Up In Flames

I was watching Dickens' Bleak House on PBS Sunday when suddenly I realised that Dickens wrote about SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION!! How come I didn't know that? Now I'm not a big fan of Dickens, David Copperfield telling his story before he was born just about did me in and, because Dickens used to get paid by the word, there's a heck of a lot unneeded words and sentences in his writing. Remind you of anyone?
So, even though I never read Bleak House I would have thought that I would have run across it somewhere. It's the weird kinda stuff that I like. In fact I watched a whole show about it and not once did anyone mention that Dickens wrote about it. In stead they made it sound as if all the cases of SHC needed electricity as a igniter.
Now, unless I'm more clueless than I think I am, I know that there was no electricity in Dickens time. I'm certain of it because honestly those fingertipless gloves cannot be a fashion statement alone.
I was even more flumbuzled to realize that Dickens even had all the components, greasy soot, blue flames, legs left un burned and the fact that the guy who went up in flames was a boozer.
So I go scurrying into the living room where the husband is partaking of his favorite sport, channel surfing and tell him all excitedly that I just learned that Dickens wrote about Spontaneous Human Combustion. The husband looked at me as if I had suddenly sprouted another head and that head was speaking Urdu, muttered something and went back to his surfing. Older son came upstairs just then and he was even more bumfuzled than I was about the whole SHC thing. The older son and I share a love of the weird. Not so much the younger son but then I guess when you live in a house with a helpful ghost who actaully unlocks the front door for you, Dickens and SHC isn't all that weird.