A Nasty Surprise

The following incident happened to me in Bury, home of those scrumptious black puddings, back in 1960. I have verbally, over numerous bar counters and many years, told the story on countless occasions and now, at risk of causing  our more adventure seeking readers to yawn, I thought to put this rather mundane (but nevertheless pretty scary for myself at the time) experience into print.

A group of friends had just left, after spending the day helping me to rejuvenate a mid 19 century, three storied, rundown pile of bricks, which I was shortly hoping to move into. Since early that morning we had been scraping paint off doors, skirting boards and banister rails, chucking out a century of accumulated junk from the cellar and ripping old layers of faded embossed paper from the three meter high walls.

It was a typical damp, mid-autumn evening and the light was already fading. I planned to stay the night and to start work again early the following morning. I was going to camp out in the only room which had a fireplace and I had brought with me a mattress, a sleeping bag, a primus stove and a kettle for my morning tea. For my supper there was beer enough, plus a few sandwiches and quarter of bottle of Johnny Walker, left unfinished by my friends.

The fire place was already full of wall paper, bits of wood and sundry other burnable remnants piled in the grate; enough to kindle a good fire. Using a strip of rag soaked in paint remover for a fire lighter, it did not take long for the fire to be burning merrily.

Pulling the mattress closer to the hearth, I threw some more rubbish on the fire, opened a bottle of beer, and selected a tired cheese and onion baguette as my supper.  Squatting there, in what was soon to be the lounge, a feeling of drowsy contentment washed over me. Satisfaction of a day’s work well done and an equally deserved night’s sleep ahead were my justified reward.

I opened and drank another beer and, with a length of metal curtain rod, stoked the fire. The wood and paper were now reduced to a hot red mass and I added more rubbish. Aimlessly poking around in the hot ashes, the rod struck something hard. Curious to see what it could be I raked it to the front of the grate. I determined that it was metal, and that it was egg shaped, and that it was glowing and – My God! It was a hand grenade.