We had taken what seemed an age to line up three fire engines, the Unimog and the Water Rescue van in front of the Fire Station.

Everything had to look just right. The pumps had been washed, tyre black had been applied and the Union Flag was flying dutifully at half mast.

Normanshurst was preparing itself for the funeral cortege of Keith Boyce to pass the station. And, as Sod’s Law predicts, the bells went with about 10 minutes to go. Blue Watch, with our own Dennis Newton in charge, were off to Great Yarmouth to a Make Pumps 5 incident (subsequently went to Make Pumps 9).

As they disappeared off in the direction of Yarmouth we repositioned the vehicles to fill the gap that the departed Ladder 1 had left.

And, as mentioned in my previous post, just as the ‘stand at ease’ command was given the bells went again and our alerters sprang into life too.

We were off to Gorleston to an AFA and a sheltered accommodation complex.

A slight stand off occurred between that nice Irish Lady who resides in our SatNav and Al, who lived in Gorleston, over the best route to the incident. We duly followed Al’s directions, did three sides of a square and popped out on the road we had crossed just a few hundred metres back!

Nice Irish Lady 1 – Al 0

Seems that the culprit was a burnt piece of toast. If I didn’t know better I’d think my mother-in-law had popped over to Gorleston for a visit! She is the only person who burns toast in our toaster, swears blind it’s the toaster’s fault and makes me consider having a BA set ‘ready to go’ at home!

I’d just put in the Stop message when Control asked if either us or Clifton (they’d been sent to the same piece of toast) were now available. We were and they asked Clifton to standby which normally means they are about to get a Fire Priority. Then our mobile rings and its Control asking if we want to go to an RTC in Gorleston. I said that we’d love to go. So, all on board for a dash through some of the back roads of Gorleston. This time Al was determined to win in the fight with the Nice Irish Lady who lives in our SatNav. Al’s instructions weren’t quite as precise as that of the Nice Irish Lady and she definitely doesn’t use as many expletives as him, but we got there just fine.

So, via the back door we arrived at the RTC – two vehicles with one female casualty medically trapped. A pump from Sprowston was there, probably already on standby in Yarmouth what with the Make Pumps 9 still ongoing. It looked like no cutting was needed as the ambulance crew didn’t want the roof removed. The ERT from Normanshurst was on its way but was turned back as it was no longer required.

And so ended yet another drought of shouts and we had to send everything we had into Norfolk to get these…

– IAN CARTER (www.accessiblewebsites.co.uk)

www.alerter.co.uk