I grew up in a town with two flour mills right in town - one of them (the Maple Leaf Mill) was once the largest of its kind in the British Empire. When I was about 10, it caught on fire and everyone rushed down to the lakefront to watch the blaze - it was on the Welland Canal, where it empties into Lake Erie, Ontario. Everyone, that is, except the families who had people working there. The men all escaped but phoned home to tell their families to get into the basements and stay there because, as Liz points out, if the fire got to the flour storage silos, the whole town would have kerblooied. (Kerblooied?) Including us on the shore.

Spectacular sight, though. Fireboats came to help from Buffalo.

When the other mill, The Robin Hood, caught fire, another time, the whole town smelled of chocolate cake for days. It didn't mill flour; it prepared cake mixes 'n' stuff so when the fire hoses got going, the mill got baking ...

Apart from the bread problems arising (sic) from the grain shortages, I've also been told by my butcher that anyone wanting a Christmas fowl better order them in advance as, apparently, a lot of the smaller farmers have gone out of production due to the cost of grain feeds this year.

sian