What a nightmare week this has been. I’ve been in the library almost every night this week trying to bang out the first draft of my dissertation to hand in to my supervisor today. This has meant more than a couple of all-nighters of the worst kind (I love the all-nighters that consist of a good club and a banterous night out.)
For a whole week I have been surviving on minimal amounts of sleep (averaging four hours a night) and sporadic, meagre portions of food. In a bid to try and strike a balance I started taking vegetarian-specific vitamins and bought a big carton of smoothie which listed boysonberries amongst its main ingredients. Now, I’m pretty sure that’s a fake fruit, but I decided it was probably still worth a go. Today, as a celebration of handing in the majority of my work to be checked, thus giving me a temporary break from Dante, I sit before you updating my blog with a bottle of pear cider beside me. For tonight at least, all is well with the world.
As you might have guessed, studying all hours of the day and night has left me with very little to talk about… goodness knows if a country in Europe has imploded, the Sun suddenly ran out of gas, or the elections have already come and gone without me noticing. All I can tell you is what a state my bedroom is, and how the pile of dishes I have to wash has grown exponentially over the past few days. This is student life in all its horrible, cruddy glory. My hair is a mess, I have acquired two new spots on my face, and a friend assures me that I have lost weight. Such is the nature of an essay deadline.
Yet something vaguely interesting did happen today not long after I came back from meeting my supervisor. I put my head down and managed to fall asleep for what couldn’t have been longer than an hour, when I was awoken sharply by my housemate Aimée shouting ‘Scarlett! SCARLETT!’ from the kitchen. The sound of running, banging doors, and general chaos ensued. Then I smelt smoke.
Scarlett lives next door to me, and is one of the sweetest girls you are ever likely to meet. She is a devout Christian, an apt economist, and an excellent cook. A big fan of homemade soup (she is Chinese), she will often put a winning combination of ingredients together in a saucepan and leave the ensemble to simmer away for a couple of hours, filling the kitchen with the smell of delicious Chinese spices that cannot be found in England.
On this occasion, it wasn’t a soup she was making, but some sort of rice dish. The saucepan boiled dry whilst she was in her room, then the ingredients started to combust. When I got to the kitchen, Scarlett was covering the alarm with a towel to stop it from going off and Aimée was desperately swinging the front door back and forth in a bid to get all the smoke out – the kitchen was filled with a horrible grey smog and it hurt a little to breathe. I would love to be able to say that I saved the situation in some way… but I did not. All I did was suggest we leave the doors open to clear the smoke for however long it took, and Scarlett and I went and sat on the steps outside, laughing about the near disaster and wondering why the alarm hadn’t gone off despite the sheer quantity of acrid smoke.
Why hadn’t the alarm gone off? I rang reception, explained the situation, reassured the guy at the other end that the kitchen was intact and the residents still alive, but that we wanted the fire alarm tested. What if we had been asleep?
Fast forward ten minutes and two security members arrived. I was the only one out of my room at the time so it was down to me to explain it all over again, affirming at least twice that no I was not the culprit, that yes everyone was okay, and that we were worried about the fire alarm not having sounded. Perhaps my English skills escape me when I am tired… I am fairly exhausted… but the security staff took my details and said they would return – I took this to mean they were going to get new batteries for the alarm and would come back to test it.
For my non-British readers I should perhaps clarify at this stage that
This is, quite frankly, the only reason I can think of to explain why the security members came back with two firemen who apparently had two engines outside.
In the meantime Scarlett hid in her room as I recited once again that NO, THERE WAS NO TOWERING INFERNO! Finally someone explained that the alarm in the kitchen was merely a heat detector (situated some distance away from the oven) which would only sound when the temperature around it reached 90 degrees.
‘So, basically, if we ever hear that alarm sound it means that we’re already screwed?’ I asked.
‘Yeah pretty much,’ grinned the security guy.
‘It’s only there to wake you up really,’ added the better-looking of the firemen.
Perfect.
In any case, I was reassured I wouldn’t be charged the standard fire brigade call-out fee that normally applies when students set fire to kitchens and told to advise Scarlett that burning the flat down was anti-social. What a load of fuss over nothing!
Scarlett, in the meantime, felt guilty about not coming out of her room so bought a box of ferrero rocher for us all to share. Aimée berated me for not having fetched her when the firemen arrived. All’s well that ends well, I guess!
