How did we sleep while our beds were burning?

That is a good question and the answer is we were no longer there. Fortunately, we had made the annual migration, heading South to our summer habitat in the Cape.

With the arrival of the rains, we had already decided to make our journey back to Cape Town for the summer months. The wind blows a lot in summer, but it's warm and the skies are mostly cloudless and blue. More importantly, perhaps, the migration of others in search of sunshine, and sandy white beaches, brings most welcome visitors to our Zimbabalooba shop.

We had already spent a stormy night in the tree house when the rains first broke. Oscar was terrified of the thunder and lightning, while Mila and Ella were thrilled by the flashes of lightning, streaking white blue, out in the night sky. I reassured Oscar that it was only thunder and that there was nothing to worry about. All my life I have had that experience, incredible flashes of streaking light and massive crashes of thunder, that have never amounted to more than nature's light and sound show. I have heard the stories but one's personal experience always trumps hearsay, that's always been my experience.

So Oscar was terrified and I was calm, enjoying the show. Little did I know that was soon to change. In retrospect, Oscar's reaction was "on the money" as they say, quite literally so! Thousands of generations of instinct were telling him this is not something to be calm about, while my short stay on the planet was telling me otherwise. I always relish a bit of excitement. By chance, luck, fate whatever you might call it, I had reached the conclusion that lightning was no more than that - exciting.

It turns out I was wrong. On the positive side, I'm still here to acknowledge that. More importantly, those nearest and dearest to me are too. Although it is difficult to say how close a call that was, with my newly acquired respect and knowledge of lightning, I can say we were lucky to have not been at home. I could recount the many stories that I have heard since lightning came into my life. Let's just say it is more dangerous than sharks or toasters.

Returning home, some days later was a strange experience, with everything gone, reduced to ashes, still, cold and cremated. The incantation of " dust to dust, ashes to ashes" came to mind. There was nothing left, everything that could burn had burnt - gone up in smoke, as they say. The literal meaning of this came home to me, things that had been there had just gone .The pod mahogany hippo, the size of a very large watermelon, was now a darker shade of grey ash in the rest of the charcoal ashes; a shadow of its former self. All the things that had been born from fire had survived it. The steel of the chair frames, and our beautiful baked-earth tile table was still there, buried under a bed of ashes.

Then there in the ashes I saw two strands of thick wire that had been burnt thinner but were still intact. Looking at them I realized I was looking at the possible cause of the lightning strike. The explanation as to why, after 30 years of existence on top of this hill, our tree house had suddenly been struck by a bolt from the Heavens. There it was, a horizontal lightning conductor, unearthed, that had been secured in the ridge of the roof, buried deep in all that lovely golden grass. I had no idea that Gideon the thatcher had used wire that thick, or that long, as the anchor for ridging the roof. Two thick, long strands running the entire length of the roof. Like a fuse ready to be lit. It could have been a year or two before a big enough thunderstorm occurred directly overhead.

It could have been that first thunderstorm of the rainy season, while we were all there.

Then Oscar's terror would have been fully justified.

As it was, it wasn't.