The night where Rachael set fire to her house.

Last night I went to Rachael's house again with Claire. This is something that generally happens each weekend.

At about ten o clock Claire decides that she's hungry. Rachael suggested cooking sausages. I heard that sausages were being cooked and suddenly also felt famished.

Rachael puts eight sausages under the grill (she wasn't eating any, this was purely for mine and Claire's sausage sandwiches only). They started sizzling away and I promptly decided I needed the ladies room.

When I came out of the downstairs toilet into a cloud of smoke I deduced that something might have gone awry with the sausages. Going into the kitchen however I did not expect to see what I did. Rachael was standing over the grill poking at eight sausages which were now all on fire.

Now I'm not talking about a small flame dancing off some fat, I'm talking about large 'I could take off your eyebrows' kind of flames.

Now would have been a good time for me to have taken a picture so that you could see for yourself the tray of death Rachael had held in one hand. Unfortunately grabbing my camera so we could have a Kodak moment was the last thing on my mind. So instead here's a picture of a fire that was a lot worse than our one but looks good for dramatic effect.



I would like to say that I dealt with the situation with a clear head and a calm attitude but alas that particular moment of my life was not my finest hour. Instead this is how it went.

"Um Rach." I murmured, upon first catching sight of the flames. "Is that supposed to happen?"

"It's fine, the grill just caught some of the fat that's all."

"Shouldn't we try and put it out?"

Rachael threw me a tired look. "I am trying."

Rachael poked the sausages, trying to separate them from each other in the vain hope that that would calm the flames down.

It didn't.

Instead the flames got higher and more smoke started clouding the room. At this point I got scared and started my little panic dance.

"Rachael! That's a real fire!"

"I know it's a real fire Lisa, I'm trying to put it out."

When it was clear that I wasn't getting the correct reaction out of Rachael, I ran into the living room.

"Claire! Claire! Rachael's sausages are on fire! Come and look!"

Claire was laying on the sofa, all cuddled up in her blanket and it was clear that she did not want to move from this spot.

"It's probably just a bit of fat that's got caught." She said.

"It's exactly that!" I cried. "Only, the fat has been caught A LOT! This whole house it going to burn down unless we do something!"

I ran back into the kitchen to find Rachael attempting to remove the alight grill tray from the grill. Again this just seemed to aggravate the flames more.

"What can I do? What can I do?" I asked Rachael, whilst creating new moves to add to my panic dance (this is very similar to the 'I need the toilet dance' only with more arm movements).

"Open the kitchen door so we can get some of this smoke out."

I obediently ran to the kitchen door that led to the garden and wedged it open. Using my new dance to wave some of the smoke out into the night air. I then turned back to the oven and saw that Rachael had now managed to put out part of the fire but there were larger flames accumulating around the remaining part.

Seeing that Rachael clearly was struggling and knowing that I had no experience with this kind of thing as I am a complete noob when it comes to all household emergencies, I ran back to Claire.

"Seriously Claire, this thing is huge!"

"Well what do you want me to do about it?" Claire asked.

"You could put it out!"

"Why can't you?"

"I don't know how."

"Stick some water on it Lisa, come on, it's not hard!"

I ran back, clearly terrified that I was going to have to own the task of putting water on the fire when I saw Rachael shove a tea towel over the last of the flames and put it out completely.

"You put it out?" I asked Rachael.

"It would seem so."

I ran back to Claire. "It's okay Claire, Rachael's put it out. But you missed some big flames."

Claire decided to get up at this point and proceeded to help waft the smoke out of the kitchen while Rachael stood out in the garden and attempted to remove the smoke from her eyes.

Looking back and judging by the others reactions to this fire next to mine, I do wonder if maybe I had made this into a much bigger thing than they had. But still, it was my first oven fire and I was running off adrenaline.

I didn't get a picture of the fire, but here's a picture of the sausages after.



And here's Rachael telling Claire of the amazing help I had been in the putting out process.



All in all a rather eventful evening. Ta ta for now.

Peace out.