Fire and water

CDs Adams to Prokofiev after the fire in my London study. Puccini to Zemlinsky safe, if a bit smoke-blackened, in the hall and opera DVDs OK next door. The water input here was necessary but has of course caused further damage. But how glad I was to be by the waters of Lake Vesijärvi a week later, after one of the superb concerts in the Lahti Sibelius Festival.

And right now I'm back in Dublin and immersed myself in the waters of the bay last Thursday, with swimming friend Catherine and visiting artist pal Marcelle happy to look on in the sunshine at Seapoint. 

I see looking back on this that I didn't say how it happened. I'd returned two hours earlier from Dublin, lying on the bed in my t shirt and underpants looking at emails. Smelled burning, checked the rooms four times, then saw an orange light. The curtains by the desk were on fire, which was spreading. Singed my hair trying to pour water on it, then neighbours at the door got me out and had called the fire brigade, which came quickly. I was taken to hospital to check I didn't have carbon monoxide poisoning - I didn't - but the blood tests revealed I had a severe potassium shortage, so I was put on a drip feed for two hours. 

The two weeks of kickstarting insurance action and leading a nomadic existence, shared between my friend Cally's Chiswick place and my late mum's flat in Banstead, in the process of being sold, had many good moments, but I look back on it with a kind of horror, and such relief that I'm temporarily away from the chaos. Contents insurer via NatWest has been on the case, and I'm impressed with the professionalism of the assessor. The buildings assessors have been very slow but are now finally firing on various cylinders. with  news about alternative accommodation now very urgent.

No clearance has begun, so the place still looks like this. A photographer on Bluesky suggested I should get it all snapped in black and white. The burnt CDs could become a kind of installation.

Two big paintings by Ruth Addinall have been completely destroyed, inter alia, but the other two rooms are more or less OK, if smoke-blackened. While the single Adams CDs are also a goner, the Earbox which I kept on the other side of the study is soggy, but JA's personal signature, which he made after I'd interviewed him before a BBC Symphony Orchestra concert, survives.

The smell is overwhelming. There have been silver linings. One is that at Charing Cross Hospital, where I had tests to make sure I didn't have carbon monoxide poisoning, they discovered I needed a two-hour infusion of potassium. And the fact that my precious study as I knew it is gone may affect the decision on where to live when J retires.

I didn't think I'd be able to carry on my Zoom courses as the hifi has melted down - I need the big burner to make clips - but in the back room, in the black filing cases, I found my snippets from the last time I 'did'  Tannhäuser, so that's been continuing, and it's another happy place for me. I even retrieved the Dover score from the other side of the room - books and LPs have been slightly damaged, but not gone. I can do the same with Tosca and The Makropulos Case for Opera in Depth starting in early October, but will need a place and equipment for the late Schubert course. One step at a time...