Barty Bumble's Brilliant Bonfire

Bartholomew "Barty" Bumble didn't believe in bad luck; he believed in a celestial saboteur with a personal vendetta against him. His latest existential crisis began with a flickering kitchen light. "Right," he'd sighed, "let's tempt fate."

He retrieved a rickety ladder, a relic from his great-aunt Mildred's attic, which listed dangerously to starboard even on level ground. As he gingerly ascended, one of its termite-riddled legs punched clean through his linoleum, puncturing what sounded suspiciously like a gas pipe. A faint, acrid hiss filled the air.

Panicked, Barty scrambled down, his foot catching on a can of lemon-scented furniture polish. It sailed gracefully through the air, clipped a precariously exposed wire from the offending light fixture, and *zap!* A small, cheerful blaze erupted where the can had landed. Barty, ever the optimist, grabbed the nearest fire extinguisher. It was a novelty item, gifted by a well-meaning cousin, filled entirely with biodegradable glitter.

The kitchen was now a disco inferno. Barty, thinking quickly, hurled a plush, faux-fur blanket over the growing flames. He'd forgotten that faux-fur was approximately 98% highly flammable synthetic petroleum product. The blanket merely accelerated the conflagration.

He burst out the front door, gasping, just as a fire truck screeched to a halt. "Thank God!" Barty choked, pointing frantically at his now fully engulfed abode.

A fireman, helmet askew, gave him a thumbs-up. "Good man! You made it out! We got a call about a gas leak *next door*, but this is much more dramatic. Don't you worry, sir, we'll get right to your neighbour's place as soon as we've contained this spectacle!"

Barty watched his house become a pyre, the embers casting a demonic glow on his perpetually bewildered face. He remembered, with a sickening lurch, that his insurance policy renewal notice had probably been delivered to an abandoned bird's nest three counties over, eaten by a particularly discerning magpie.

Just as the last rafter collapsed, a fiery streak tore across the night sky. A meteor, the size of a grand piano, slammed into the exact spot where Barty’s living room once stood, leaving a perfectly house-shaped crater. Barty blinked. "Well," he muttered, picking a piece of glitter from his eyebrow, "at least it's structurally sound now. And the view of the stars is unparalleled." He then realised he'd left his emergency chocolate stash inside.