Good advice - get a fire extinguisher and fire blanket

I have one by the front door and a fire blanket in the kitchen.

In about 1984 I woke up with what at first was bleary eyes, then smell of smoke. I went to the top of stairs thinking it was burning toast, looked down into blackness and re hot smoke rushed up towards me. I rushed into back bedroom which was empty as my housemates had already gone to work. Smashed the window, grabbed a sheet from the bed and shouted fire as loud as I could, climbing out onto the lower kitchen roof. Quickly a nearby builder turned up with a ladder which I descended, cutting the soles of my feet with glass from the smashed window, also having cut my side on the glass as I exited. Still thinking it was just a small fire and still somewhat bleary, I smashed the glass in the kitchen door, knowing the key was on a hook just inside. I reached in, cutting my arm, grabbed the key which was so hot that I dropped it.

The fire brigade turned up in about ten minutes.

Next door was occupied by a group of Muslims - they invited me inside. They told me they had been upstairs chanting and seen what they first thought was some sort of manifestation before smelling smoke.

The "house mother", who had been standing at the kitchen sink, said she had heard the noise and looked outside and up and had seen a "naked blackened hippy climbing out of the bedroom window and averted my eyes."

After the fire had been put out and the contents of the back room emptied outside, I went inside the house, to see the landlord, a fireman and a policeman standing talking and (unbelievably) smoking cigarettes.

They told me the fire had started in the back room through faulty wiring of the stereo although I thought it may have been started by the coal fire. It was just burning through the door to the front downstairs room.

Everything was blackened, including me. The copper took me first to my doctor then to the hospital where they let be bathe and treated my cuts.

The landlord had another house just up the road where we moved into.

It was one of the luckiest days of my life, which taught me well to appreciate my life.