Those lads were an absolute joy.
One (Assistant to the head honcho) thought he was the mutt's nuts. Anywhoo one day he was up a ladder with a blow torch burning the old paint of his "barge boards/soffits etc) and his pager went off. Knowing that only the first six to the station would go on the call he decided he certainly wouldn't get there in time and carried on paint scraping. Within a matter of minutes the appliance pulled up outside his house and he called down "Do you need me then lads?" .... Back came the reply "NO ~ your neighbour phoned us to say you'd set your roof on fire you soft twat"
Roundly abusing his colleagues for taking the piss he was more than somewhat upset when they put the hose on his roof, drenching him and extinguishing the fire he had indeed started.
On another occasion one of the nominated drivers was first into the station (having been in our pub knocking them back). As first driver in he activated the shutter door, leapt into the driving seat and started up as the others arrived and jumped aboard, donning their kit as they came. Last man in grabbed the telexed message of where they had to go and read it to the driver who, pissed as a newt, set off in entirely the wrong direction. From behind the bar I heard the two tones retreat into the distance up through the town and then suddenly get louder and louder until they flashed past my front window. The fire was, it seems few minutes from the pub, in the opposite direction from the fire station. An explanation was required as to how the appliance had covered some 12 miles to attend an incident only a few hundred yards from its base. They had in fact gone through Ringwood, out onto the Bypass (Dual Carriageway) .. along to the Ashley Heath Roundabout to turn and come all the way back through Ringwood to get to what turned out to be a small kitchen fire which the householder's wife had put out with a wet tea towel.
