Playing With Fire

So, apart from planning to quit my job, I have been doing other things.  Yesterday evening, for instance, I conclusively proved that I'm not safe to be allowed to play with fire.  To cut a long story short, I was using my garden incinerator to burn some rubbish (this is part of a clear up at home and has been going on for several days) and nearly succeeded both in setting myself on fire and burning the house down.  The problem was that the wind was much stronger than I expected and kept whipping the fire up so that huge orange flames kept leaping out of the incinerator.  Now, I know that these incinerators come with a lid, (basically an old-style dustbin lid with a metal chimney on it), which is supposed to allow you to burn stuff safely, without huge flames and sparks by protecting the fire from things like high winds.  Which is all very well, but I had a lot of stuff to burn and having the lid on all the time just got in the way of my constantly stoking up the fire.

The result was that, at one point, just as I was putting some more rubbish into the incinerator, the wind gusted in my direction and I was chased to my back door by a huge sheet of orange flame.  Then the wind changed direction and the sheet of flame set fire to some ivy which was crawling up the kitchen wall.  (OK, I will concede that I might have placed the incineration too close to the house).  Somehow, I got the lid back on the incinerator and put out the ivy fire.  Of course, I had to to take the lid off again to shove more stuff in - this time some papers (trust me, burning stuff like old bank statements is far more effective than shredding them) - and everything was OK until, just as I was poking the fire with a bit of metal, so as ensure that everything was burning evenly, there was another gust of wind and bits of blazing paper were flying everywhere: the garden, the path, even through the open back door.  Once again, I managed to get it all under control and apart from scorched hair and a singed shirt, I survived the ordeal.  I think I'll be giving the incinerator a rest for a while, though.