Scary wake-up call

When Stu's alarm went off this morning, at 6.30am to be precise, I dragged myself out of bed as I desperately needed a wee. On my way to the toilet I was woofed by a distinct gas smell. A little alarm in my head went off but was suppressed by the urge to wee, quite badly. Whilst I was being freed from the bladder pressure, Stu came out of the bedroom, smelled the gas and ran to the kitchen. My brain was active enough at this point to realise he was checking the cooker. If he'd only given me 5 more seconds, I would have come up with that idea as well.

The cooker was off, the boiler/heating was off but we could still smell gas. At this point, I had successfully emptied myself of bodily fluids and alarm bells had started ringing in my head too. We immediately opened all the windows (it's freezing in the morning now!), called British Gas and closed off the mains at the front of the house. Stu then abandoned me as he had to dash off to work, leaving me on my own to wait for the gas man who, I was told, would be with me in under an hour.

45 minutes later, the man arrived. He checked for any drops in the pressure of the system but he couldn't find anything. At this point I was freezing my t*ts off and must have looked like a human penguin with PJ on. The gas man then decided to wake up the lady under us, as gas rises. (I vaguely remember a physics class explaining this, but did I pay attention?!) After a while, he came back up and it turns out the people from the garden flat (new neighbours; Mexican; not German) had left one of the hobs of their cooker on all night!!!! Flipping ek. I'm surprised they didn't gas themselves down there...