Fire!

Earlier this week there was a huge fire in a fortunately empty flat across the road from our office. Flames and this black smoke belched out, Knightsbridge was closed and it took the fire brigade two hours to extinguish it. It brought to mind a fire which had occurred when I was at Cambridge. Two of my friends (Tim and Tim), in their final year at St.John's, shared a set of rooms on the ground floor next to the Cam. One of their friends in who'd graduated the previous year, had lent them his uncle's collection of animal heads and the sitting room was resplendent with a fierce leopard, an antelope and a boar as well as a couple of oil paintings loaned by the college. Anyway, Tim 1, who had rather a penchant for fine wine, fell asleep in an armchair at about 1am , cigarette still lit and the smoke and heat resulting from this unfortunate event soon awoke him from his slumber. Tim 2 was asleep in bed and as his bedroom was next to the river and the college didn't want undergraduates getting up to high jinx and jumping into the river, there were bars on the window and the only way out was through the sitting room. Tim 1 saved Tim 2's life. The notes for their Finals were destroyed, however, as was the set of rooms which were thick with charcoal and stank of destruction. All that remained were the skulls of the animals on the walls and the blackened frames of the paintings whose canvasses had gone up in smoke.