The spiders hold many aces up their many sleeves, you know

[yaramaz]

 Luckily the past few days have been mild and springlike. When Shoddy Turkish Wiring finally revealed its true self and set our next door building ablaze last night at 2am and filled our flat and general neighbourhood with acrid, toxic smoke, we were able to open the balcony door and hall and living room windows to clear the thick fog that seeped in under the front door and through the open hall vent. The stairwell was opaque and our shouty upstairs neighbours stomped up and down the stairs in a muddle of confusion. Our building was fine, untouched, unsinged, but we threw Lola into her carrier anyway and headed out, just in case.  We were shooed back up after barely a moment at our front door by one neighbour who came bounding up, insisting that all was grand, nothing to see here, thank you. Just an electrical fire in the workshop over there, the one that leaves huge bags full of cloth scraps out on the sidewalk every evening to be picked at and kindly recycled by the local Roma ragpickers. 

The lone fire engine eventually, delicately pulled away, guided down the narrow street (technically we are an alley) by the man who runs the restaurant across the street, barely scraping past the parked cars. Lola shook in her metaphorical cat-boots for quite a while after walking out of her catbox into the still murky hallway. We were too wired to sleep so we stayed up, comforting her and trying to detoxify our heads and stinging eyes. The balcony door stood open to the mild night. Clean air eased its way in. At some point I slept.

It's a beautiful day today.

Comments

[used_songs]

Wow! Scary stuff. I'm glad you are OK.