I’m scared of fire.  I feel this is a perfectly normal fear, or at the very least a healthy one.  I have other fears/phobias which are questionable in regard to their normality but more of that another time.  At my parents’ home they have a wood burning fire and quite often I’ve had cause to light and then keep it going.  Mum seems to shows no fear with either of these two things, to the extent where I sometimes question if she could do with a dose of my worry.  I’ve found my own way around the first issue of lighting it by using extra long matches, extending the distance between myself and the flame thus easing my worries.  The second issue is quite hard to get around as gently throwing the log onto the flames runs the risk of it falling off and out of the fire if you don’t close the door soon enough, and if I have to place it in the fire I’m convinced I’m going to burn myself.  Which I’ve ended up doing, albeit on the door of the fire rather than from the flames.

I was running low on extra long matches, so on my next visit to the northern version of Waitrose I decided to stock up.  The shelf where they were normally stocked was bare, however regular matches were in plentiful supply.  These simply wouldn’t do.  I went in search of an assistant and found a middle-aged man stocking shelves in the freezer department, one aisle along.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you but I wonder if you could help me.”

At first I thought he hadn’t heard me as he continued stacking and didn’t return any kind of eye contact.  Nice.  I ploughed on.

“I’m looking for some extra long matches, but there doesn’t appear to be any on the shelf.”

“Probably sold out.”  The stacking continued, as did the lack of eye contact.  A look of annoyance flashed across his face.  He wanted to stack, not chat.

In my mind I ran through my options.  Other shops were sold out, the fire had to be lit, it was baltic outside and I was on my own at the time so had no other person who was fire-happy to light it for me.  If I used regular matches, I could easily use a quarter of a pack in one fire-lighting session which I couldn’t really justify.  There’s a recession on after all.  “Well, I wondered if you might be able to check to see if there are any in the back.”

“Look, they’re probably held behind the customer service desk for our customers’ safety.  Check there.”  He continued stacking which given he’d not stopped once whilst I’d been there made it difficult to know if this was the end of the conversation or not.

“Right then.  Thanks.”

I walked back to the aisle to double check.  Quite clearly the label for extra long matches was on the shelf, so they definitely would have been there.  I scanned nearby for what was available to the good people of Kendal without any fear for their safety.  Extra large firelighters, gas lighters, fire flints, you name it they had it right there on the shelves.  Clearly the assistant believed that extra long matches were the real problem around these parts.  With a certain frisson of danger I decided to go back home and be as economic as I possibly could be with what I had left.  It would seem, in Kendal at least, size really does matter.