The Old Lamp Shed: January 2009

Farewell Newhouse Farmhouse.

Thanks so much to everyone for their patience and consideration, we are all well and doing fine. Just take a second now to pop and check your smoke alarms, and maybe tomorrow have a fire drill with your children, tell them there is nothing in your house more precious than them and tell them to never, ever return to a burning building.
Maybe like me you may one day be very glad you did.

30th December 2008
Too old for partying on New Year's Eve we just asked a couple of families round for dinner, and as my parents (who shared half the farmhouse with us) had company too that night we cooked earlier in the day, which was handy as just before our guests arrived we lost all power and had to run around lighting candles. My husband Toby, called the Electric company and they sent a man within 20 mins, he said the cable from the road was live but the power was not reaching the house and asked jokingly if we had smelt any smoke, then left saying an emergency team would come and replace the cable that night. So I poured wine and made conversation while Toby hovered and waited for the electricians. He soon noticed an flickering orange light (emergency vehicles have orange flashing lights in the UK) outside reflected in the windows and went to meet the crew, only to find the farmyard empty and the roof alight! Unable to see the full extent of the blaze from close to the house he believed the fire to be much smaller, and calmly came inside and asked everyone to leave immediately and move their cars, I pulled the littles ones straight out of bed, and 9 adults and 10 children assembled quite calmly outside in the cold (most without coats or shoes due to the dark inside the house) to discover quite a serious blaze overhead. My elderly father foolishly went back in to look for my dog, and stop to blow out the candles,( I know!) which was probably the most terrifying moment as the tiles were shooting off of the roof by this point. In the next 9 hours 6 fire engines came and soaked our dear old wreck of a house while we watched shaking. To be truthful the thrill of surviving and knowing all were safe (Lucy our deaf dog had decided it was nighttime and gone to sleep in her bed and was quite delighted to be rescued later by my husband and some handsome firemen!) helped postpone the sorrow, because I knew watching the blaze that everything in the house was replaceable and of so little importance compared to the wonderful little people in their Pj's, crowded into our friend's cars, . We had done fire drills and talked of fire safety, making sure they didn't hide or block exits (especially with Daisy the 4ft cuddly giraffe) and the house had six working fire alarms, which actually never detected the smoke above them. So the children understood the seriousness of the event even if they hadn't needed these precautions.

The house wasn't ours but a rented one and needed a lot of updating which was why the rent was within our budget, but it was still a dream home for us, space for my work and the Grandparents too, a trampoline in the garden and newts in the pond and lots of space to entertain. A very comfortable but shabby sort of place with cupboards and corridors everywhere, we lost a lot of furniture and all our electronic gadgets, but our clothes and toys were lovingly washed and dried by friends and we have been placed temporarily in a 3 bedroom house by our local counsel till we find somewhere more permanent. A few loved items were lost but nothing life changing and although I do wake up some morning wishing I could just go home, we consider ourselves very lucky, first to have lived there at all and second to have escaped unharmed from what could have been a terrible and unthinkable night.