I was woken up this morning at 7.30am by a phone call from my good friend John Molloy, who is also from Hemel Hempstead, saying "Buncefield Oil Depot has just exploded". I'm from Hemel originally, although these days I live in the west country, and for years my friends and I were always speculating if and when the oil depot would ever go up in smoke. Obviously all the speculation was about 10-15 years too early. I wonder if I had money on it?

Anyway we always wondered about if it DID go up if it would take the whole town out, or if it would just blow in a few hundred windows, make a really loud bang and cause around 50 casualties. I guess we now know exactly which prediction would be right. I think Hemel got off really light considering there are houses in all directions really quite close to the depot, plus offices and factories even closer still. First of all it happened on a Sunday, so no workers around, and second only half the depot went up as far as I can see, so it's a win win.

If it was going to go it couldn't have chosen a better time.

Had a quiet time today because the kids were out all day at their Grandma's house. She's going away for Christmas so they were doing their Christmas dinner with her this weekend. They had a good time and saw some of their cousins, so they cam back in a good mood.

While the kids were out Mia and I busied ourselves with making Christmas stuff and writing book proposals. (Yeah I finally got around to it.) It was nice having a bit of time to ourselves. It's a common thing for parents to enjoy time without their kids, but the trick is to do it without guilt. That's a tough one.

After the kidswent to bed Mia and I played a few rounds of Midnight Club 3 Dub edition two player tag mode, then PS2 Trivial Pursuit, Flash Game. We went to bed and fell asleep to the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" TV show, one of our favourite late night TV shows. Broadcast TV is dead, long live divx.

Back to work tomorrow, but not really looking forward to it. Still feeling grotty and if I had a choice I'd stay home, but I got too many things to do so I got to bite the bullet.