Burn, Baby, Burn

I came back to the flat at lunchtime today, in order to take delivery of a couple of books. Fourth attempt, though admittedly only the second time I had known in advance that the delivery man was going to try and get it to me. The other two times I'd just hoped to bump into him. This enabled me to score a bonus happening: missing a meeting at work that would have been both quite dull, and in my lunch hour. Lunch meetings are wrong.

Since I was not in a dull meeting, and was in fact in my own home flat, I decided to have a quick and easy lunch there, whilst waiting for the man. My lunch of choice: Toast and Marmalade. So, after doing some washing up, I put a couple of slices in the toaster, turned the dial to 2 and went off to write an email. Some minutes later, my spidey senses started tingling. Or maybe I smelt burning.

"That's odd" thinks I, "I wonder what that smell/tingling is?". I walk quickly to the kitchen and quickly spot that I have severely burnt the toast. To the extent that the kitchen is full of smoke and I can barely see the toaster. Ooops. I slam down the eject lever, the toast flies out onto the worktop, and I turn off the toaster at the wall. Then (very quickly) whack on the extractor fan and dash to the hallway door to close it before the smoke alarm goes off. By the time I've done this, both the kitchen and living room are totally full of smoke! Arrghh! But "Arrghh" in a "this is both funny and interesting kinda way". I suspect I might have been thinking "Arrghh" in a different way, if the toaster, kitchen and myself had actually been on fire.

At this point, the delivery man has not yet arrived with my books.

Next obvious step: Open the damn windows, let some smoke out and some fresh air in. To anyone outside, it would probably have looked like the flat was actually on fire (which it was most certainly not) as there was a lot of smoke leaving through the window. I'm not really sure what to do next, so I go back to the toaster. Looks like it had turned on, but the timer hadn't started ticking down. Best watch out for that in the future. I'm still hungry though, so I put another couple of slices of bread in, check that everything is working ok, and go back to the living room to marvel at the smoke. Who would have though that the old bread had so much smoke in it?

The delivery man has still not arrived, so in the meantime, here's a photo of the burnt toast:



Second batch toast works much better, as does third batch. And by this time I've run out of marmalade, so it must be time to stop. Just as I take the plate to the kitchen, the man arrives. I get him to pass the parcel through the window (this is ok, as I am on the ground floor) as I don't want to go through the hallway and let smoke near the alarm. This he does. I sign, he leaves. It takes around another quarter of an hour for the smoke to clear sufficiently for me to be happy to leave the flat and head back to work.

After all this smokey excitement, I was left smelling distinctly barbequed. Someone told that until I'd told them about the toast, they thought I'd been in a very smokey pub at lunchtime, drinking. Which I hadn't. I hadn't even had a beer at home, just a mug of cherry tea. I smelt smokey all afternoon. When I got home this evening, the flat smelt of burnt toast. It still smells of burnt toast. Darn. Better than bad drains I suppose.

Suffice to say, burning the toast was the most exciting thing that happened to me today. To be honest, it may be the most exciting thing that happens to me this year. It's great being an actuary.