Right now my prime concern is finding out how fire-tolerant London is. I mean I'm sure they have a pretty good fire fighting system in place but how, well, sympathetically, do they view, let's say (just hypothetically of course) a kitchen draped in smoke or, say (again, purely hypothetically), socks on fire? Do they lend a helpful shoulder, come running with a blanket?
I sure hope so.
My kitchen smells burnt right now and that's probably because my pressure cooker just burnt itself. No, really. I had little to do with it. There was some plastic stuff on the outside and once the pressure began to release, some hot water hissed out as well and in just minutes the plastic crumpled and tore and a complex brown pattern began forming on the lid of my otherwise spanking new shiny cooker. Now there's burnt plastic decorating one entire side of it, a haze through my kitchen, a strong smell of danger and, clearly, no rice for lunch.
This was just rice. Not even some fancy meal.
And about a year ago there was that little incident of the socks on fire. A came to stay and our socks were damp - not unusual for a persistent Delhi winter - and we often dried them on the electric heater. Yup, I wouldn't recommend that again. It usually worked except this time I forgot they were on, so P and P and their mum came scurrying in to a room filled with smoke, a sparking sock that was later relegated to the trash, all black and charred, its Mona Lisa pattern unkindly eaten into.
So these London people. I'm wondering how they'll take to a pyromaniac in their midst. Kindly, I hope.
