To Whom It May Concern
Thursday, May, 9th 2002

During an electric storm on Tuesday (May, 7th) my building was hit by a bolt of lightning which sadly caused a bit of a fire...

Considering all, I was damn lucky: Some helpful neighbours called the fire brigade who arrived after only 3 minutes (TV was there after 2 minutes!). They managed to control the flames really quickly!

Although an attic room burnt out completely, not much personal stuff went up in flames. I was only using to store some not-so-needed things like travelling back, a rather peculiar wooden Christmas tree, a pile of Fury in the Slaughterhouse books no-one wanted anyway. The only thing I really liked was my football table – but insurance is going to take care of that!

Thank God most of the water the fire brigade used did not go into my flat, but went straight down to the basement of the building.

Since the fire brigade had to make sure that no-one was still in my flat, and since they couldn’t get in through my obviously well-protected front door (!) they had to knock down a wall connecting the attic to my upstairs room. So that room looks a bit of a mess now...

The roof above that attic room is rather gone, which actually is the main problem of the whole thing. They will somehow have to get a new roof up there and this – I am sure – is going to keep me rather busy and entertained throughout most of the summer. I have no idea how easy / hard it is to exchange / renew a half-burned roof construction but as I am someone who enjoys DIYing quite a bit, I am sure to learn a lot!

Almost as interesting is the question how I will cope with a summer without a kitchen! All the electricity supplying the kitchen went over the attic, so that’s gone, too. This means: Anyone who’s coming to visit me over the next weeks, will not be greeted with a hot meal (finger food will always be possible) and should also bring a sixpack of cool beer (available at all good petrol stations!). Otherwise it will be tea and water from the tap only.
Please, consider this as an invitation – I always love to have visitors!!!

OK... so far – so good. As you can see from what I have written, I have decided not to worry about this but to make the best out of it. After all, there are some positive things going to come out of this, too: The insurance is going to pay for a brand new carpet in all the rooms, and the carpet was in much need of re-newing anyway and they’re also going to re-paint the whole flat, which means, I no longer have to worry about how to paint a ceiling that’s up to 15 feet high!

Something else happened, which is going to please at least some of you: In order to be able to co-ordinate all the work that’s going to go on at my place, I finally gave in to resistance and bought a mobile phone (taaraa!!! Ring-ring!!!). So all of you can now get hold of me any time and any place...

So, I hope to hearing from you!
Don’t worry – I didn’t / don’t either!
;)
Corinna.