Well, it's been a week...

[Morrus]

Well, it’s been a week. Last Thursday we were evacuated from our home at short notice due to a dangerous gas leak with no time to pack more than a carry-on bag amount of stuff. Today, Monday, we still haven’t been given the all-clear to return home. Last I saw there were four big gas vans parked in our driveway, a team of engineers working round the clock, and several large meter-wide holes in our driveway.

Luckily our awesome friends took us in with no notice, and let us stay for three days (with the dogs—special thanks to their son for keeping them occupied!) We owe them the biggest of dinners. Now, as we wander the earth like itinerant … err … wanderers, we find ourselves in Thornbury, where we’ll be staying with my dad until we get that magic phone call telling us it’s safe to go home.

Last update was that the readings were “headed in the right direction”. I’ll spare you the boring technical details, but every morning we’ve had a call saying that hopefully they’d get us home today, followed by one in the evening saying ‘nope, soz, maybe tomorrow‘. The worst part is just not knowing. It would have been easier if they’d just said it would take a week, and we could have planned around that. Still, in the grand scheme, this is an inconvenience not a catastrophe—it’s not like the house has burned down or anything.

If you’ve been expecting anything from me work wise, I’ve been off work since Thursday. All I have on me is my phone. I’ll be back when I’m back, I guess!

I really hope it’s before this weekend as my big birthday BBQ is on Saturday and if that gets cancelled I might just cry. But I’m feeling optimistic! The readings are, as they say, heading in the right direction!

 

[dbm]

Gas leaks are serious- glad to hear it was spotted and it sounds like they have sorted it in time.

 

[payn]

Yikes, I hope they resolve this for you soon!

 

[dragoner]

Wow, that is incredible!

 

[Deset Gled]

Dang, that sucks.

Trying to look on the bright side, it's better to be evacuated when there's gas leak than to not be evacuated when there's a gas leak. Here's hoping you get back home soon.

 

[Echohawk]

Many years ago, I was viewing potential apartments to rent, and I was shown three similar apartments all next to each other. One of them had a completely new kitchen and bathroom but the rest of the apartment was older. A second had a completely new living room, but an old kitchen and bathroom. The third (the middle flat) had clearly been completely renovated; every room was new.

This struck me as odd, so I asked about the renovations, and after some prompting, the landlady admitted that the previous occupant of the middle flat had, sadly, died by suicide. Regrettably, they had chosen to do so by turning on the gas and leaving it on. Obviously, after that person had passed, the gas continued to fill the apartment until, eventually, something ignited the gas cloud. As well as that apartment, half of each adjoining apartment was destroyed, and the explosion blew out almost all of the windows in the four-storey building. Very fortunately, nobody else was hurt.

All three apartments had exactly the same monthly rental. Despite the attraction of a completely new apartment, I simply could not bring myself to pick that one, and ended up renting one of the two neighbouring flats. For the four years I lived there, switching on the stove filled me with irrational dread every single time I cooked! (To this day, cooking makes me nervous, even with an electric cooker.)

Gas leaks really are a serious business, and I'm really glad you were promptly evacuated, Morrus, despite the inconvenience.

 

[Sossij]

Best of luck to you and happy birthday!

 

[Thierry-Advent]

Better safe than kaboom! The wait is worth it. A neighbours house blew up in the middle of the afternoon a few years ago. I was gardening when I heard the explosion. Luckily, no one was home but the house was gutted and on fire.

 

[Tigris]

Why not just take precautions and move the birthday BBQ? Getting nice memories from a new place.


Once again I am glad to have induction and not gas.

 

[Kaodi]

Yeah, gas is deadly serious. One of my favourite Israeli writers was rendered homeless because a gas balloon by her Old City apartment exploded several days ago. One of her neighbours, an elderly lady, died, and had she been in the wrong place just a few minutes different she would have died too.