Accidental firebug

On Friday I nearly set fire to the house.
It all started when I moved the breadmaker instruction booklet from its normal spot next to the breadmaker over to the side of the stove. Next thing I know there’s an interesting burning smell in the air and the instructions are on fire. So I apologise to Eleni, open the doors and windows, blow out the flame and chuck the smouldering instructions outside on the concrete.
Ten minutes later I’m sitting upstairs working when I hear hysterical screaming from downstairs. I fly down to find Eleni trying to douse a grass fire in our back yard. Luckily we still had the bathwater from the previous night so we could just fill up some buckets and put it out, but there’s a nice little patch next to the kitchen wall that’s all black now.
It seems that the smouldering breadmaker instructions, far from dying out quietly as they were supposed to do, just kept on a-smouldering and eventually set fire to the plastic outdoor slippers nearby (which you wouldn’t have thought were burnable, but given that they’re now twisted lumps of charred plastic, I think we can assume that they are). The slippers must have been so hot that the grass next door then decided to burst into flame. And this is where the fun (and the screaming) began, because the grass was burning really, frightening, quickly. Had Eleni not been sitting at the kitchen table, I suspect the whole back yard would have been on fire in minutes, not to mention the side of the house.
In Japan, summer is humid and winter is dry, so it’s winter when you need to watch out for fire, rather than summer as in Australia. In particular, we’ve had a cold snap over the past few days which has made the air even drier (as our cracked hands and feet will attest).
So all in all, a rather lucky escape for Sushi on a Stick.
After all, not only would it have been highly embarrassing in the local community and down at the school (because everyone would have heard within minutes; Felix would have found it highly amusing but Ruby would have been mortified), but it all happened on Friday, just days before I was due to get my official visa. And as we all know, Immigration Authorities love nothing more than an excuse to refuse you a visa. Any excuse will do, but I imagine arson would go down particularly well at the Bureau.