Summer Bank Holiday

butterflies from Doc Sleaze on Vimeo.
This time it's butterflies.  I know that, logically, after posting some video of bees going about their business, the next bit of video should have been birds, but the butterflies were there in front of me the other day, while I was on a walk.  It's no good asking me what type of butterflies they are - they're white, that's all I know. 

Anyway, it's a bank holiday again.  One of my favourites, in fact, the August Bank Holiday, which effectively marks the end of  summer as, with September looming, children go back to school and everything starts to return to 'normal' routines.  Even though I'm on holiday anyway, I still get a kick out of today being a bank holiday, a non-working day for many people.  It just has that different feel about it: the lack of traffic, the quietness compared to a normal day, just the general feeling of peace. Personally, I had a very laid back bank holiday, a fair proportion of it spent lying on my sofa watching DVDs.  I needed to unwind after the events of the weekend, when my house was, for a while, under threat of burning down.

To be fair, it never actually caught fire or even suffered any smoke damage.  But the fact is that a house six or seven doors down did suffer a serious fire and, as both it and my house are part of a terrace (which also has interconnected lofts), there was a very real possibility of the fire spreading to every other property in the terrace.  The first I knew of it was when, late on Friday night, or early on Saturday morning, whichever way you prefer to look at it, I went to investigate why a vehicle had been idling opposite my house for the past fifteen to twenty minutes.  I found myself looking at a street blocked by two fire engines and several police cars.  By this time, apparently, the fire had been extinguished.  Nobody was hurt as the property was, unusually, empty at the time.  I have to be careful what I say next, as it seems possible that there might be criminal charges over the incident, but the tenant was, I understand, arrested on suspicion of arson, but subsequently released.  Someone else, however, was consequently arrested and, the last I heard, was still in custody on suspicion of arson.  All of which leaves me feeling bloody angry: an accidental fire which potentially could have burned down the entire terrace is one thing, but the idea that some bastard was irresponsible and callous enough to set it deliberately, knowing the possible consequences, appalls me.  Fucking bastards.