Drama

There was some unexpected drama on the road at the end of my driveway this afternoon.  Apparently there was a vehicle fire.  The circumstances of my finding out were quite confusing.  I happened to come home after lunch, and so I was sitting at my computer working away when I heard my outdoor faucet (wow - that's very American language of me) being turned on.  What the heck - I took a look, and saw a teenager I didn't recognize taking a cup of water down my driveway.  A second later I saw my landlord's son - who had been working on his car in their driveway - following him down the driveway, with what I thought were water balloons.  I assumed it was just some high jinks going on - some friends having a water battle or something.  So I went back to my work - but then I heard my faucet being turned on again.  Well, that's kind of rude I thought to myself - but let it go.  Then 5 or 10 minutes later, I saw the lights of a fire engine at the bottom of my driveway.  Now, I had to go out to investigate.  As I was walking down my driveway, the landlord's son was coming back up the driveway with a fire extinguisher - and so I found out there had been a vehicle fire.  Something which I couldn't see from my house and would totally have missed if I hadn't seen the lights.  The fire had been put out by the time I got there, but there were a lot of firemen still milling around - along with a broken down car and a couple of teenagers who had presumably been in the car.  I'm glad the fire looked as though it was just contained to the car - with the lack of rain and all the dry leaves and undergrowth on the side of the road, that is a lot of tinder for something potentially much bigger to break out.  They had shut down the road, so it was a good job I didn't need to go anywhere (or indeed had been trying to get home then) because I couldn't leave my driveway for some time because of first the fire engine and then the tow truck.  Naturally they left quite a mess behind - whatever they used to put out the fire will probably stay on the road for a while.  And then my dishwasher broke down this evening.  Fun times.