"Gas! Gas! Quick, boys...!"

[desperance]

So for the last few days, I have been troubled by an acris, fumey kind of smell downstairs, in the dining-room mainly. A smell of gas, I thought it. The boiler lurks in the chimney there, and I was worried. But the smell came and went, which seemed unlikely with a gas leak; and friends couldn't smell it, above the aromas of my cooking; and my nose has never been my most reliable feature, except in a purely physical sense. I doubted myself. I did phone the plumber, but couldn't get hold of him, and felt perhaps a little grateful, not to make an idiot of myself.

Last night, though, awake at 4am, I thought I could smell gas even in the bedroom. And went downstairs, and it seemed to me the whole house smelled of it. So I lay awake and worried for a while, and then of course slept late, and so got up knowing that I'd missed my best chance of getting hold of the plumber. But I had, as I do, concocted a couple of theories as to what it might be, rather than a gas leak. There's a gas fire against the chimney-breast, with the boiler behind it; the gas fire has a separate pilot light, and it has been windy recently; if a gust of wind had come down the chimney and blown out the fire's pilot light, might that be oozing enough gas to smell it, if my nose were being unwontedly sensitive...?

So I went to the gas fire, to see if the pilot were alight.

Ahem.

I should have said, there's a gas fire that Barry loves to sprawl upon, its being consistently warm from the boiler's work behind it...

Specifically, there was a gas fire with its gas turned on, because the control knob is on the top there and really rather loose, and all it would take is a kicking cat's paw to knock it on.

At a guess, I suspect he did that days ago and he's just adjusting it since on a daily basis, higher or lower as he jumped on and off.

And yes, the pilot light is indeed out, so I had leaking gas rather than telltale flames.

*goes off to figure out how to light pilot*