Russell Hobbs recalls exploding irons that 'burst into flames' ...

... I read & just for a moment think now why would he do that? A surrealist Proustian epiphany? A missed episode of some Reality TV show?

& then the penny drops.

Good name for a character, though, in that novel I am perpetually not writing. Armitage Shanks another. & I remember Kimberley Clark from Bristol days & Jacob Delafon down in Burgundy (but Keith Waldrop nabbed him). Otis in the lifts ... & those two Belgian lads Villeroy & Boch ...