Ending the evening with a bang!

I knew we should have taken the Christmas decorations down last night when we were supposed to. My mom always said that if they stay up past twelfth night, the hobgoblins would get us and we'd have bad luck for the rest of the year.

So there we were, vacumming the last of the tinselly strands out of the livingroom carpet this evening, when all of a sudden a panicky Stephen came hurtling down the stairs in search of help. His laptop - which had been switched off - had caught fire, and was merrily burning away on his bed. Bobby ran upstairs and came down with the computer, which he deposited on the driveway, where it sat, 30 cm high flames and all. Meanwhile Stephen was dousing his smouldering mattress with water, and our house was filled with disgusting toxic smoke.

Amazingly, none of us was hurt during all this frantic running about with burning hardware, despite Roly doing his normal cat thing of trying to kill us on the stairs by twining around our legs. And the only thing damaged is Stephen's bedding and mattress. Well, apart from his computer, which is no more. When we'd all calmed down, Bobby look at its remnants smouldering on the driveway and said to Steve "I think your essay may be lost."

It's minus four outside, but obviously we had to open all the windows and doors to try to get rid of the smoke in the house - it was really nasty.

And, during all this drama, our smoke alarm, which goes off practically every time we make toast, didn't even peep.

It seems that somehow the battery in Steve's computer caught fire. We've googled it, and there've been loads of battery recalls - though not of the model we have. The thing that unnerves us is that we have two other identical computers in the house. Are they about to catch fire too? Bobby phoned PC World (where we bought the computers) and they were utterly unhelpful, since the computers are one month out of warrantly. Basically they said that they hadn't had any other similar reports, and that they weren't interested in whether our other computers might be at risk, that they wouldn't assess them, and that it wasn't their problem in any way shape or form. We'll write a letter of complaint but meanwhile it's a bit anxiety provoking. What if it happens again while we're out? Or while we're asleep?