reipan

Okay, well, I had one of two things lined up for my next post - either a review of the Twilight saga or

hippyjolteon 's birthday post (which is coming, I swear! ...as it were) but, what with one thing and another...I just don't feel like it.

Instead, have my account of the Great Rooftop Fire of yesterday. I'll try to keep the angst to a minimum (for anyone vaguely interested: I fail at romance. the end.) but if some creeps in, poke at it with a skewer and eventually it'll fall off.

Also, check out the features of my awesome new tagging system! ...I've only just started using tags, so this is the only entry that has any, but dude! I'm being all organised!

So, here we all are - look, there's

rionaleonhart, and that one in the Hawaiian shirt is

hippyjolteon - all sitting merrily by a flaming barbecue, not a care in the world. Any and all vegetarians present are bravely bearing the smell of flame-cooking meat. There is a lot of alcohol, there is shisha, and there are cigarettes of interesting lurid shades for those inclined to destroy their airways.

Tranquility is in the air. It is about seven o'clock in the evening; even those leaving early don't have to leave for a while, and those of us leaving late are pretty much settling in for the night. There crappy chart-toppers from the nineties blasting out of the speakers. I'm sitting quietly in the shisha corner with my second or third rum and coke, nursing my broken heart. But I have my friends and my nefarious substances, and I am high up, and there are blankets and other soft things to sit on. And although there's been some strange white smoke drifting out from under the roof for about ten minutes now, Hamer has assured us all that that's just the lighter fluid he spilled earlier evaporating. As you can tell, safety has well been taken into account in this venture. Don't worry, you guys - we've done this before, and nothing went wrong the last time!

(I, for one, will Never. Trust. That phrase. Again.)

And then...the white smoke turns A Colour.

I, personally, thought it was a mangy sort of grey; you know, when grey makes a bizarre attempt to try and look like one of the warmer colours without turning brown? It happens. For the purposes of this entry, thought, I'm happy for you to call it yellowy-green.

I'm not sure who pointed it out first, but while white smoke seemed pretty harmless - a nice dry-ice effect - when the smoke takes on a threatening hue and smell, well, it's probably best to check it out and move the blankets away from the fire. Somehow, though, although we have sprayed water around the barbecue's perimeter, we cannot determine the source of the smoke, nor how to stop the roof smoking. And it's really billowing in a rather worrying sort of way now.

And then Yuffie moves one of the barbecues. I should explain about the barbecues at this point - they are tinfoil boxes filled with coals, liberally sprayed with lighter fluid, some of which spilled on the (lead) surface of the roof and has already caught fire several times. "Don't worry, guys - nothing went wrong last time!"

There is a hole. No, not one hole - two holes. No, not two holes - two holes which are freaking well both spouting flames.

HOLY SHIT.

We scatter. Some of us bravely turn tail and flee; others stagger back; others go to get water. (I did neither of these things. Frankly, at this point I hadn't actually got up, which might have been for the best; one more quickly-moving person could only have made things worse.) Yuffie pours the contents of a five-litre bottle over water over the holes, which are partially doused; the cry goes out for more. I accept (having got up by now) a plastic tub and an (empty) bin filled with water, which are duly put to use. One of the barbecues is moved to the relative safety of the wall; the other is kicked over, and I find myself uncertain that spraying hot coals across the roof's surface was really the best way to, you know, fix our flaming roof problem. And...oh. Oh, God. What a waste of perfectly good meat.

Still, at least the smoke has stopped.

There is, I feel, a lesson in all this. Do not play the heat-resistance game with lead sheeting; it's all fun and games until the holes start shooting fire everywhere.

Epilogue: Nobody was hurt, and the barbecue was salvaged with the aid of a proper barbecue on unwitting loan from one of the neighbours. Yuffie and her boyfriend are now trying to figure out the best way to fix the roof without alerting their landlord; the plan was to take some spare lead from Hamer and weld it to the roof, but this plan has been somewhat retarded by the fact that earlier today, during what was supposed to be the repairing process, one of our heroes lost his balance and put his foot though the living room ceiling. At last update, everyone was calling every builder they knew.

Further news on reception.

22.37: An update has just come in! The lead surface of the roof has been fixed, apparently the ceiling is being done tomorrow, so the damage can't have been so very terrible, and our clumsy hero has not broken his arm.

So all's well that ends well. Also, lousy as I feel right now, my friends have all been pretty amazing. Thanks, guys. Really.

Confidential to

hippyjolteon : Feel better! University is a happy place.