I Set Fire To My Table

Back in the height of summer, you know, when the clouds were lowering over the horizon just as the school holidays started, my friend Emily and I plotted a small party, mainly to celebrate her birthday, which is today (Happy Birthday, gorgeous), but also to continue the warming process of my new home.

I've moved into my home gradually.  Dawn downstairs reminded me that it's been five years, near enough, since I started buying it.  I shared it for three years in a system called 'nesting' (more of this one day, maybe) and for the past 18 months, it's been all mine. 

Wanting to ensure we had at least one guest, Emily and I created Hugh Jape, a mannequin dressed for the occasion in one of my son's hand-made coats and draped in fairy lights.  We stood him in welcome, at the bottom of the stairs, calm as anything.  We discussed food, seating, dancing, ice, candles.  We discussed my new table, the quality of its oak grain, and the need not to damage it with water.  We protected it with a plastic table cloth.

What happened to my table halfway through the party was entirely my doing.  It involved tea lights and the careless placement of a packet of poppadums (Waitrose). Back in the 70s at school, we used to shrink crisp bags in the oven and wear the miniaturised Smiths Salt and Vinegar or Cheese and Onion packets as badges.  The bag of poppadums didn't shrink - it burst into flames.  The plastic cloth underneath quickly followed suit.

My first reaction was to try to put out the flames with the second pack of poppadums (Waitrose). Maybe one guest brought both packets (thank you, and I'm sorry).  I completely forgot about the fire triangle (heat, fuel, oxygen) in my haste.  Fortunately, Mike hadn't, and he calmly poured water (sparkling, natch) on the table top fire.

Afterwards, Mike said that what'd come to hand first was lemonade, but that he'd had enough time to choose sparkling water.  I was glad about that, as the smell of burning sugar added to burning poppadum and plastic would've lingered.

As it is, the smell is nowhere to be smelt today and I am urged, once again, towards gratitude: I'm so grateful that the party didn't end in a panicked alarm, that the table isn't damaged, even though in the few minutes of Ted and Mike doing the clearing up and re-dressing-the-table-in-a-duvet-cover-process I had reconciled myself to its imagined imperfections.  

Yes, the cloth with its gaping charred hole had to be thrown away (along with the now-laminated poppadums) but what of it?  What of the small losses in comparison to the warmth of my calm-as-Hugh-in-a-crisis friends who have seen me through to this gift of a place, this sanctuary of rest and creativity.

I Justify My Position

Justified, I'm justified
it's just as if I'd never sinned ...

This was amongst the worst of the choruses I sang in church when I was a child. For those blissfully in the not know, justification refers to the Christian doctrine that we are all sinners who can only be saved by accepting the forgiveness won by Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. 

(Crazy, isn't it?)

There was also this:

I keep falling in love with him over and over and over and over again,
I keep falling in love with him over and over and over and over again,
I keep falling in love with him over and over and over and over again:
over and over and over and over and over and over again.

You don't believe me but it's true.  We - father, mother, three brothers, me - were on holiday in Yorkshire.  We'd found (no respite) a church to go to on Sunday.  Even I, indoctrinated as I was, could recognise this doggerel as a exceptionally poor example of the expression of ecstatic religious fervour, and struggled to stifle my sniggers.

The Just As If I'd chorus followed by the Over and Over chorus came to mind in quick succession when I received an email from Waitrose this morning telling me I've saved £125.94.in the past three months.  I was very pleased.  About the savings - not the earworms.

I know that I don't need justification for anything these days, but still, the tug towards providing an explanation to some unknown Watcher In The Sky (WITS) for all my actions, even grocery shopping in not the cheapest shop available, remains.

But never mind.  The feeling's so much weaker these days. Most of the time it's imperceptible.  And I'll keep queuing in Waitrose (maybe meeting my love from time to time) over and over and over and over and over again.