oxford – Dan Q

“You saved my life!” (or: how my kids briefly thought I was a superhero)

This weekend, my friend Liz arranged for some other Abnibbers and I to gather, with our families, for a camping/glamping weekend East of Oxford.

Here’s a story of something that transpired there, presented in three parts:

The fire
The battery pack
“You saved my life!”

Adults and children mill around a firepit, some of them holding marshmallows on skewers. — The campsite provided our large group with an entire field to ourselves, including spaces for socialising, a fire pit (at which the kids enjoyed toasting marshmallows), and a wood-fired hot tub.

The entire weekend would have surely been a memorable experience already, but one particular event will probably stick in the minds of everybody in attendance: the fire.

The fire

The UK’s in its unprecedented third heatwave of the year: the grass is all dying and everything is tinder dry. And so it was that, on Friday night as the kids and I slept in our glamping “dome”, I was woken by the distant beep-beep-beep of a domestic smoke alarm. A few seconds later, I heard a second such alarm with a different tone, and it became clear that this wasn’t just somebody’s toast on fire.

Not recorded: the sound of the occupant of this static caravan/cabin – having jumped through the window to safety as the front door was blocked by flames – on the phone to the fire brigade.

I went back into the dome to check on the children, which is when Penny knocked on my door to ensure I was aware of what was going on. The kids were sound asleep, so I ran out to the car park to move the car (which was parked in such a position that embers were raining down on it!) and to check on the situation.

I returned to the dome and got the children dressed. We evacuated to a safer distance and watched as the firefighters arrived and began to tackle the blaze. Short of water, they had one pump dousing the flaming building while two others relayed water from the nearest fire hydrant, way down the hill.

Eventually the situation came under control and we were all able to return to bed.

The battery pack

I spoke to Mike, whose holiday home was the building that was destroyed. He’d managed to escape with some shorts and his mobile phone, but little else: in particular, his car keys remained inside and were probably destroyed, which rendered him unable to drive back to his regular home.

A group of adults and older children stand out in a field at night, while in the distance thick smoke is illuminated by flashing blue lights. — The firefighters worked quickly, but it still took over three hours before they were able to finish spreading out and drenching everything that had caught light. We watched from a distance, and sheltered all the children (including those of a non-Abnib family on-site) in one of our tents.

Mike had been turning his phone on only in bursts in order to conserve battery for all of the essential calls he’d have to make (e.g. his bank, to extract some money without his cards, and a locksmith, to get him back into his car). His phone charger – an awkward USB-B-Micro one – hadn’t survived the fire.

But conveniently… I happened to have such a cable in my bag. Plus a fully-charged battery pack. So I lent both to Mike, in the hope that it’d make it easier for him to do all of the necessary administration¹.

A handful of metal frame struts stick out from an ash pile that was clearly once a static caravan. — It’s got to be a pretty-devastating thing to happen to your holiday home and everything in it. Mike was surprisingly chill about it when I spoke to him, taking soft-of an attitude of “well, there’s no point fretting about it after the fact!”

“You saved my life!”

Anyway: on Saturday night, shortly after the kids and I had turned-in, there was a knock on the door. It was Mike, come to return the battery pack I’d lent him.

The kids didn’t know who he was, so I explained: “This is Mike; he’s the fella who lived in the home that burned down last night.”

Mike handed over the battery pack and charging cable and, grateful for them, used a metaphor that. “Thanks,” he said, passing the hardware to me, “You saved my life!”

Several beds laid-out in a darkened glamping pod. — I hadn’t told Mike which glamping pod was ours, and just figured I’d see him around. Or else if I didn’t get my battery pack back, that’d be fine: it’ll have been more-useful to him than to me in the days to come! But there we were, in our pyjamas, when he appeared at our door.

He turned and left, and both kids sprung out of bed and exclaimed “You saved the life of the guy whose house burned down‽”

I’m sure they had in their minds the idea that, during the period between the fire starting and me waking and evacuating them, I’d singlehandedly dragged this dude out of a burning building. Y’know, instead of just lending him a phone charger after-the-fact.

I only let them hold the misapprehension for a few minutes, but for a moment it lightened the mood.

Footnotes

¹ I was already using my phone to call our insurance company before our flood, earlier this year, had finished. I can only imagine how inconvenient it is to suffer a disaster and lose your communications lifeline at the same time!

Note #28940

Pub lunch by the river in the Spring sunshine. ☀️

F-Day plus 12

It’s now twelve days since a flood struck my house, causing the ground floor to be submerged under a couple of feet of water and ultimately leading us to kick off an insurance claim process.

A home office with its floor stripped down to poured concrete and an industrial dehumidifier running. — My regular home office of the last six years sits stripped-down, with no flooring, skirting boards, or power (with the exception of the specialised circuit powering an industrial dehumidifier).

And man, a home insurance claim seems to be… slow. For instance, we originally couldn’t even get anybody out to visit us until F-day plus 10 (later improved to F-day plus 7). The insurance company can’t promise that they’ll confirm that they’ll “accept liability” (agree to start paying for anything) until possibly as late as F-day plus 17. Nobody will check for structural damage until F-day plus 19¹.

Oh, and the insurance company have advised us to look for something like a “12 month let with a 6 month break clause”, which is horrifying. We could be out of our home for up to a year.

Dan, a white man, stands with his arms raised outside a nicely-decorated converted barn. — Right now, though, we’re spending two weeks in this holiday let about half an hour’s drive from our house. It’s pretty nice, except that we have to commute over the ever-congested single-lane Burford Bridge to get the kids to and from school every day².

Some days it feels like being stuck in a nowhere-place… but simultaneously still having to make the regular everyday stuff keep ticking over. Visiting the house- currently stripped of anything damp and full of drying equipment – feels like stepping onto another planet… or like one of those dreams where you’re somewhere familiar except it’s wrong somehow.

But spending time away from it, “as if” on holiday except-not, is weird too: like we’re accepting the ambiguity; leaning-in to limbo. Especially while we’re waiting for the insurance company to do their initial things, it feels like life is both on hold, and not-allowed to be on hold.

A nervous-looking French Bulldog in a teal jumper looks up from under a desk. — The dog gets it. I had to take her to the house for a while on Monday³ and she spent the whole time leaning against my feet for reassurance.

And I worry that by the time they’re committed to paying for us to stay somewhere else for at least half a year, they lose any incentive they might have to contract for speed. There’s no hurry any more. We’re expected to just press pause on our home, but carry on with our lives regardless, pretending that everything’s normal.

So yeah, it’s a weird time.

Footnotes

¹ I’m totally committed to this way of counting the progress, which I started on F-day plus 3. I get the feeling like it might be a worthwhile way of keeping track of how long all of this takes.

² Normally, the younger and older child are able to get to school on foot or via a bus that stops virtually outside our house, each day, so an hour-plus round-trip to their schools and back up to twice a day is a bit of a drag! We’re managing to make it work with a little creativity, but I wouldn’t want to make it a long-term plan!

³ And do some work from there, amidst the jet engine-like noise of the dehumidifiers!

Note #27940

Bitterly cold and starkly beautiful, this morning: West Oxfordshire is blanketed in an impenetrably thick freezing fog.

It’s quite pretty, though I’m regretting not bringing my gloves out with me!

Note #27761

A few pockets of the morning’s freezing fog still cling to the hedgerows as the dog and I set out on a chilly West Oxfordshire morning walk.

30 Years Of Notices

This telegraph pole in the centre of Eynsham carries the scars of hosting countless community announcements, notices, and flyers over the last 30 years.

#ShowYourStripes #Oxford

Not just a global issue but a local one too. A local one… almost everywhere.

#ShowYourStripes

Three Rings ❤️ NLA

Oxford Station. Catching a train to Manchester for a get-together in memory of the Nightline Association, which will sadly be closing this year (although individual Nightlines will doubtless soldier on just as they did before the Association).

Carrying a big ol’ bag of Three Rings swag to give to basically anybody who expresses even the slightest interest. 😅

Three Rings has been supporting Nightlines since before the Nightline Association and nowadays underpins voluntary work by hundreds of other charities including helplines like Samaritans and Childline. Feeling sad that the Nightline Association is going away and looking for a new and rewarding way to volunteer? Come chat to me!