling me there is an actual fire outside out house?"
"Yeah...yeah there's a fire outside the house with real flames and smoke and all that. Just come and see."
See it? I didn't want to see it. I wanted to be far away from it with all my precious things, significant stuff and essential junk.
"Jesus H Christ are you kidding me!" And with that I jumped up and wrestled on my jeans and Camper shoes. There was no time for socks. Obviously. I ran into the Trolls Kingdom and made for the window. There was a fire, a very fucking big fire. But thankfully it was far enough away for me not to have to worry about the oil tank or having to make quick decisions about whether to save my 22 years worth of vinyl lps or eight years of precious letters, cinema stubs, dinner receipts etc from LMM.
"You think we are okay?", asks The Cousin. I wasn't sure if he was being cool about the whole thing or was being serious. There then followed a five minute lecture from me about what to do should a similar situation arise again. I explained that knocking on the door when you think there is a fire is an unnecessary social nicety that he should forgo. I told him that if he notices a fire again that he shouldn't stare at it for five minutes and enjoy, "the cleansing lapping of the flames". I also gave him a script to use. Instead of getting on like a wet blanket and playing twenty bloody questions were I have to guess the nature of the life threatening danger he should just shout the word, "FIRE" over and over again until I give him the safe word, "Nut Sack."
Dearie me.
When I had calmed down and he had put shorts on we went for a late night wander to take a look at the fire. Turns out some Ouch, that's gotta hurt/cost. We weren't the only ones either. There was a right crew of late night fire watchers gathered on Adelaide train station's platform. Well I assumed they were there to watch the fire, they could still have been waiting for the last train. Translink are really very poo. It was all very exciting....for about five minutes and then we went home.
Still, I remained cross with The Cousin the whole way to the fire and the whole way home, despite our house not actually being in danger. Who knocks the door and whispers, "fire"? Surely you kick the door in and shout, "FIRE", thus removing any ambiguity from the situation. Maybe a bit of arm waving too, whatever works.
Sigh...
Have a pleasant and arson free weekend folks...
Few years back I was sitting in my bedroom fiddling about on my computer when my sister came to the door. “Could you move your car?” “Why? It’s not blocking the driveway.” “The fire engine needs to get round that side of the house.” “Fire engine?” “Aye, the living room is on fire.” This was a slight exaggeration, but only just – the fireplace in the living room was full of white-hot burning soot which was in serious danger of spilling out onto the carpet. The thing that really stays with me is that although there were no flames there was this ungodly whistling sound from the air rushing up the chimney as it burned…
nice….family eh?
but didn’t you say the Cousin is a civil servant? once they are hired and have that final lobotomy and really thats as excited as they can get, or as excited sounding as any civil servant i’ve ever come across. really
yes, and he has a new and even more exciting job now too….honestly I fully expect to wake up one morning and find out he is in charge….of everything…
YIKES!!!! he need to come live here, sugar, where people yell as if every single piece of good crystal just hit the floor because they dropped a plastic glass! he needs some dramatic coaching! xoxoxoxo
yes, yes he does need to be taken UP the dramatic scale a touch…
Fire needs drama I say. Striking a match should be fucking exciting (BEHOLD! A MATCH HAS BEEN STRUCK! WATCH IT BUUUUUUURN!) otherwise there is no need for fire at all in my books.
*a recovering pyromanic*
oh my….[steps slowly away]
Hulk boxers? that’s seconds of panic but years of shame for all involved. I think I’d still knock.
I have found that there is a correlation between bad shit happening and me wearing those monks…
And here was me thinking you were being topical about that fella in Utah and his firing squad.
We had a fire round near mine. The place at the end of my back garden was set alight, probably by some naughty scamps with a spoon and a lighter and some entertainment powder.
Except no one knew. They did such a poor job at it that the next door neighbours only found out when they read about it in the local hackrag the next day.
However, this didn’t stop the hapless arsonist (heh, I said “arse” (nearly)) as a fortnight later the garage at the back of the house was also set alight. We knew about it then as the fire brigade turned up, blocked our street, took our water, and made the women in the road (all of them curiously well dressed and made up for 5:30 in the afternoon) stand around with their mouths open, staring at the sweaty firemen.
Of course, it was another failure of a fire. The garage sat and smoked for a bit, but there were no flames.
Yobs these days! They can’t even graduate Yob school successfully…
see in my day, that garage would have been toast by now….I blame the tories…obviously
9 Alpha Romeos? Somebody is going to be pretty pretty pissed off.
unless they…well you know….hard times for dealerships…
Eight years of cinema tickets and receipts ?????? Poor LMM.
pfft v 20+ years of lps? no contest
Next thing you know, Cousin is going to be yelling FIRE in a crowded theater and you’ll be to blame
as long as I’m not there I don’t care….plus extravision isn’t really a theatre…
Sounds like you suffer from “Premature Evacuation”
hahahahaha brilliant
If the arsonist has a brit accent then it’s probably the twat from where I live. Several years ago this chump went on a serial light up the car adventure. I sitting in my lounge watching CSI, drinking a few tinnies, when suddenly I noticed a burning smell, the window being open I had a look (after twitching the curtain of course) and saw a car, burning quite well. Huh, me thought, Mr ******* is not going to be happy about that. I then looked at the car parked next to it. It was smouldering, the tyres were smoking A LOT, next I heard a crack and one of the side windows smashed from the heat. Since I didn’t know who’s car it was I was unsure weather to be happy or sad about it. Then I noticed the car parked next to the smolderer.
SHIT.
MY PARENTS CAR.
I had to move it and NOW. Where are the keys? The car is gonna burn. They’ll be buggered if they can’t get around. The fireman will smash the car up. I’ll have to take them everywhere. Found ‘em!! I rushed like a fat cloud to the car got in and started her up.
She stalled.
Oh for fucks sake come on!, I tried again, SUCCESS!! The blare of the whopping 950cc engine was music to my ears, I began to reverse, I heard siren’s in the distance, crap got to hurry. Slowly but surely I moved the car to a parking spot ten parking spots down. I had done it. I had saved the day even before the first fire engine was on the scene. I felt like a hero and had done it while a “little” under the influence. The second car by then had ignited, and the boys in blue were hard at work. I smugly walked backed home feeling on top of the world, I opened the door and promptly tripped over the door frame ending up on my arse.
Bollocks
jesus christ sparky!