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| After a fire, many of my possessions are ruined. Suddenly, I feel so lucky | After a fire, many of my possessions are ruined. Suddenly, I feel so lucky |
| (25 days later) | |
| Nothing good generally comes of a conversation that starts with the words, “I think you should probably sit down before I tell you this”. | Nothing good generally comes of a conversation that starts with the words, “I think you should probably sit down before I tell you this”. |
| And so it came to pass. Away for Christmas, we got a call from kind friends at home; our neighbour’s house had caught fire on Boxing Day, mercifully while they were out. The fire didn’t spread to our house but the smoke very much did. I’ve always wondered what people meant by “smoke damaged”, and now I know. | And so it came to pass. Away for Christmas, we got a call from kind friends at home; our neighbour’s house had caught fire on Boxing Day, mercifully while they were out. The fire didn’t spread to our house but the smoke very much did. I’ve always wondered what people meant by “smoke damaged”, and now I know. |
| You vaguely imagine autumnal bonfires, or the charcoal smell of burnt toast, but it’s not like that. It’s firefighters wearing breathing apparatus just to get up the stairs, at first. Then it’s industrial fans, followed by dire warnings about lung damage and a lingering acrid smog that tightens the throat, plus a thin film of soot cloaking everything. | You vaguely imagine autumnal bonfires, or the charcoal smell of burnt toast, but it’s not like that. It’s firefighters wearing breathing apparatus just to get up the stairs, at first. Then it’s industrial fans, followed by dire warnings about lung damage and a lingering acrid smog that tightens the throat, plus a thin film of soot cloaking everything. |
| It’s weeks of either throwing out, or sending away for specialist cleaning, every single thing into which smoke could conceivably have permeated because the particles are an ongoing health hazard and washing isn’t enough. Metal and plastic are resilient, but anything soft – sofas and carpets and children’s teddy bears, clothes, books, Lord knows how much personal flotsam and jetsam accumulated over decades – is suspect. We will be seeing in the New Year in a decidedly minimalist fashion. | It’s weeks of either throwing out, or sending away for specialist cleaning, every single thing into which smoke could conceivably have permeated because the particles are an ongoing health hazard and washing isn’t enough. Metal and plastic are resilient, but anything soft – sofas and carpets and children’s teddy bears, clothes, books, Lord knows how much personal flotsam and jetsam accumulated over decades – is suspect. We will be seeing in the New Year in a decidedly minimalist fashion. |
| What I didn’t expect to feel, however, is this lucky. And yet lucky is the word. Nobody was hurt, and this year of all years none of us should need reminding what terrible things fire can do. We didn’t have to flee the house in the middle of the night. Unlike our poor neighbours, we should hopefully be living in our house again in weeks rather than months. | What I didn’t expect to feel, however, is this lucky. And yet lucky is the word. Nobody was hurt, and this year of all years none of us should need reminding what terrible things fire can do. We didn’t have to flee the house in the middle of the night. Unlike our poor neighbours, we should hopefully be living in our house again in weeks rather than months. |
| And in the meantime friends and neighbours have rallied round with incredible generosity, providing roofs over heads, securing the door that firefighters had to chop through, launching a search party for the cat (who was initially posted missing but turned up a day later bristling with indignation). We will never again underestimate the closeness of the village community in which we live, or the innate kindness that is most people’s instinctive reaction to trouble, and are grateful to be reminded of so much that is good. But that’s not the only thing I’ve learned. For in a sense, we have a chance to start again. | And in the meantime friends and neighbours have rallied round with incredible generosity, providing roofs over heads, securing the door that firefighters had to chop through, launching a search party for the cat (who was initially posted missing but turned up a day later bristling with indignation). We will never again underestimate the closeness of the village community in which we live, or the innate kindness that is most people’s instinctive reaction to trouble, and are grateful to be reminded of so much that is good. But that’s not the only thing I’ve learned. For in a sense, we have a chance to start again. |
| Everyone feels remote from the news cycle at this time of year, cocooned inside Christmas. But it is hard to explain how much I don’t currently care about whatever row confected out of nothing is convulsing social media, or what Prince Harry told the Today programme, or January miracle diets. | Everyone feels remote from the news cycle at this time of year, cocooned inside Christmas. But it is hard to explain how much I don’t currently care about whatever row confected out of nothing is convulsing social media, or what Prince Harry told the Today programme, or January miracle diets. |
| My only new year’s resolution is to be more diligent about testing the smoke alarms that could have saved our lives if we’d been at home when the fire started, and nagging other people into doing the same. I am liberated from caring about a whole heap of nonsense that turns out not to matter. | My only new year’s resolution is to be more diligent about testing the smoke alarms that could have saved our lives if we’d been at home when the fire started, and nagging other people into doing the same. I am liberated from caring about a whole heap of nonsense that turns out not to matter. |
| And there is something strangely liberating, too, about the cull of smoke-infused possessions that presumably lies ahead. Right now, the only clothes I have to my name are the ones I took away with me: a Christmas Day dress and scruffy things for walking the dog in. And that’s all fine. Clothes are only things, even the ones supposedly imbued with emotion and meaning, like the wedding dress carefully packed away in its now hopelessly redundant tissue under the bed. If the books have to go in order to shift the smell, I’ll miss them more, but the things we’ve read that mattered will surely have stayed with us. | And there is something strangely liberating, too, about the cull of smoke-infused possessions that presumably lies ahead. Right now, the only clothes I have to my name are the ones I took away with me: a Christmas Day dress and scruffy things for walking the dog in. And that’s all fine. Clothes are only things, even the ones supposedly imbued with emotion and meaning, like the wedding dress carefully packed away in its now hopelessly redundant tissue under the bed. If the books have to go in order to shift the smell, I’ll miss them more, but the things we’ve read that mattered will surely have stayed with us. |
| There is an odd sort of weightlessness to this state that reminds me of being 19, living out of a backpack for six months while travelling and discovering that all the things I thought I’d missed or craved seemed oddly superfluous on coming home. | There is an odd sort of weightlessness to this state that reminds me of being 19, living out of a backpack for six months while travelling and discovering that all the things I thought I’d missed or craved seemed oddly superfluous on coming home. |
| That feeling passed soon enough, and then it was back to accumulating the same old clutter as everyone else. No doubt this house will be just as full of junk again before long, as the squirrel instinct to hoard reasserts itself. Few of us are really cut out for a life of monastic simplicity. | That feeling passed soon enough, and then it was back to accumulating the same old clutter as everyone else. No doubt this house will be just as full of junk again before long, as the squirrel instinct to hoard reasserts itself. Few of us are really cut out for a life of monastic simplicity. |
| But the surprise on being forced to think about what might urgently need replacing is how short the list of essentials seems; how much we must have been hanging on to out of habit, sentiment or a vague conviction that it might one day come in handy, and how much we have been conditioned to think was important. For the first time, I understand those people who occasionally make the news by selling everything they own on eBay and starting again. | But the surprise on being forced to think about what might urgently need replacing is how short the list of essentials seems; how much we must have been hanging on to out of habit, sentiment or a vague conviction that it might one day come in handy, and how much we have been conditioned to think was important. For the first time, I understand those people who occasionally make the news by selling everything they own on eBay and starting again. |
| It’s all too easily assumed that family history lives in tangible things – old photographs, teenage mixtapes, the rug someone bought us when we got married, a dress bought decades ago for a night heavy with memories – but that’s not quite right. These things were only ever prompts, reminders of what we already carry with us in head and heart. | It’s all too easily assumed that family history lives in tangible things – old photographs, teenage mixtapes, the rug someone bought us when we got married, a dress bought decades ago for a night heavy with memories – but that’s not quite right. These things were only ever prompts, reminders of what we already carry with us in head and heart. |
| Walking through the house, sweeping up the broken glass, I realised that the answer to the old parlour game question of “what would you save in a fire?” is actually that nothing really matters but each other, and maybe the cat. We have been given, unlooked for and unwanted as it was, a moment of clarity. It would be a waste not to use it. | Walking through the house, sweeping up the broken glass, I realised that the answer to the old parlour game question of “what would you save in a fire?” is actually that nothing really matters but each other, and maybe the cat. We have been given, unlooked for and unwanted as it was, a moment of clarity. It would be a waste not to use it. |
| • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist | • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist |