Men at work, part three

My occasional series continues.

Part one: beer delivery man, August 16, 2017
Part two: railway signalman, August 17, 2017
Part three: full time firefighters from Stroud fire station, August 30, 2017

Nick and Jerry from Stroud fire station came to give our house the once-over re. Fire safety, and to replace the smoke alarms. One alarm was so.old we didn't even know it wasn't working. We'd never even noticed it in fourteen years!
They gave advice, and before they left I asked to blip them outside their vehicle.

I have my fire stories. We all do. My brother and younger sister went through a phase of being teenage pyromaniacs, lighting fires in biscuit tins on the kitchen table. Possibly they were trying to get a response from our mother. In this they were to be disappointed. She was depressed for years, so they probably would have had to set the whole house on fire for her to notice. Years later I saw a programme about teenage domestic fire raisers in Wales, and wondered that no one had ever raised more than an eyebrow at the behaviour in our home. The good news is that my mother and all my siblings are still alive, with teenagers of their own. None of them have ever become arsonists, nor tyre- burners on the roundabouts in the Middle East ( did I mention that they'd learned their craft from a Lebanese refugee named Jihad, holidaying in the West Highlands in the 1970s?).
And the teen wannabe arsonists in Wales showed a 100 per cent reduction in fire raising behaviour once they'd had a friendly visit from their local fire officers.

I have other stories. One of them involved my getting some smoke alarms for my mother's house, and asking Steve to fit them. I seem to remember that when I visited a year later, they'd been removed, and my niece inadvertently started a fire by leaving some tattie scones to warm in the grill chamber while she had a shower. She hadn't noticed the grill pan full of bacon fat,
which ignited as soon as she opened the grill chamber and the oxygen rushed in.

Fortunately my mother came in and smothered the flames, whereupon they both left for church, leaving all the doors and windows open, and a horrid smell remaining.

Oh, those were the days! I'm certainly not buying my mother any more smoke alarms. If anyone can, the Fort William fire brigade might just be able to persuade her to keep some in place at her 'new' home.

I'll tell you the other stories another time, because I know you're all asleep by now.