Saturday, April 12, 2003

“Fire”

God, I’m a hero. A real, genuine, bonafide, girls-falling-at-my-feet hero. Somebody ought to give me a medal.

Last night, for the second time in my career, I prevented our workplace from burning down, saving myself and all my colleagues from a hideous firey death. The first time I bravely snuffed out somebody’s cake in a microwave oven that had spontaneously combusted to hilarious effect. On this occasion it was a TV monitor that decided to kill itself rather than be used by me. It did a passable impression of a bowl of Rice Krispies (“Snap, Crackle, Pop!”) before smoke and flames started to belch out of the back.

Neal and I both took one look at it, nodded in agreement, and did what any sane individual would do when faced with a flaming piece of live electrical apparatus. We bravely fought the flames, raised the alarm, and saved several small children and cute fluffy animals from certain doom, before being hailed as heroes by swooning female colleagues.

Actually, we ran away like a big pair of jessies.

The fire went out on its own accord and we had to stand out in the cold for nearly two hours as no-one knew how to turn the fire alarm off.

This morning, we were feted as heroes by our dayshift colleagues. They cheered, waved and slapped us both on our backs with cries of “You bastards! Why didn’t you let the whole place burn down?” and “Next time douse it with petrol.”

There’s no pleasing some people. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s old ladies needing to cross the road. Whether they want to or not.

The Scaryduck Archive

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