May the Fourth Be With You

There's something I mention now and again on my Twitter and Facebook pages, which I realise I never fully explained. I tweeted about bits of it at the time, but I've never told the full story in one place.

For me, it was one of the most memorable (and honestly frightening) experiences of my life. That makes it sound really dramatic, and I don’t mean to make this sound like an X Factor style sob story. I just want to share my account of it fully, in a way that cannot be expressed effectively in 140 characters or less.

It started as a normal day. Of course it did; no one wakes up in the morning, fully expecting things to come crashing down around them - especially not so literally.

It was a four day weekend, owing to a staff training day on the Friday and a bank holiday on the Monday. At this time, I was in my last couple of months in sixth form. Exams were fast approaching, as well as coursework deadlines, so I, naturally, was looking forward to spending four days doing nothing. I woke up late on the Friday morning, just as my mum was getting ready to go out to the high street. My little brother, Paul, was in the same school as me at the time, so he was at home too, while my two older brothers, Ian and Scott, were both at work.

After mum had left, Paul was amusing himself in the front room, while I ‘did ICT coursework’ in my bedroom. It got to about half past twelve, at a guess, when I heard a noise. At first, I thought it was just heavy drops of rain colliding with my bedroom window, so I dismissed it and carried on with what I was doing. A few moments later, I heard the same sound again, louder this time. In my mind, it sounded like something falling over, so I decided to investigate and put my mind at rest. Once I was sure it had not come from anything in my own bedroom, I crossed the landing into the room Ian and Scott share.

I think this would be a good time to clarify that, when I say ‘landing’, I mean a very small square space at the top of the stairs, which separates the two bedrooms. Directly above this landing is the loft hatch, leading to an unconverted attic, which we never go up to.

Allow me to show you this diagram, to help paint the picture a little better for you.

So I stood just inside the door of the boys' bedroom, trying to spot something out of place, or lying on the floor. I couldn't see anything of the sort, so returned to my bedroom, feeling confused.
It was about five minutes later when the noise came again, like something dropping. I tried to ignore it, but I heard it again a moment later. And then again. As the sound became more frequent, I went searching for its source once more. I eventually came to a standstill on the landing, staring at the loft hatch. So that's where it was coming from.
The only explanation I imagined was that there was a bird trapped up there. So I turned back into my bedroom, with the idea of giving my mum a ring to let her know that there was this odd noise coming from the loft.

I didn't even reach my bed.

I don't even know how to describe the sudden new, much louder, sound that came from behind me. 'CRASH' doesn't cover it, 'BANG' isn't quite right.

I whipped back around to see bricks tumbling out from the loft hatch - which was now hanging by just the one hinge.

The avalanche of bricks seemed to go on forever. As they hit the floor, they came rebounding into my room, and I could hear some bouncing down the stairs.

It stopped as suddenly as it had started, the last cluster of bricks collapsed onto the pile that covered the landing and spilled into my bedroom and that of my brothers. What followed it was a large cloud of dust and soot-like dirt, billowing through the doorway.

At first, all I could do was stare at the bricks in complete shock. It was only when I heard Paul emerge from the front room that I remembered how to function.

After calling down to him to check that Paul was okay, I grabbed my phone to contact my mum. My hands were shaking and I was fully aware of my heartbeat, which had, unsurprisingly, increased considerably. As Mum answered my call, it struck me that I wasn't sure of the best way to describe what had happened. I went with 'Lots of bricks have just fallen from the attic!', and I could hear the confusion in her voice when she asked me to repeat what I'd just said. I gave her a rough outline of what had happened, but I don't think I managed to convey it to its full effect, because although she said she'd come straight home, she didn't sound all that convinced.

She'd told me to go and sit in the front room with Paul, so after hanging up, I then had to negotiate my way out of my bedroom. Climbing over a pile bricks wearing nothing but a thin pair of socks on your feet isn't the easiest thing to do. Finally finding my way onto the first step down from the landing, I could see how far the bricks had gone. As well as the large pile on the landing, there was a small accumulation of them at the bottom of the stairs, with a few scattered across the steps in between. There was a hole in part of the skirting that ran down the side of the steps, and the carpet and the walls were covered in a layer of grey dirt. Dodging the bricks along the way, I finally made it to the bottom of the stairs, where Paul waited. Looking along the passageway, I could see that a stray brick had found it's way down the flight of steps that led down to the kitchen.

Paul and I waited in the front room for mum to get back. As soon as she came through the front door, we heard her swear in surprise, presumably at the sight of the bricks in the passage at the bottom of the stairs. Then we heard her put her shopping down and move further along the hallway towards the staircase. More swear words followed, accompanied by the sound of her climbing the steps to inspect the damage, before she finally came into the front room to find out exactly what had happened. I knew we were covered in dust, but it wasn't until later on that I realised just how much. She said that we looked like we'd been in a fire, with the way the soot looked around our noses and on our hands.

The few hours that followed went by in a blur. Mum was on the phone to the insurance for what seemed like forever, with one or two breaks in between when she was stuck waiting for someone to call her back with information. She used those breaks to tell me to get in touch with Ian and Scott at work, which I did, and had the same trouble explaining what had happened as I did when I'd phoned my mum earlier.

In between all of this, I returned to the bathroom countless times to wash my hands, though it didn't manage to make them feel any cleaner.

After a long afternoon, mum finally completed her last phone call of the day, by which time she'd filled three envelopes with notes.

The bank holiday weekend meant that no one was available until the middle of the week to assess the damage and make it safe. Therefore, we'd been booked into a hotel for an initial five nights, courtesy of the insurance company.

Not knowing how long we'd be out of the house for, I took a risk and climbed over the rubble to collect certain vital things from my bedroom - my laptop which contained all my A-Level work, my shoes, charger, etc. While doing so, I managed to get a good look through the gaping hole of the opening to the loft, spotting another gaping hole further up, letting what was left of the day's light to stream in.

I still felt completely in shock about what had happened. Knowing that if I'd stayed on that spot on the landing a few seconds longer, I would have had rubble collapsing on top of me... It was an extraordinary thought. It still is, really. I've never been exactly certain about whether to believe in fate or destiny, but at that moment, it did make me wonder a little more.

That night, we took all our essentials and went to stay at the Ramada Encore in Chatham Maritime, where I had the best shower in the entire world! It's a really swanky hotel too, which we were quite surprised by.

Going back to school on the Tuesday was strange to say the least. I went armed with a note about why I had the nerve to wear Converse-style shoes in case the head of sixth form had a go, and spoke to my form tutor (who was also my ICT teacher) about what had happened at home. He was a little less sympathetic than I'd thought he might be; the thought of bricks nearly hitting my head seemed to amuse him.

In terms of the chronology of what went on with the insurance company, I'm afraid I can't be exact. So much went on that it became hard to keep up.

It turned out that part of the chimney stack and some of the 'flank wall' had collapsed. We figured that it must have happened over a certain period of time, with the bricks gathering on top of the loft hatch until the weight was too much and it all gave way.

The first set of people who assessed the damage told us it wasn't safe to be in the house as it was, but they couldn't do anything about it until they determined what caused it. This led to us being shifted from hotel to hotel until we ended up at the King Charles. Although it wasn't quite as high-end as the Encore seemed, it was in a better place for us to make it to and from school easier. We stayed there for about nine weeks all together, popping back home on rare occasions to pick up more clothes and suchlike.

A few weeks in, the insurance finally gave their decision, saying they wouldn't help us because the cause of the damage wasn't one we were covered by. Mum put in complaints, but at the same time had to try and find help from the council. We were due to check out of the hotel on the coming Wednesday, and we had nowhere to go. It came to the day we checked out, and mum had a meeting scheduled with the housing office that afternoon about temporary accommodation. We met back at the house after school, and waited to hear where we would be sleeping that night. When mum came home, she told us that she'd had a call from the guy who'd been handling our case with the insurance, saying they'd 'overturned their decision on good will' and agreed to 'have the house made safe to live in'. Because the housing people now knew the insurance company were helping us, they were unable to offer us housing, not even for that night. The insurance had tried booking us a hotel from that night onwards, but everywhere was fully booked. They'd managed to get us into the King Charles from the Thursday onwards, but that was no help for the Wednesday.

With nowhere else to go, we ended up travelling to London to stay the night on the living room floor in my uncle's one bedroom flat. It meant that Paul and I had to miss a day of school, which wasn't entirely helpful, what with my deadlines and suchlike.

After that, we checked back into the King Charles and called that our new home until the builders were done. As weeks went by, we watched as scaffolding was erected around our house, and spent the mornings running for the bus to school despite the stop being directly outside the hotel's car park.

I finished my two exams and started focusing my time on my ICT coursework, which wasn't easy, considering the less than great signal in the hotel room I had to share with Paul.

We decided we'd have to make the best of the situation, so I embraced the fun elements of the hotel life.

I would giggle at the family who run the King Charles because of how much they reminded me of Fawlty Towers characters-particularly the Italian manager I nicknamed 'Manuel'.

We would find entertainment in the fish that lived in a tank in the lobby, watching as they tried to bite our fingers through the glass, and tried following us when we walked past them.

We even managed to watch a couple of the weddings they held in the courtyard from the window in my mum's room.

It was the run up to the Olympics, and with Medway Park leisure centre next door, the hotel was occupied by at least two Olympic teams: Congo being one of them, and the Egyptian boxing team the other. One of the boxers seemed to take a shine to me, made clear by the way he would stare at me and spread his arms wide in the corridor to try and hug me, which was a little creepy, I have to say!

We eventually returned home on the 16th July, which was a huge relief. We spent that evening in Morrisons, picking out new bedding to go on the new beds mum had been provided with money for, seeing as ours were ruined by soot.

It was a little odd being back and getting back into normal life at first, but it was really nice to be home, especially to have my own space again.

The scaffolding on the house didn't come down for a while longer, so the finishing touches to the paint work and suchlike could be done, but when it did, it finally felt like we had our house back.

Today marks 2 years since it all started. Sometimes it feels a lot longer, but other times, it feels like it was only a few months ago.

There are still times, such as now, that I look back on that day and feel incredibly lucky, especially after being told by one of the surveyors that just one of those bricks falling from such a height would've been enough to do serious damage to me. I feel so grateful that I, nor any of my family, were at all hurt - I shudder to think what could've happened if I hadn't moved, or if Paul had come walking up the stairs at that moment.

Like I said, I don't mean to sound all dramatic about it, but it's really made me think about and appreciate life a lot more than before.

Today is 'International Star Wars Day', a celebration of a simple pun in the day's date. Although I've never seen Star Wars, I enjoy puns, so I think it's a good way for me to end this.

Take a look around you and the way your life is at the moment. Find the good things in it, the things you wouldn't want to lose, the people you'd worry about anything happening to.

I frequently complain about my brothers and my mum and the things they do, but that doesn't stop me from loving them all so much. When I'd phoned the boys and told them about what had happened, the first thing they asked was whether we were alright. In those ten weeks or so that we spent in hotels, we really pulled together, more clearly than we had done in years.

It's a silly thing to say, because I know you're probably all fully aware of it already, but take time now and again to think about the people you love and show them that you do. It doesn't hurt.

Until next time...

Be strong.

Be thankful.

Be happy. 

And May the Fourth Be With You.