Last Saturday night Chris decided things had not been
sufficiently exciting around here, so he decided to start a fire.
Now he claims it was an accident. He says he was only burning the pizza boxes
in the fireplace, but I still have my suspicions. Some people will do anything for attention…
I was asleep on my one good ear, which means I was oblivious
to the world. I was finally awakened by
my dog Harry, as he has been trained to do, when the Bomberos (firemen to you
ignorant gringos) turned up.
Anyway, the facts, as I can best reconstruct them are these.
Chris tossed the pizza boxes into the burning fire in the
fireplace to save having to walk them to the trash in the street. (As skinny as he is, he can’t afford to burn
off the calories.)
The Next thing that happened was someone madly ringing the
bell at the gate. Chris went out and
there was a neighbor on his cellphone to the Bomberos. He pointed to the roof and Chris saw
multicolored flames shooting out of the chimney, that while very pretty, we
dangerous to the trees with dying leaves all about the house.
Within a matter of just a very few minutes, the fire truck
arrived, the fire men came into the house, took the dog’s water bucket and
dumped it on the fire in the fireplace, watched to make sure nothing was set
blazing by the now dying chimney fire, and then left.
They did give Chris the card of a chimney sweep—who turned
out to be a fireman, of course.
The chimney sweep was duly called the next day. When they cleaned the chimney to took out
FOUR GARBAGE BAGS FULL OF SOOT.
Apparently it had never been cleaned and some fool had burned a lot of
pine in it which coated the inside with tar just waiting to burn. Total cost, U$S28.00..
At least we know that emergency service works—I am not
planning on field testing the others anytime soon: somehow a burglary or heart attack seems to
much to ask for…
I was checking some websites and I got here I dont know how. The thing is, I started browsing ur photos, and it seems we are kind of neighbours. My name is Manuel, I live around the block. I wanted to know, how did u get the aerial picture, because its great and I cant find it anywhere.Thanks, Manuel
Left by Manuel on June 2nd, 2006
Sounds like an eerily similar situation that I had with the toaster oven in Grenada!! 8-)
Left by Tim on July 6th, 2006
I had almost forgotten about that. In this case however, no one was drunk and passed out, and I pretty much slept through the whole thing. We try never to make the same mistakes twice, but to push on to new and even bigger mistakes…
Left by The Southron on July 6th, 2006