IT HAD BEEN ...

ONE OF THOSE DAYS ...  and threatened to be THE day I have feared for years - a day with nothing to photograph or write about!

It started badly, when my legs decided not to take me downstairs to visit the outside world, so I just moped around all day, trying to urge my brain to focus on some words to enthral all my eager readers (unless both of them had something better to do!) but unexpected help was soon to arrive ...

I had not eaten all day, except for snacking on biscuits, fruit, and too many cups of coffee, so I ventured into the kitchen to prepare something, and that gave me an idea: I would photograph its preparation and the finished meal.

Next, I sat at my laptop and started to write this piece, and that was when I was rudely interrupted.

All fire alarms in the 20 flats here are linked so that if one of us burns the toast, we can all check on each other until the Fire Brigade arrives. I knew that my kitchen was unlikely to be on fire, because a cold meat salad is not highly combustible, and it did not take long to discover that one of my neighbours had absent-mindedly allowed a plastic dish to jump onto a hotplate, creating a lot of smoke but no serious damage.

So there was something to write about after all, and after a peaceful night I woke this morning to see another emergency vehicle below my window. One of my neighbours had been taken unwell and called an ambulance. That in itself was unremarkable; it is a service I have myself used several times, but it did add a little to the excitement of life in this quiet little community.