That Bang Woke Me Up !

6:03am : I sit bolt upright in bed, trying to work out what woke me up, where I am and what that noise was, all this whilst my eyes adjust to the dim light in the bedroom. As I quickly come to I jump out of bed and head for the stairs, at this point my brain kicks into gear and reminds me that if I am to run out the front of the house to investigate, then better wear a few more clothes that a pair of M&S boxers. What had just happened ? it was a cross between a sound and a sensation, like a shockwave hitting the corner of the house with a dull thud and shaking my newly installed double glazing.

With a dressing gown to cover my pride, I ran into the street to see if a lorry had hit an adjoing wall or if a light aircraft was sticking out of my roof, neither of these seemed to be the cause of the noise. Maybe it was something within the house, myabe the boiler had blown up or a tank in the loft had collapsed. Within minutes I had checked the garage and then had ladders extending into the loft to check the situation. No clues so far, my next thought was a terrorist attack on my local Sainsburys, so I checked on the internet for any news bulletins, there was nothing. Pippa had also been woken by the noise, but wasn't too worried, so she made some coffee.

I ventured out the back door with Pippa to check the rear of the house and as we started to describe our individual accounts of the noise to each other, in the distance an expolosion could be heard and we nodded at each other and said "Yeah, sounded just like that". I could relax now, my house wasn't about to fall down, this was something a mile or so away, but still worrying, what was going on, and could this be the start of something nasty.

By this time, the first snippets of information had reached Sky News and everything started to make sense. A massive fuel storage depot about 15 miles away had for some reason exploded. The events of that day and the devestation to the depot are well recorded. For the first time in ages I experienced an unusal feeling, I had been really scared.