Burning issues

Up reasonably early today. Lorraine has a cold. In an unplanned branding exercise, I managed to scorch three fingers picking up an iron that Lorraine had turned off seconds before. Spent the next hour or so with my hand in water or on cold pad whimpering quietly whenever I removed it from the cold. The cold business worked however, as at the end of the day I had just a line of three small blisters.

In the afternoon off to meet Lakshmi and Aimee at Brighton Station. Hadn't seen either for some time. Aimee now moved back to London. She told us about her Friday night, having seeing Coldplay she returned home to her flat, and decided to have a cigarette and nightcap glass of Scotch on her tiny balcony dressed only in her pyjamas. She has a complicated door, which while she was out there partially closed. She showed us the bruises on her arm caused by fishing around trying to get it open again. After some time she decided to tear off the net curtains and fashion a rope to work the door's three way mechanism to open it up again. After much ingenious weaving of curtains, she lassoed the handle and managed instead to lock the door into a position where it was open only a couple of centimeters. Carefully she pulled back the curtain and employed it for warmth. Eventually someone passed in the street below, and she called out to him that she was trapped. He called the fire brigade, apologised that he had to go and moved on. Some time later a highly pimped up black car with extra exhausts and black windows showed up, and it was the same guy back (with friends grinning in the back) who helpfully threw up a packet of cigarettes, of which Aimee took two, before they drive back off into the night again.

Eventually the firemen showed up, clambered up a ladder and found that Aimee also couldn't unlock the door. Aimee had to be carried down the ladder, for legal reasons, with her bum in a fireman's face and her PJs slipping off. Eventually, at 5am, the firemen were able to force entry into the flat by breaking a window. Aimee, who was by now rather enjoying the company of firemen, managed to take lots of photos of them in her house and sitting on chairs etc.

Very good to see Lakshmi too, and I had an enjoyable afternoon of sitting in The Eagle, scarfing a large roast dinner and shooting the breeze with them over a few drinks, and there was a good deal of breeze to be shot. Also joined by Bianca, who is one of Aimee's numerous cousins and who lives in Brighton, who is head of art in school in Lewes, and by night a rather good DJ who plays sets in a couple of Brighton venues. Really nice woman.

Home in the teeming rain, after seeing Lakshmi and Aimee off at the station. Home and Lorraine pottering about looking tired and illish. We sat on the gold sofa, with the rain teeming down outside, and I felt very lucky to have a roof over my head and to be sitting on the gold sofa with Lorraine. All well.

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