Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 June 2006 10:15:50
I was firefighting.
It wasn't a pleasant experience so I suppose I should be grateful that the fire is out now. But I have the feeling of someone who has won the battle but quite possibly lost the war. Although the fire is out it feels as if the house is now nothing but ashes and all that was invested in it is now lost. The fire is out so the urgency is gone, but the need for action, long-term concerted action, rebuilding, is very much still there.
In fact it's not as simple as a single fire destroying things. The fire is out and the building is destroyed but, and here the analogy breaks down, the reason the fire happened probably was because the building already was in the state it is now. The fire was a distraction, or a reminder that things are in a dangerous condition, but it hasn't really made things worse. In fact it may have even made things better in a way. Fire's like that. It's a strange phenomenon, although strange isn't the word I would usually choose first. I always had a terrible fear of fire as a child. Frequently I couldn't sleep for nightmares about being burnt. My parents attributed it to the 1978 fire on an overnight sleeper train that killed 14 people. Given how often I travelled on overnight trains as a child that event probably did affect me more than it might have. And it's ironic that I should be thinking about this now given that I've just booked a bed on an overnight sleeper for the first time (in Britain at least) since almost that long ago. But just like my brother attributing my love of Scotland to their success in the 1978 world cup (an influential year, seemingly), I knew they were wrong because both the fear and the love had been around for many years before that.
But what is strange is that while fire is a destructive it is also constructive. Even as a towny I know that farmers burn stubble to make the field more productive, and so it shouldn't come as a surprise that my particular fire may have helped produce something good (although it may just be coincidence). But let's not get things out of perspective - it is far, far more destructive than constructive.