The self igniting hot water bottle

Once upon a time, a little girl who lived in Petersfield was rather frightened by a fire, in fact by two fires.

The first fire happened just beside her when she was sleeping. Her Mum had draped a table lamp beside the bed with "something" to make it less bright so the little girl could go to sleep. Lo and behold, the "something" caught fire! Fortunately the little girl's Mum came in just in time and whipped that smoldering "something" off the lamp so no harm done - well, no physical harm anyway.

Then however, there was a proper fire, a chimney fire, a fire that involved very exciting firemen in uniforms, a fire engine, big smoke coming out of the chimney, flames in the fireplace worse than the usual flames, and the use of the little girl's favourite mug to throw water on the fire in the living room! "Don't break my mug!"

The little girl then started to have nightmares about fire, she wrote about them in her "freework" school book, like this

The little girl got really, really worried about fire and, with that delightful lack of logic that makes a small child's world full of irrational fears, was convinced that her hot water bottle was going to set the bed alight!!! She had to ask her Mum to go upstairs repeatedly to check, because if there was a hot water bottle fire, she wasn't sure how to put it out! This fear lasted for some considerable time.

Eventually the little girl did grow up (more or less) and forgot all about it. Until, that is, she found her childhood in a suitcase, including her "freework" books, and coincidentally happened upon a posting on her friend Pen's blog here.

If you look very closely, there is a hot water bottle under her notebook. Just for a second, there was a brief childhood pang - hope that hot water bottle doesn't cause the technology to explode, notebooks get hot underneath!!!

I's OK, I think I've grown out of it now - oh, and Pen assures me there was no hot water in the bottle, so that's all right then!!!!!