Danger Zone - my back garden
It was 2.40 a.m. exactly. I heard a gentle thud, almost as if someone had let my back gate swing shut, and that sound penetrated my sleep. I thought someone had come into the back garden, but when I pulled up the blind there was a fireball rolling skywards ten metres from my window. It seemed likely someone had set my wheelie bins alight, and as it was collection day at 7.30 in the morning there was a fair amount to burn. My 999 call had me logged as the second call - my neighbour had beaten me to it. It was not only the rubbish bins on fire, in fact they didn't even exist any more, it was a torched car in the back lane and my neighbour's garage was alight.
It was a crystal clear, cold night sky and it did it's brilliant best, letting the stars shine - and sucked the boiling flames skywards. The overhead telephone wires were beginning to melt. I ran next door and helped pull out some of my artist neighbour's paintings and then two fire crews and local police were on the scene. I went back over the wall, connected my garden hose and got water onto the garage roof, because if the fire reached the underfelt it would take hold of the timbers and the whole place would be gutted. There is a pleasure in fighting a fire - it's perverse perhaps - but that blaze took me back to when I did this for a living.
It was about then I not only got soaked, but had a dozen apples land on my head.
The fire crew had hit the flaming car with what felt to be about 180lbs per square inch of water pressure. That nailed my burning back gate, shot through the fencing and smothered me - and the apple tree. It had suddenly got a lot colder. Newton's Law did its thing and I was engulfed in enough cooking apples to make enough pies for the neighbourhood.
I watched as a dozen volunteer firefighters did their professional thing. And kept out the way because I really felt the urge to grab a hose or an axe and start hacking my way into the burning roof. I've got some press photos somewhere of my first vehicle fire when I was a firefighter in days long gone by. I made a big mistake on that one. A VW Kombi van was ablaze and I, more eager than most, got to it first from the fire engine. The flames were roaring inside the vehicle and the most obvious thing to do, or so it seemed to me at the time, was to smash the glass with my axe, and get water inside the vehicle. So I did. What happens when you give fire oxygen? The explosion nearly took my head off and my eyebrows are still singed to this day.
So, like all has-beens, I kept out of the way of the men and women who knew exactly what they were doing two nights ago when they tackled this blaze.
A footnote to the night was a driver who'd had a few too many drinks and tried to drive through the police road block. Apparently he nearly ran an officer down, attempted to escape by reversing, had his window smashed and then got tasered for his stupidity.
This photo is the aftermath as the crews put out the last few flames. The car had been stolen the day before and the joy-riders chose the back of my house to torch it.
Literary criticism is one thing - but this is taking it too far.
