Secrets Revealed

This week's post reverts to the old standby, the diary ... or, put another way, "what have I done this week?" Two particular incidents in the week stand head and shoulders above the rest of mundane me and I'm ashamed to say that they reveal my prejudice and my senility.

A few months ago I used my hairdresser as an illustration in my 'other' blog.  You can see what I said here.  More recently, I discovered that she was pregnant, and she has now left the salon on maternity leave (or permanently, for all I know!).  Knowing that she only worked certain days, alternating with a colleague, I always made sure that I visited on the days when she would be there because (as your curiosity about my other blog will by now have revealed), she did a good job.

Now her colleague is there all the time and I have to say that there's something about him that I don't like.  I'm not sure what it is but, when - and it seems that it can't be soon enough for me - the time comes for the wave of the mirror behind my head and the inevitable, "Is that all right for you, sir?" and the equally predictable follow-up, "can I do anything else for you today, sir?", I'm very quick to pronounce my complete satisfaction, and release myself from the self-imposed prison of that chair, pay my dues and leave.

If it's such a bad experience, I hear you ask, why don't you go somewhere else?  The main reason is that I can't be bothered, added to which there is usually a parking space within 50 yards of the door.  So this episode reveals not only my prejudice but also my laziness.

Turning the diary page, as it were, the other evening I cooked some pasta for my dinner.  It seemed a good quick option, since I would be going out soon afterwards.  Once the water had come to the boil, I decided that I would have time while it was cooking to go into the bedroom and get changed.  I'd just about finished when I became aware of a burning smell and dashed back to find the kitchen rapidly filling with smoke.

Now, it's my habit - for safety's sake - to switch the cooker off at the wall in addition to switching off the hob I've used and, of late, I have become a little haphazard as to which I do first.  Clearly the last time I had used the cooker I had turned the wall switch off first and then my attention had been diverted before my hand had moved to the control for the grill, for it was this that now caused the problem.  Another habit - one I have now forsworn! - has been to leave the removable handle for the grill-pan on the pan and shut the whole inside the grill compartment out of the way.  In the few minutes I had been away, the heat from the enclosed grill had begun to melt the plastic of the handle and fumes were starting to fill the whole flat.  How long before a raging inferno would have developed I dread to think.

Needless to say, windows were opened, and a blower called into play to try to clear the air, but the smell lingered for quite a while ... and, indeed, can still be detected on returning from outside.  My meal consumed and the washing up done, I went out for my meeting and thought no more of the matter until I returned, probably not an hour-and-a-half later, to find the road to the car park blocked by a fire engine.  I pulled up behind it and was wondering what to do, when the driver got out of the cab and came towards me.   He asked if I needed to get past, and I indicated the car park, the entrance to which he had blocked, whereupon he asked which flat I lived in.  When I told him, he was immediately on the radio to his colleague in the hallway to say I had arrived.  I was just in time to save the firemen the task of battering the door down to see where the smell was coming from!

At the time, I agreed with their comment that I had very kind and thoughtful neighbours who had smelled the fumes and called the emergency services, but since, in the calm light of day, I have recalled the disaster of Grenfell Tower, and called to mind the speed with which a fire starting in the kitchen of one flat had spread to the whole block.  Perhaps what had been thought initially to be a kind and neighbourly gesture was really simply one of self-preservation!  All in all, it's been a week to prompt deeper self-examination!