rflong

Bit tired today as last night, after a heavy day of Christmas shopping, having retired to bed realtively early, we were woken by our neighbours because our backgarden fence was on fire.

No really.

Our lovely neighbour got it under control, the fire brigade came and investigated. They had to get through the roses too. One of the firemen accused my garden of trying to rip his clothes off. M'kay?

Turns out they thought it was malicious - given that it was the back of the fence that went up and in the current cold weather some form of accellerant had to have been used. So the gardai came too.

The cat nearly went ballistic - combination of "I want to go out and investigate" and "OMG there are many large men with waterhoses in my garden"

But seriously - how freaky was that. We back on to overgrown woodland, preserved woodland - oaks and beeches, chestnuts and all sorts of other indigenous trees. It doesn't bear thinking about what might have happened if it had gone up. There are ten or so houses on our side of the road alone, a very old church on the far side of the woods, another estate to the south and several other houses beyond that - all of which back on to the woods. Not to mention wildlife.

And the massive oak tree over the fence - it that had gone up and fallen towards us, it would definitely take out our house and our other neighbours' too.

Fire brigade call out charges are steep but most of it should be reclaimable from our insurance company. I'd still rather see them than not. The other scary thought is we were in bed. I was asleep. We heard nothing at all until the doorbell started ringing.

Thank heavens for good neighbours.