Let’s do this together

It was my neighbour who spotted the small fire on the back wall of our house and called the fire brigade on Saturday night.

The engine turned up five minutes later which didn’t give me much time to prepare for five burly firemen entering the premises. If I’d had more notice, I could at least have dug out a fireretardant negligee and fluffy mules or something.

But they were too late to help because I had already put the fire out myself with a broom, watched by four squealing teenagers who couldn’t put their trainers on fast enough to leave the burning ship.

But putting out the fire meant the gas leak started building up just outside the back door. Luckily my quick-thinking neighbour turned the gas off at the meter, while I was on the phone to the emergency gas leak people, who instead of explaining how to turn the gas off, were more bothered about where the leak was coming from so they could wriggle out of any responsibility.

“Get everyone out of the house,” they cautioned, so the teenagers all trooped off to McDonald’s leaving me to wait for an emergency gas engineer to cap off the incoming gas pipe as a safety precaution. Although the girls did bring me back a burger and fries, half of which I noted had been eaten.

With no gas, we’ve been lucky with the weather so far and haven’t had freezing temperatures at night. Although when I went to wake all the girls on Sunday morning, I had never seen so many bodies in one bed, along with the kitten and dog. All it needed was a pig, and we would have been plunged back into the Dark Ages when peasants used to kip with the animals to keep warm.

We’re hoping the heating and hot water will be back on by Tuesday afternoon so we can stop having to wear woolly hats and duvets indoors. Although The Dark Lord doesn’t seem unduly worried by the lack of showers, I’ve found you can last a surprisingly long time on tea and toast, and it saves on the washing up.

But then to add insult to injury yesterday morning, I discovered psycho kitten Dan Dan had also chewed through my laptop cable, so I don’t have much time before I run out of batt…

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