A run-out for 10 firefighters as Cheryl lets off steam in garden
Afriend of mine picked me up for lunch this week and as she pulled into our drive she saw two fire engines outside with about 10 firemen packing away hoses.
She said to me with a disconcerted look: ‘Drama just follows you around Cheryl.’
So, let me backtrack about 20 minutes from there…
I was innocently looking into our back garden when I saw a huge amount of what I thought was smoke coming from our neighbour’s garden. Their garden backs on to ours and they have a shed right next to the fence that separates our plots.
The ‘smoke’ was getting worse and worse and despite my best efforts trying to put our hose to it, the ‘smoke’ was just getting worse and engulfing our decking where I couldn’t see much through it.
Now I should also point out here (so you don’t think I’m a complete idiot) that I can’t smell a darn thing – since getting Covid my sense of smell has gone completely and I truly can’t smell anything so to me the sensible thing to do was to call the emergency services, which I did.
Within five minutes I could hear two fire engines roaring down White Dirt Lane towards us, blue lights flashing and sirens blaring. I did try to explain to the operator that I didn’t think it was particularly bad and that I wasn’t in danger given that our garden is a fair enough size (although the sheer amount of wood in fencing and decking would mean a fire would rip through it pretty quickly).
Anyway it was like a scene in a film – they pulled up, lights flashing, sirens blaring and jumped out running with their hoses through our garage and into our garden (I should also point out that our neighbour wasn’t in and I have no idea what road they actually live in so my information to the operator was pretty loose).
There were about 10 of them all attending what they thought was a garden fire when in fact it was… steam. Yep. Steam apparently. Admittedly a lot of it, but nothing more sinister than that.
I was beyond embarrassed and apologised profusely to which I was politely advised that I absolutely did the right thing in calling them. Mortified doesn’t come close.