Up in Flames

They say that it is the simplest things which give us the greatest pleasure.  Which is probably why I got such a kick out of finally using the garden incinerator I bought months ago.  Not that it is for burning garden waste - I decided that I had too many documents which need burning for my shredder to handle.  So incineration seemed the logical alternative.  (Obviously, someone as mysterious as me, someone who spends so much time wading through the sleazier parts of life, has a lot of stuff that needs destroying - I can't have those paper trails leading back to me, now can I?)  For various reasons, I didn't get around to actually using the incinerator until last Saturday.  Damn, I wish that I'd used it earlier it was so much fun!  This was just a test run, a burning of a relatively small amount of documents, but I have to say that it was an exhilarating experience.  I mentioned before that, when younger, I had ambitions to be a professional arsonist - well, using that incinerator brought it all back!  I'd forgotten the sheer thrill that watching stuff burn can bring.  Watching the flames shoot out of the incinerator's chimney as the fire got going was amazing!

It was undoubtedly made all the more spectacular by the fact that I was doing my incinerating under cover of darkness.  I decided that it was the best way to avoid any complaints from the neighbours.  I mean, if they leave their washing out on the line over night then that's their problem, not mine, and they won't know whose fire it was that left it stinking of smoke anyway.  Not that I'm going out of my way to be anti-social toward my neighbours, obviously.  Those people at number seven had put their house on the market long before I started my incinerating.  (They've only been living there for barely a year.  Clearly they've decided that they don't like the rest of us on the terrace.  Maybe they've found out that I'm that bloke on the web who watches and reviews all those low rent sleazy movies.  Perhaps that's why I was the only neighbour they didn't invite to their house warming barbecue.  Not that I wanted to go, but there's a principle involved there somewhere).  But to get back to the point, I found burning all that paper work a most satisfying experience.  I felt a lot better for it.  Far less tense - it was as if some of my troubles went up in flames with all that paper. All that's left of the paper work now is a big pile of ash.  Which, if I'm lucky, will be picked up by the wind and blown all over my neighbours' gardens.  I'm really looking forward to this coming weekend's session when I'm planning to incinerate a second, significantly bigger, pile of documents.  And I'll still have a lot more to get through after that, so between now and Christmas I'm going to be having some fun weekend burning sessions.