Don’t look at me

4 July 2005

This afternoon, having heard a few sirens on the main road, Dad went up to his bedroom window to see what he could see. Usually this is nothing, so he was rather taken aback by the large plume of smoke billowing heavenwards. Typically, the battery in my digital camera had died the day before and – unusually for me – I didn’t have a replacement waiting. So I had to rely on my so-so mobile to record everything.

Having watched for a minute or so, Dad and I jumped into the car to see if we could go and do a bit of helpful rubber-necking – we’re nothing if not community-spirited. Once just out of the village, it became clear that the smoke was further away than we’d at first thought; from the window it’d looked like the fire was just in the centre of the village.

Anyway, we couldn’t get much further as the traffic was backed up in front of us, so we turned in a gateway and came back towards the village centre. Dad turned into the community centre’s car park, where Celia (otherwise known as “the plant lady”) passed on the rumour that it was the Whirlpool warehouse in Paddock Wood.

I went across the playing field to get a better picture of the smoke for John, whom I’d been updating on the phone. He in turn was having his own craziness over in Woking – plunder and frightening, an enormous hail storm and then brilliant sunshine, while the hail was still stacked up against the house. A few other people were meanwhile arriving in the field to have a gawp at the smoke and one guy said that he’d first seen the smoke after a big fork of lightning, so had the warehouse been struck?

Mum called my mobile to find out where we were. Coming home from Tonbridge, it looked like the whole village was going up in smoke and she’d had quite a fright. And it didn’t really help that we weren’t around when she got into the house. Later we watched the local news and found that it was indeed the Whirlpool warehouse that had gone kaboom in such spectacular fashion. About 100 firemen were tackling the blaze, but no reporters had yet been told how the fire had started. I’d like to make it clear that it wasn’t me.