The Explosion

It's funny how I never know what I'm going to write about, when I sit down here and start. I know some people have each and every blog planned to the last word. But I log on and I haven't a clue what I'm going to write about. It all just comes out. I stare at the blank screen and it's a stream of consciousness that comes out.

Today however is different. Today I was sitting at work at this desk when the whole building shook. A fucking huge boom! My first thought was "Oh Shit! The fireworks factory has gone up again." It's happened twice before. We ran out of the shop and looked out as a plume of smoke rose above the houses. Charly turned up. We stood in the street looking east at the smoke. Wondering what had happened. Then we heard the crackling noise, like a load of firecrackers going off. Like a damp bonfire on an autumn day.
Within three minutes we heard the sirens. That was bloody quick.

500 yards from our shop at the roundabout members of the public were blocking the road, stopping people going toward the parkway. It was serious. A friend of mine drove past in his car and shouted to me that a cars petrol tank had exploded round the corner near the Boongate roundabout. Cars don't explode. They only do that in American films. The plume of smoke grew and drifted towards us. The shop filled with smoke. My brother said "That's the smell of a burning car. It's unmistakeable."

I am aware that our normal road is dead quiet. Not a car moving. It's like a hot summers sunday afternoon. I imagined I could hear Crickets calling above the crackling sound coming from the direction of the smoke. There's sirens coming from all directions. Everyone is asking everyone what's happening. No one knows. It's only speculation. We're all out in the street and no one knows anything. Slowly facts start emerging. It's a car crash.... It involves a lorry, someone has seen a dead body in the road. A helicopter hovers over the site.

Then nothing for a while.

More intelligence trickles through. A car has hit a lorry. It fractured it's tank and burst into flames. The driver is killed, but there could be a child in the passenger seat. The flames engulf the car and the petrol tank explodes. This is the explosion we hear. It's horrific. The crackling we can hear from just under half a kilometer away is the contents of the lorry.

Meanwhile the police have turned up and blocked off the road they're diverting traffic suddenly our road is gridlocked. No one is moving anywhere.

It turns out the lorry is carrying shot gun cartridges, which in the flames are exploding. People are evacuated from their houses, and moved to a safe distance.

The explosion blew a hole in the road. The road was kept closed to allow the council to retarmac the road.

This afternoon the papers came out. There was no mention of the shot gun cartridges. They mentioned a possible child in the car but that was not confirmed. The driver was confirmed dead. The lorry driver and his mate escaped with minimal injuries.

So this is todays blog. I haven't a clue what I was going to write about. I never know. You never know what's going to happen. Today there's one more dead person and another unconfirmed. There's explosives on the roads of our country and no one knows where or when they are travelling. This lorry was an everyday removals lorry. "Kimes removals". You will never know what's being carried in the truck in front of you.

It makes you think.

Rock on dudes