Tuesday 21 November 2006

drama in 3 parts - part 1

James and I looked at each other intensely when we first heard the fire alarm blaring downstairs. We sniffed the air and looked round ourselves, trying to locate the offending fire and to assess if we needed to GET OUT of the building.

Within the same millisecond all four of the industrial strength ‘no one’s going to die from smoke inhalation if i've got anything to do with it’ alarms in our upstairs flat were screaming.

My eardrums began vibrating and everything went slow motion. I ran into the kitchen to check that I’d switched off the grill.

It was off.

Someone starting banging on the front door.

We heard :

‘mumble ou – mumble ou’ (which we assumed meant get out – get out) .

We looked at each other blankly and both ran around a bit, disorientated by the alarm.

We ran down to ground level and noticed that the front door was wide open and that the downstairs neighbour had vacated the building.

Still we could not locate any fire but it was clear that something was wrong.

After a further few moments of looking this way and that, James noticed the water. It was bucketing through my downstairs neighbour’s ceiling.

James practically flew up the stairs and turned the taps off on the bath that had been gently overflowing for some time.

The blood drained out of me, I had initiated a disaster and I didn’t have a clue how to fix it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No point crying over spilt milk or bathwater in this case! At least water dries - fire doesn't! what was it that distracted you from the taps? (cheese on toast i bet). I sure hope this story has a happy ending - and that life on planet northerncreative is ok....

Joanne Hartley said...

Ahhh - my mysterious anonymous commenter....

i was watching the final episode of 'Afterlife' which was sooooo sad that I cried and was emotionaly drained and forgot all about it.

All is well on planet nc. Thanks.