Burning houses - past and present

God, I've literally just watched the house opposite ours burn out! I was mucking around in the bathroom and kept hearing sounds of breaking glass. My stupid thought was that we must have missed the recycling day - again! But when I looked out of the living room window, there was black smoke billowing out of the first floor window of a house a terrace below ours! What I'd heard were the windows exploding! I almost went into shock. This seems ridiculous, there was no danger to our house and I'd seen lots of fires before on TV, but this just sent my mind spinning. God, what do I do, do I call the fire brigade? Yes, of course that's what you do. Is 999 the right number for that??? I kept thinking 112, 112, but that's flipping Germany - I've not even lived there for 16 years!!! So I grabbed the phone and dialled 999, forgot to say what town I was in until prompted and when I put the phone down the sirens where already sounding anyway. I couldn't help but keep watching, my heart beating fast, as the smoke billowed and squeezed itself through every gap in the tiled roof. The fire started to eat a hole through the roof, threatening to spread down the terrace to the houses on either side. Not much later and I saw the first fireman on the groundfloor. I was relieved, this was going to be ok now. Perhaps 10 minutes and it was all under control. However, in those few minutes the first floor of the house had been almost completely burnt out and next door's curtains looked half gone - the fire had made it across after all.

I couldn't get over how shocked I felt and of course, as they always do, my meaning-making faculties set in. Given that I was writing about loss yesterday, this is the kind of random event that can put things into perspective.