Let’s do this together

After a busy day wishing for death and destruction and less homework, The Dark Lord likes to come home and set light to candles in her bedroom, like some sort of satanic ritual.

The first thing I notice is usually the smell of burning rubber as she forgets to move her fake plants out of the way of a candle flame, and I go and try to reason with the pyromaniac.

As someone who grew up in the era of public safety films, I’m petrified of electricity pylons and unattended chip pans. But The Dark Lord is going through the idiot stage of growing up, and doesn’t see the obvious danger in sticking a burning candle directly under a nylon flag stuck to her bedroom wall with Blu Tack.

I knocked on her door as I walked in, saying, “Please don’t light more than one candle in here at a time, and please make sure it’s not under a wall hanging or poster, or near any plants, or…”

And at that very moment, our kitten Dan Dan jumped up, as if to prove my point, and knocked a plant off the shelf. The Dark Lord hasn’t burned anything since, but it’s only a matter of time before her addiction to Primark scented candles wins the battle for her frontal lobe.

I’m always wanging on about fire safety at home, but then I had to laugh when my friend Greg sent me an article in his local paper, The Mercury News in California, about how cats have caused over 100 house fires in the past three years by turning on stoves.

I texted him back, “Ha! Very funny. But I think teenagers have probably caused more fires in homes just to get out of failing to hand in their homework!”

Then yesterday I made myself lunch in the kitchen, took my cheese sandwich back upstairs to my office, and the fire alarm went off a few minutes later. I smelled smoke and rushed downstairs to find a blazing dishcloth on the stove.

I ran around like a headless chicken for a minute while working out what to do. Then I grabbed tongs and picked up the burning cloth and stuck it in a frying pan and put it straight under the cold water tap.

Turns out I’d forgotten to turn off the low flame on the stove that morning after making scrambled eggs and it had just been waiting for me to leave my new red double decker bus-themed dishcloth on it. So London did indeed burn.

I texted Greg back, “Are there any stories about how many tired mums have caused house fires? ‘Cos I reckon it’s a lot more than cats or teenagers.”

Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

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