It wasn't exactly the perfect end to the perfect summer. First up, on Monday, I became horribly snagged in the Notting Hill Carnival on the way back from Somerset.
I had a Boris Bike with me, which was the only means of transport available from Paddington Station to my residence in the epicentre of the million-man event.
I therefore formed a major roadblock for the bump-and-grinding crowds trying to surge past me in the wake of floats containing gyrating almost-naked women in skimpy glittery costumes and feather headdresses, and I ended up being rescued from the terrifying crush by a handsome young policeman called Matt Turner, to whom I owe my thanks.
That was Monday.
And so we come to 4am on Wednesday.
We were all sleeping soundly in our beds when, less than 36 hours after I’d been almost suffocated by drunken twerkers (I should explain ‘twerking’ at this point:
it’s a semi-pornographic, hip-thrusting dance move as performed by singer Miley Cyrus at an MTV awards ceremony last week), and thousands of revellers loaded to the eyeballs on Red Stripe and laughing gas, there was an almighty crash and the whole house shook.
My husband jack-rabbited out of bed and rushed downstairs. Neighbours apparently came out of their houses. I lay prone, putting off the delivery of more bad news.
It didn’t take long. ‘I thought it was a massive burglar, driving a tank into the house, or a bomb. But it’s the sitting room ceiling. It’s all fallen down.’
Was this because the whole house had been shaken non-stop for two days by the carnival’s massive sound systems?
My husband, mindful of the fact that the sitting room is where I claim to work, and where we keep the baffling new digital hi-fi, my laptop, my mother’s paintings and all my papers and books said:
‘Don’t go downstairs now.’
When I did brave it in the morning, it really did look as if a bomb had detonated. The room was draped in rubble, and a filthy, black, chalky dust cloaked the house.
The sofa, an ancestral footstool, a spindly side table, the carpets, were all ruined or destroyed, and my husband was on the telephone to Saga, our insurers. I could hear him saying: ‘But what do you mean? But I have up-to-date, comprehensive, contents AND and buildings insurance!’
It was not a good day.
Most of the rubble has been cleared, but we are all still in post-traumatic shock.
My cleaner will not enter the premises without wearing a bike helmet to protect her bonce from further skyfall.
And my daughter hasn’t been able to sleep, so worried is she that her ceiling will fall down on top of her in the night.
So my children lie sleepless, and home no longer feels safe as houses. And what happened – just like insurers disclaiming any liability, and invoking the small print – wasn’t even that uncommon.
More accidents happen at home than anywhere else, most commonly in the sitting room. (Some 113 of them involved ceilings, according to the latest yearly figs from RoSPA, the prevention of accidents people).
Crowded: Just pushing your way through the hoards of people partying on Notting Hill's streets was a mammoth- and sometimes scary- task
But still, we think of our homes as our refuges in which we nest and cocoon in security.
We do not worry about our ceilings falling in and killing us (it was a miracle no one was slobbing on the sofa at the time).
And if the worst happens, we fools assume that our expensive insurance policies will protect us. But they don’t.
The loss adjuster has just confirmed we are not covered for ‘wear and tear’ and not covered for ‘accidents’ and therefore, you guessed, not covered at all.
Which is outrageous. How do you carry out due maintenance on a ceiling that appears perfectly sound?
Which, for 48 hours, formed part of the fabric of a delicate, Victorian house, that was throbbing and pulsating to the ear-splitting decibels of the carnival, to the pimped-up sound systems called things like Far Too Loud and Rampage? Could that not have helped dislodged the lath and plaster?
I will be making these points with firmness as we appeal the decision from Saga/Zurich that we’re on our own, despite an unblemished no-claims record to date (apart from that time my husband got back from playing golf, and perhaps a visit to the 19th hole, and left his clubs on the pavement by mistake).
It’s a shocker. When your house falls down, who you gonna call? Not your insurers, that’s for sure.
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