On the way to work this morning I was driving past County Oak retail park and could smell a sort of burning smell. I hate that. I am always convinced that I have broken the car somehow. I was a bit relieved when I got into work and could still smell smoke and it all became clearer when we got an e-mail cascade telling us there had been a major fire nearby and smoke had drifted over our site.

That explained all the fire engines going past all day, and the 6 pumps I saw parked up in Martyrs Avenue on the way home today. It turns out that the recycling centre AKA the local amenity tip had caught fire yesterday and 24 hours later they were still pumping water at it. How did I manage to miss a fire that required the attendance of 28 fire engines only a couple of hundred metres from my workplace? Talk about being unaware of your surroundings!

Fortunately the fire actually started about half an hour after I passed the area. Phew. I bet it was chaos there. Bloody shame too because that tip was one of the best things to happen to the town for ages: a real state-of-the-art facility. The only silver lining is that the site of the old tip, right next door, has not been used for anything else yet so they should be able to populate it with skips and provide a similar service to the old one while the new one is rebuilt.

Its a terrible thing to be sure, and guaranteed to fill up the front pages of all the local rags this week, but at least I can stop being paranoid about my engine blowing up now.