Sometimes it's real.

It's always worth treating the evacuation alarm as real - sometimes it is.

The alarm sounded this afternoon and we thought it might have been someone burning toast. Nontheless everyone left the building in an orderly manner and our fire wardens donned their reflective jackets and swung into action.

As it turned out there was a real emergency - it would appear we had a hydrogen leak. Four fire engines attended and the crews wore breathing apparatus to investigate the problem.

I was very proud of the professionalism of our fire wardens who created a cordon, directed the traffic, kept the public informed and helped people to cross the road.

We weren't able to return to work, except to enter the building with safety officers to retrieve necessities. Things will be back to normal - if a little smelly - tomorrow.

The moral of the story is, if you hear an alarm, get out. It may just be toast, but better that than being toast yourself.