Smoke Alarms

You may recall from one of my earlier messages that I have been experimenting with making food in the kitchen, a rather novel prospect for this humble blogger. Well, since I have started this new cooking experiment not everything has gone as well as it could have. Where this is smoke, there is fire. Both happen to be in my kitchen.

Sometime early last week, I got a foggy notion to try and cook up a big Ulster fry breakfast spread for me and my flatmates, just like my grandmother used to make when I was growing up in Belfast. While I was brewing the tea and prepping the chips, somehow the sausages started to burn, causing a horrible grease fire. All three flatmates came running downstairs angry as can be because of the blaring fire alarm.

The fire alarm became an easy scapegoat for me to blame for my mess, and I have been blaming it for most of the week in fact. That is until yesterday when I read about a man from Ashburton. This man, a certain Mr. Paul Leary, nearly lost his life when his house caught on fire on Thursday evening. Miraculously, this poor bloke’s life was saved thanks to screeching fire alarm that tipped him off. The news article I read mentioned that he lost things like birth certificates, school records, family histories, and the like.

I kept thinking about how it was because he had recently changed the fire alarm batteries that this man’s family didn’t have to lose him. Since reading this story, I have been feeling rather introspective. I have been pondering how I curse the things that are designed to protect me because of a temporary inconvenience they may present to me.

It began to dawn on me that although my grandmother didn’t teach me how to make a proper Ulster fry, she did teach me to count my blessings. From my childhood, I remember my grandmother’s cooking but I also remember her consistently optimistic outlook on life. She was always finding the best in situations.

I swallowed my pride, grabbed a kitchen chair, and changed the batteries out of the very same alarm that earned me the early morning ire of my distempered flatmates. I haven’t given up yet on cooking, but my commitment to thankfulness has been renewed