There but for the grace of God...

I woke up late this morning. 8:32 a.m. to be precise. A power cut some time during the night had reset my clock and the alarm hadn't gone off. My class starts at nine, so it was a mad rush to get out of the house. No shower, no breakfast, just get dressed and go. Bugger.

However, my cursing at this misfortune stopped as soon as I got outside. One of the houses opposite me, a house that I see and walk past every day, was no longer there. It had burned down. There was nothing left save for a large pile of charred wood. Suddenly my problems were put into stark perspective.

I had never witnessed a house fire before, and now here was one almost on my doorstep. When I got to school I learned that no one had been hurt, which was the most important thing, but here was a poor family who had suddenly lost everything, literally overnight. I can't possibly imagine how I'd cope with that. Since I've been in the North I've learned to become less attached to 'things', but I still can't comprehend what it would be like to be stripped of everything you own, without any warning.

Earlier this year, the smoke alarm in my house kept going off despite there being no visible signs of smoke, so I called maintenance. When they came to the house they went to the boiler room and found that the furnace could have exploded at any time due to a blockage somewhere. It was quite a sobering moment; there but for the grace of God went I.

We all walk a thin line in this life, and 90% of the time we forget that fact. When there's an accident on the motorway, everyone drives slowly for the next mile or so, but the image soon fades and then it's back to the normal grand prix circus. I guess if we didn't think like this then we'd be too scared to do anything, but for one brief moment we are forced to confront our own mortality and we are made to realise just how ephemeral our existence is on this planet.

Time for tea.