Burnin’ Down the House (…as Long as it’s Not My House)
During my embarassingly extensive vocationally-challenged period which spanned February and March, I concocted various methods to con myself into thinking I wasn’t being a complete sloth.
Although I didn’t quite convince myself with ideas such as going over to someone else’s house to watch Ricki Lake rather than remaining slouched in my own sofa, my early morning walks in the Sydney Botannical Gardens were a raging success. I think it had something to do with the fact that I was rising before the first major radio news bulletin had gone to air each morning. There was a sense of knowing what the day had to bring before anyone else got a peek at it. I’m sure the nice homeless beggars sleeping in the grass I carefully trod around on my way to the gardens felt the same way too.
(Why are they nice beggars? Because even if you walk past them, pretending they’re merely an offensive smell as they plead for money, they still call out ‘thanks anyway, have a nice day’. Talk about feeling guilt).
Blinking in the early morning yellow sunlight, I’d arrive at the gardens, armed with a sense of adventure. I also felt jauntily fit as I entered the gates, because at that hour the only people in the gardens are people running to get fit and thugs. If you’re not normally a runner, the thugs will turn you into one anyway.
One point of curiosity that nagged me each time I strolled around the gardens were the ever-present references to the Friends of the Gardens. ‘This tree DONATED BY FRIENDS OF THE GARDENS!’ a plaque boasted. ‘These flags DONATED BY FRIENDS OF THE GARDENS!’ reads another. It was upon encountering a ‘These street lights DONATED BY FRIENDS OF THE GARDENS!’ plaque that I began to harbour an amount of suspicion for these strange ‘friends’.
At the front entrance to the gardens sits an ‘Ask a FRIEND OF THE GARDENS!’ stand, where I presume an elderly person happily sits armed with park maps (printing paid for by FRIENDS OF THE GARDENS!, no doubt) and a worrying knowledge of local botanic history that verges on the sexual, providing perfect answers to bizarre questions posed by international tourists. Yet not once have I seen a Friend of the Garden in its own habitat. I acknowledge that perhaps my overtly pre-dawn visits are outside of Ask a FRIEND OF THE GARDENS! operating hours, but even when I’ve visited at other times during the day, there are no FRIENDS to be seen in the area.
They don’t seem to be very good friends, actually. More of a hey-friend - the kind of acquaintance you say ‘hey’ to when you spot them in the street, and nothing more. The FRIENDS OF THE GARDENS! visit when it’s convenient for them, and them only.
Apparently, it wasn’t convenient for them to be in the gardens’ presence one morning when the gardens appeared to actually be on fire. I was stumbling through the lower gardens one morning when I smelt smoke, and then noticed a grey cloud wafting overhead. I was initially alarmed, but then excited. Fire equals adventure!
Still, my conscience told me that I should perhaps fetch a member of staff. Attempts to flag down gardeners passing by on industrial lawnmowers proved futile. I wasn’t able to locate anyone with a uniform on until I located a character dressed in khaki shirt and shorts loitering around a garden bed, apparently inspecting a couple of palm trees.
I approached, leaned into the garden and called out. ‘Do you work here?’
The man jumped, snapped his head at me and gave me a wild-eyed, slack-jawed expression of shock. He then grabbed a bag on the ground and sped off through the foilage. I scratched him as a gardens employee and put him into the thugs category. Wacky thugs.
I decided to hang around the Ask a FRIEND OF THE GARDENS! stand, hoping to locate someone more responsible than myself. There was nothing I wanted more to do than locate the source of the smoke and jump around it gleefully. I don’t think I’m a pyro, because everyone has a sick part of them that takes delight in seeing things destroyed, especially if they’re valuable or expensive. Maybe it’s a form of tall poppy syndrome. Perhaps poppies actually were being burnt a few hundred metres from where I was standing. I wasn’t sure, I desperately wanted to find out; but thought I should advise a FRIEND first.
As it happened, I waited around fifteen minutes before giving up. I even craned my neck to make it obvious that I was looking for someone. The people in bike shorts running around didn’t seem to mind. I called out to a passing man with Adidas plastered all over his body.
‘Is there a fire?’ I shouted to him over the other side of the grass, trying to sound as urgent as I could.
‘Probably,’ he shrugged, and continued pacing headlong into the gardens, right into where the smoke was coming from.
I guess the FRIENDS had better things to do, and presumably one of the gardeners encountered the fire because I didn’t hear about it on the news. Still, it would have given me a sick form of satisfaction if that alleged 100-year-old plant trapped in a ridiculously large iron cage that the Sydney Botanical Gardens are famous for was destroyed by flames. It looks creepy. It’s so old it has a similar exterior to that of a 100-year-old human.
Fire fascinates everyone. If someone’s house down the road is set alight, you can’t tell me you haven’t made your way slowly down the street, rubbernecking as you ‘go to the shops to buy some milk’. When I was about five years old, the house over the road from me was tragically burnt to the ground. It horrified me and fascinated me all at once. I’d never seen such an infernos so close before.
I had a few nightmares for the next few weeks after witnessing our neighbour’s loss. They were even scarier than the pictures I’d seen on the copy of The Joy of Sex my mother had accidentally left lying on her bedside table, opened on page 56. Page 56 haunted me for months. Did dad really do that? Why would he want to?! (Perhaps chalk this one up to another factor of becoming a gay guy).
Also, the man in the photographs of the book looked identical to Matthew Corbett, host of Sooty. To other children, whenever they watched that show and heard the Sweep character’s strange squeaking form of communication, they assumed it was a secret language that only Matthew Corbett and the dog puppet knew. I, however, was wise enough to know the truth. I knew that Sweep was agressively barking legal threats to Matthew to get away from him or he’d take out a restraining order. I knew what kind of tricks dirty Matthew Corbett got up to in his spare time, and poor old Sweep seemed to be a victim of them. This resulted in me screaming and escaping the room whenever Sooty appeared on the TV. My parents couldn’t figure out why this didn’t happen when I watched more violent cartoons such as Transformers, or even worse, M.A.S.K., known in the schoolyard as one of the more scarier toons.
But the fire was scarier than Matthew Corbett. Far scarier. Although not quite as scary as the Wombles. They seriously frightened me. They still do. It seems as if the artistic director who created the Womble figures turned his back for a cigarette break halfway through creating the characters, and a junior stagehand strolled by and incorrectly assumed they were complete. I hated the Wombles and wanted them to die. Fortunately, they looked fairly flammable, so I figured as long as a pack of Redheads was handy at all times, I could easily rid a Womble assault if it occured.
As I slowly realised that fire could assist me in overcoming my fear of suspicious characters from Wimbledon, I began to accept the concept of it. The next major incident I had with fire was at a primary school Blue Light Disco. I’d begged and pestered my mother for weeks to permit me attendance of one of the Blue Light Discos, which she had steadfastly refused until I caught her at a weak moment. I have no idea why she perceived an event open only to those under 12 years of old which was enforced by the police to be drug-ridden and violent, considering the worst thing you could get your hands on at a Blue Light Disco was Wizz Fizz. (Can’t you see it? ‘No cordial for you sir, are you under 12? I’ll need to see some ID first…’)
To this day, I lucidly recall that ‘Love Shack’ by the B-52’s was playing, and Kate Pearson had just called ‘Tin roof… rusted!’ Considering that we were all about ten years old and only knew what Kate was screaming courtesy of well-thumbed Hit Songwords magazines, we were singing along pretty well.
Then an elderly lady burst forth from behind the snacks stall, pulled the needle from the record, and hollered into the microphone: ‘FIRE!’
I knew panic was imminent and slowly smiled. To make passage towards the main door easier, the DJ immediately flicked on the strobe lights, causing the smaller children to be mangled underfoot. It eventuated that one of the mums had been cooking some chocolate crackles in an oven in the hall, and forgot about them. After investigation it was decided there wasn’t actually a fire after all and ‘Sexy is the Word’ by Melissa ‘Pronounce My Surname, Go On, Bitch’ Tkautz resumed. I remained amazed by the power fire commanded.
At school I had a friend who was in year 6, one of the ruling gods over the playground at primary school. Although he was merely 2 years older than me, I worshipped him because he lived on a farm. I spent many weekends at his house getting up to all sorts of mischief. I recall that he once demonstrated how easily you could create your own flamethrower with a can of WD40 and a cigarette lighter. Fascinated by the process, I later attempted to recreate this at my own home with a puddle of sunscreen and a box of matches I’d smuggled into the backyard. I was extremely deflated when the desired results were not produced.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve noticed that there are different varieties of fire smells which produce different reactions in people. For example:
Burnt honeycomb smell. This slightly acidic smoky odour usually seems to occur in workplaces where a ditzy receptionist has jammed the lunchroom toaster full of oversized bread. Typical reaction caused: excited workers, eager to break the monotony of their working day, crowding around the ‘disaster area’ after a smoke alarm is set off.
Burning oil smell. Typically encountered if driving an old Datsun, and the vehicle dies in the middle of the road. Upon investigation of the engine it’s noticed that the radiator has run out of water, which is rather unfortunate because the engine has decided to catch on fire. Typical reaction caused: angry telephone call to roadside assistance organisation in vain attempt to shift blame.
Burning ironing board smell. Strangely, people only smell a burnt ironing board right before they’re about to step into work in the morning, dispite the fact that the ironing board is kilometres away from where they’re standing. Typical reaction caused: urgent telephone call to flatmate, resulting in screaming about how you shouldn’t wake them up so early and furthermore that you should get over your anxiety issues.
A few weeks ago a new type of fire smell made its way to my nostrils. Curious, I traced the source and poked my head out the front door of my apartment. Alarmingly, the building across the courtyard from us in the apartment complex had smoke billowing out from the top window. It was at this point I realised the golden rule of fire fascination: it’s fun to watch things burn, as long as they’re not yours or close to you. Also if it actually is you on fire.
This wasn’t the first time fire was in my own home, though. When I was eighteen and still living with my parents, my father had purchased a new whipper-snipper. At the family’s request, however, he was forced to revert to the original old lawnmower he’d been using. Trust me - hours upon hours of hearing a whipper-snipper blade being crunched against concrete isn’t a relaxing sound.
In his frustration at not being able to use his super-efficient whipper-snipper, my dad took one look at the decrepit mower in the corner of the yard and swiftly kicked it. I idled up beside him, lighting a cigarette (my parents figured I’d be smoking anyway even if they told me not to, so they didn’t really care), asking him what the problem was.
As I flicked ash onto the ground, my dad emitted a womanly scream and shoved me backwards in a fashion that resulted in me planting my bottom into the grass.
‘What?!’ I asked, confused. He simply pointed to the petrol now leaking out of the lawnmower, then to the Winfield Blue I was holding, which was innocently wafting smoke into the wind. Secretly, I wished that a mushroom cloud-style explosion could have occurred, resulting in a spot fire. It would have been a great story to tell in the future.
Which is why I think that fire is a great form of entertainment. I will make no secret that I’m rather obsessive about this new Big Brother show that’s just started here in Australia. I understand the concept has been done in most other countries - but don’t call us behind; because we were the first country to have the Popstars TV show. (Well, it was actually New Zealand, but Australia delights in claming New Zealand artistic efforts as our own. It remains debatable if TrueBliss are art, though).
But this is my idea: if the Big Brother ratings start slipping at all; if the live webcast hit rates begin falling; if the show just doesn’t have the zing it started out with in a month’s time: set the house on fire.
Can you visualise it? It would be a ratings phenomenon. Then the house members will truly regret idly swimming in their pool all day, lounging around and talking about how they’re worried if people can see their nipples on the internet. They’ll wish they’d spent some time going over their fire safety procedures. Viewers will comment that Shana amazingly retains her uncanny likeness to Kerri-Anne Kennerly even when she’s set alight.
It won’t stop there, either. Realising that fire equals viewers, more TV programs will incorporate the theme. Burke’s Backyard will continue roadtesting strange, small fluffy dogs; but they’ll also determine how flame-retardant the animals are. An over-enthusiastic overalls-clad contestant on Changing Rooms will argue that burning her friend’s pine wood living room to cinders qualifies as a redecoration - and look at how little it cost her. Australia’s Funniest Home Videos will disperse giggly commentary from a canned-laughter-fuelled Kim Kilby with a winning home video titled Faulty Electric Blanket Burning Boogaloo. Foxtel will swiftly cash in on the craze, and run an advertising campaign in an attempt to generate more subscribers to its cable TV service, promising such specials as When Arsonists Attack and World’s Funniest Spontaneous Combustions.
Your desire is fire, and the networks shall provide.