FireSDO

Yesterday I was promoted to senior divisional officer in Central Command, the old Strathclyde Fire Brigade. I now have an arduous task to visit every station in my area and today I have chosen HRH or to be precise Hazel Rose House my old haunting ground where it all began. Retained fireman to now a fully-fledged senior officer in less than twenty years. Another good reason is because one of my identical siblings, brother Michael with an A as we call him is a retained fireman stationed there. I was christened Micheal with an E and my other three brothers are all called Michael. The odds of having identical quintuplets naturally are incredibly low, estimated at about 1 in 57 million births and our mother managed it and so did someone else on the female side so the ten of us feel very special and it must have been a blessing from God or someone doing God’s work as gran always states.

How our mother conceived is still an incredible dark mystery and only two people in the universe have been told the clues. These two people saw her after our delivery into our wonderful new life. Those two people I will probably meet today are gran and Michael with an A who started life off as a carpenter. Michael was brought up by our gran (the fat controller but after Wegovy she is now the slim controller) and our mother paid them an emergency visit one night when Michael was three years old. That night she had a very long discussion with our gran and Michael as he sat playing Monopoly which was his favorite board game. Probably his introduction to capitalism because ever since he hit sweet sixteen, he has invested all his money into bricks and mortar, where he remodels them and gran rolls them onto the rental market, they have become the perfect team. All properties they buy are next to fire brigade’s training centre and surprise, surprise the fire brigade is her biggest customer. He has only ever studied one subject in life, cycles, which he states, revolves around astrology, and gran providing all the education in the form of WD Gann books and the Prophet Ezekiel of course. Ever since that fateful night when our mother gate-crashed gran’s house in an emergency Michael A has become a very wealthy individual or a mystery man as we four call him but he is also the eyes and ears (station spy) of the slim controller.

My other brother Michael who we call Mike or Magic Mike to be precise is a high rank in the police force. He is an assistant chief officer, with his manic personality that lets everyone know what position he is. He has two loves in life, young blonde females and trying to make it as a bookmaker. He has been married that many times we don’t remember his Ex’s. He reminds me of Mickey Rooney and his wedding certificate states “To who it may concern”. He has always told us that he has no legitimate children to leave his legacy too but the way he gambles he is always on the wrong side of the punter which means the only thing he will be leaving is a bag full of chips, casino chips at that. He seems to be saddled with the devil riding his horses because they always lose and his layers always win but he has one fantastic trait; he has always been obsessed with computers. I reckon that’s the reason they keep promoting him because he maintains their IT system. They once denied him a promotion and immediately their IT system crashed and he was the only one who could fix it, needless to say they made up a higher position and he mysteriously got promoted and like a miracle their IT system was up and running again. He was raised by a family who owned a computer company and dinner table talk was all about computers so he was conditioned from an early age. After school he would help out in the company for pocket money and slowly it became ingrained in him to study computers at college. He later solved a big criminal case due to his expertise at opening up a hard drive without a password. This led to the police offering him a job with fast-track promotion.

My third brother Michael or Michelle as she is now called decided to study education and then medicine. He was raised with a family full of hospital professors or porters as I call them because they had little common sense, this led him seeking a career in Biology and then eventually becoming a doctor in psychiatry. Education could never seem to leave him so he became a teaching professor in the mind and then decided to become a part-time councillor. He liked it that much that he stood for leader of the council but due to active discrimination only a woman could stand so he decided to change into a woman and change his name to Michelle and won. He made the headlines becoming the first transgender to lead a council and still work for the NHS. This has come in handy for Michael with an A because he fills in when a lollypop man or street cleaner is required at short notice.

My fourth brother Michael who we call old Michael is the brains of the family and joined the faculty of Advocates. He was brought up with a family full of lawyers so he just went with the flow. Like the rest of us he also has one fascinating passion and that’s archaeology. He spends all his weekends on digs all over the place hoping to find some archaeology treasure buried far underground. He set up the faculties of archeology, a team which consists of two people, him and his young female intern who works for him. If we want to know about the valley of the kings or Tutankhamun’s excavation, then all we need to do is ask him, but what he is great for is precedents. Whenever any one of us is in a bit of bother which is usually constant then we can ask him what the court will make of it. When he has been told all the facts then he can make a judgement which will have a 90% chance of being spot on. I think gran has a hotline to him on a weekly basis’s; she seems to be the centre of the web and Michael with an A sitting on her right-hand side. He lives on her estate in a small gatekeeper’s cottage close by the entrance gates. He has installed cameras permanently fixed on the gates so he can record who comes and goes 24 hours a day. 

                                      Chapter 2 Dinki Doo 

Time had come to bit the bullet and pay a visitation to HRH station because there were two good reasons. First reason was due to a new MSP Community Safety Minister visiting to reveal a plaque stating it had become a Community Station. First thing I had to do was to find out the definition of a community. Goggle says it means a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. The second meaning was the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common. To be honest we don’t need a plaque to tell us this because everyone working in the station are there to make money. If I ever wanted to empty the place then all I had to do was refuse to pay their wages but they would literally empty the place as a ransom till their wages got paid.

As I drove up to the station, I started to see the tell-tale signs that the boys have been busy beavers. The welcoming sign above the front door had a stroke through Hazel Rose and Nut was wrote above. The lovely stainless-steel flagpole that Alex had donated when he became First Minister was missing. On closer inspection the four bolt holes were still there but they were empty bar solitary bees coming and going from the holes. Heros of the pollinator world, the UK has over 200 species of these pollinators, each female makes her own nest and has no workers so like a community they all nest near each other. By default, Alex had done more for nature than a gaggle of Green Politicians. 

The plastic fire sign protruding from the edge of the building had melted from the heat of the bulb. Due to a clerical error all stations received a 300-watt bulb rather than the standard 30-watt bulb that was required. It gave all our stations character of how something so simple like adding a zero could burn down a station, well, the sign anyway. With my Strathclyde key I decided to enter without activating the bell a nice surprise I thought. 

The moment I got in I saw a frozen chip on the thermostat which helped kickstart the antiquated heating system. The mission statement on the notice board read; “A new Commander, I give unto you” It was meant to read commitment but they knew I was arriving and had altered it.  Then the phone rang in the general office so I decided to answer it. It was the procurator fiscal asking who was the funny guy who had previously answered stating he was an innocent man and then hung up? I told her it was probably autistic Alan who was the station cleaner now called general assistant and my cousin. Gran had managed to get him a job in the station through her closeness to the firemaster’s father who was now residing in the care home next door. The headache had just begun because this was the PF telling me that I needed to amend the road traffic collision (RTC) report from a female fatality to a male fatality. Doctors only realized after they cut off her dress in the operating theatre yesterday.

The tannoy looked a good shout for everyone to meet in the canteen so I could get a nice cup of relaxing green tea. I wandered down to the canteen and no one was there so I made the tea and sat down to read the newspapers. On closer inspection of the newspapers, there were holes cut out of them where vouchers used to be so I made for the bookcase. First book was called “How to run a government” followed by “Amateur winemaking, how to build a coffin, Peoples friend and Reader’s digest”. I was now slowly losing the will to live when Autistic Alan shuffled in holding a can of Mr Sheen polish. He heard someone once say “You need to be seen holding something, so it looks like you are working”.

Hi cuz, what are you doing here? I’m here on a visit and where is dumber and dumber? Mystic Mick and Davie Deepfry are round the back cleaning the care home’s windows. Why are they called Mystic and Deepfry I dare to ask? Michael with an A is called Mystic because he has just finished a course in tarot cards and now tells horoscopes on Utube and Davie only cooks with a frying pan. I see, what were you doing, did you not hear the tannoy? Aye, but Camberwickgreen was just coming on and I guessed Windy Millar but it was Peter Hazel the Postman, (Alan begins singing) “Peter the Postman is a very busy man, he empties the boxes as quickly as he can, he puts all the letters in a great big sack and whistles when he marches with his load upon his back”. I think I get the gist of it, so what’s on for today at the station? Someone from the Muppet Show Program (MSP) is coming along in the morning and we have a funeral in the afternoon. Who is the funeral for? I don’t know because I was told she was dead. I know that but here’s your chance to shine like that can you are holding, is it a relation of the firemaster? I think it’s a cousin of someone famous. Thanks Alan, before you go how do I find Mick and Davie? Just head for the garage and follow the red hose coming out of the small fire engine because they are cleaning the care home’s windows.

Just as both of us were about to leave the canteen the phone rang. I answered it and it was the Scottish Government to tell me Mr Ewing would be arriving at 11am precisely and who would be there to greet him. I replied with my new rank SDO McQuaid will be waiting to greet him and rung off. I turned to Alan and said good old JR Ewing will be visiting at 11am, and Alan asked who shot him, I realized I had made a big mistake calling him JR because it was now firmly planted in Alan’s massive brain.

                                      Chapter 3 as in Triplet

We now went our separate ways, Alan let one rip and then said “What do you deal in cuz” before heading upstairs, to the TV room to watch an episode of Dallas and I replied “Logic” and headed for the garage. The garage was always dark and dingy and gave anyone the creeps walking through at nighttime. The old Road Rescue Unit was now turned into a shiny red window cleaning van. The new Fire engine (Pump) the station had received curtesy of gran’s influence was a fully functioning Rescue Pump so it meant the RRU was now obsolete and was ideal to convert into a water fed pole window cleaning van. All they really had to do was remove the radio and blue lights. On closer inspection the radio was still active and the front blue lights were still intact and I was beginning to see a picture and it was telling ten times the thousand words but in this firefighting game everything grew arms and legs and made perfect sense or quietly disappeared.

With a deep breath I exited through the fire exit door which was ajar for the window cleaning hose and began to follow it. I began to hear a radio playing which meant I was getting near the action and heaven knows what the chuckle brothers were up too. Arriving at the corner I heard them both shout “HA” and then Mistic Mick started singing “I’ve never seen you look like this without a reason, another promise fallen through another season passes by YOU. I never took the smile away from anybody’s face and that’s a desperate way to look for someone who is still a child”.

As I peeked round the corner, Deepfry had joined in with the chorus and now they were both singing “In a big country dreams stay with you, like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside, stay alive”. Now the two of them were bouncing about like teenagers, using the water fed poles as mics. I spotted the radio was blasting out a new radio station called Nation Radio Scotland presented by wee Suzie, started to make sense because we bought our cars from her dad. It was sitting on the station’s big galvanized steel wheelie bin plugged into an extension going through a vent, why drill a hole when one is already there. That’s the thing I learned from the fire brigade, everything has multiple uses and so does words. I decided to wait till the fat ladette (Deepfry) had sung the chorus again and it was game over. It got so bad that I couldn’t wait till the end and pulled the plug and made my magical appearance like Merlin the magician.

Ho it’s you, brother, Mick shouted out. Yeeeeees It’s SDO McQuaid to you two and I have to take charge because an MSP is coming at 11 am to unveil the station’s new community plaque. Mick laughed and said “Tell him not to bother we both did it this morning when we were polishing it with brasso”. Good old JR Ewing is officially cutting the ribbon and I have to give him the red-carpet treatment so they keep giving us money, I mean, funding us. “Please yourself, gran is coming with the firemaster and his assistant side kick to visit his father or is it our uncle who is in the care home, I can never remember. We have just finished cleaning all their windows and you can be rest assured we don’t receive a penny for it. Is this so they can all get their mugshots in the press with JR? Yeeees, I will be in all the photos as well because I am representing the Brigade at SDO level. Deepfry and I will give it a miss then because we are tooooo busy with the funeral preparations. Gran was telling me she had planned this in minute detail so they can kill two birds with one stone, visit in the morning and funeral in the afternoon.

Before that I have an important job for you two and it involves lavatories. In the back garage there are doors painted on plywood that represents 21 of them. Can you both nail them together so we can show JR what 21 toilets will look like after the First Minister told us there is 21 different types of human beings in Scotland? I was always led to believed there was just two, a man and a woman, (nodding like a donkey was Deepfry’s head). Leave it to us, we always have to show the world how mad our government has become. Most governments gain in strength but ours has to be different and gain in madness and they wonder why all the public service employees hate them. Well, I don’t for one, they pay me over £70k a year and give me a new Beemer 5 series every three years. Well, I don’t want to burst your bubble twin, a little bird was telling me, you lot, will soon be driving about in fire brigade mini vans, to match your egos. I thought I told you to address me as SDO. Shut up or I will report you to gran because she, the assistant (big Brian) and the firemaster are behind you!

SDO McQuaid automatically turned round and gran swept him aside with her left arm and said nothing. She grabbed my (Mick’s) arm and pulled me aside to have a quiet word with me which involved becoming a special constable tomorrow. She mentioned magic Mike our brother had been up to his female blonde tricks again and needed a fall guy. I fitted the picture exactly because being retained I could come and go as I pleased. I was now needed to attend police headquarters tomorrow to play the personality of Mr Ben in the BBC’s cartoon series. I was almost positive that gran was related to David McKee from all her stories she used to tell me about him. As for our brother Mike, he was seconded to Interpol or interplod as we called it in France, probably meeting Davie Mckee to work out another scripted of his own, to save his bacon and his career. 

By this time my SDO brother was being grilled by the Firemaster about when the minister was arriving and what was the protocol. He was doing a lot of brown nosing and we three were loving it. He always thought he was the boss until he came up against the top dog and this was a moment we would all saver. The three of us were now behind the firemaster smiling profusely with brother McQuaid looking over his shoulder at us. We all began to wave at him and make funny faces, he didn’t know where to look and began to resemble a bingo caller with his eyes down for a full house. The best part came when the firemaster raised his voice and told him (pointing) to get over to the carpark gates and welcome in the chauffer driven car that the minister would arrive in. He walked away like Compo from the BBC’s, Last of the summer wine TV show. 

Firemaster turned round and shook his head and then introduced himself to me and Davie, gran stood back and smiled. Gran now took centre stage and said, well Mr Jamieson (Firemaster’s surname) this is my favorite grandson, (hugging me) he was the one I had to bring up when my daughter went missing from the pilgrimage to Saint Fionan monastery. How can you tell the difference? They all have different idiosyncrasies and each one has a fantastic trait. Mick’s trait is all to do with memory or Ai as it’s called now, some say he can recall things going back to when he was three years old. (I butt in) “Yes, I wonder why, three seems to be the magic number”. What trait does SDO McQuaid have? Gran replies “Although he studied Mathematics at Uni, ever since he was a boy he used to strip down and rebuild engines. He was brought up with the Clark family and Alberto was a mechanic so he used to help him at weekends so he became very good at fixing vehicles”. “Handy to know if we ever need a fire engine repaired and no one to do it. Anyhow there’s the minister’s car getting interrogated by McQuaid, let’s go and release JR from his clutches.” Replied the firemaster.

We all walked over to the now parked car and greeted JR into our lovely station that me and Davie had been cleaning for over a week. JR was full of life and smiling like he had won the lottery because he had finally made it and became a fully-fledged Scottish Government Minister. The only way was up unless he messed it up by posting something daft on social media. He had been thrown many curve balls in life and now the bucket was empty so he had finally entered the cruise altitude. Most politicians go into the job because they like meeting people and talking about everything going on in the world. Deep down they realise there is not much they can change in life because everything revolves around money, all they can really do is keep moving the money around.

Davie and I got fed up smiling and imitating the Laughing Cavalier so we decided to slip away and head for the back garage where all the door panels were placed. Our task was to screw them all together to show the minister what 21 toilets would look like and try and educate him to how ludicrous the new First Minister had become. It was a straight forward job and they were all numbered which was usual in the Fire Brigade. Before anything was dismantled, we were given a permanent marker to mark every bit that joined together. This meant if someone with no idea what they were building (normal in the fire brigade) had to re-create the project then it was pretty straight forward. Me being a joiner meant I could build it in my sleep and Davie was always half asleep so we made the perfect pair like Laural and Hardy, I was the brains and he had the look of death folk would mention.

We picked a spot below the training tower so we could use the first-floor window to stabilize the structure. A length of wood jammed inside and then an out rigger to attach to the first panel. The bottom of the panel slotted into the middle of a pair of big rubber feet and the first panel was complete. The rest of the panels just slotted together and we were finished in jig time or tea break time as we call it. Davie and I headed into the canteen where JR, SDO, Firemaster, Assistant Firemaster and gran were drinking tea and talking politics. I was told at an early age that poly means many and tics are bloodsucking creatures or show business for ugly people which seems more appropriate now. It could even be the transgender movement when my brother Michelle is in the room. The moment we sat down they all got up and left to inspect our handy work outside. Davie had noticed old JR was decidedly interested in our bespoke table and remarked before leaving he had never seen anything like it. If he raised the table cloth he would have seen the best of American oak because it was two oak coffins turned upside down and screwed together. We always thought they were too good to store them away in the back garage so we made use of their beauty and sturdiness till we get a commission from a rich family for their final resting place.

This is our best time of the day the 10am tea break or elevenses because of the Scottish Minister’s arrival. Most professionals arrive at their office at 9am and work two hours and then take a 30-minute tea break which means 90 minutes to their lunch break. Arrive back at 2pm and have a tea break again at 3pm then leave work at 5pm. Now I was beginning to understand why the UK is full of professionals or tea tasters as I call them. I blame royalty for all this tea drinking, every time you see royalty visit another country they are all sitting down drinking tea and eating scones. That’s one of the reasons me and Davie (Deepfry) have swapped over to coffee. We were very happy when it was a penny a tea bag but during covid it doubled to 2p a bag and we had, had enough of this daylight robbery and less tea in the bag. Mojo and I did a tea inventory by cutting open a new bag and then opening an old bag and the new bag had been dipped. Someone had dipped some tea out of it to make it lighter and charged double for the pleasure.

Sitting in our rightful seats, all staff in fire stations have their own canteen seat and one can wait years to move seat if someone moves watch, station or dies. I have the perfect seat corner left which means I can watch the TV on the wall, see right up the corridor to the general office (means I can see who is coming down the corridor and warn the 10 O’clock gang) and lean to my left on the seat and receive anything from our very own sous chef Saria (cook) who is always starring out of the serving hatch resting her face on her hands, with her elbows on the counter of the hatch. She is like a picture but nothing resembles what her name stands for. Saria or Square Toes as we call her because of her specially made square toed boots the brigade has to make to fit her perfectly aligned square toes or hammer toes as they used to be called. The name Saria generally has meanings related to royalty and nobility. It can mean "princess," "noble lady," or "exalted one". It has origins in both Hebrew and Arabic. Additionally, in some contexts, it can also mean "clouds coming in the night". She moves like a cloud, slow and precise but she has one fantastic trait, she knows everything there is to know about housing benefit because her father has slowly built up a buy to let business. He also owns a big Glasgow Cash and Carry business and surprise, surprise, he supplies the fire brigade with all our janitorial consumables and anything we need in a hurry or a curry to be more precise. She is very handy to know and can speak fluent Hindi or Hidey as I call it when she doesn’t want anyone to know what she is talking about.

With the coffee made and us relaxing with our feet on the table (coffins) and headphones on listening to some trance music, we were in heaven. This is our time, 30 minutes of complete bliss, without a care in the world. Can’t even hear the phone ringing so that means we can’t answer it and they will need to call back after tea break is over. The two of us are listening to the same tune so our heads and hands are in sync with each other. Who ever invented wifi, cordless headphones must be the genius of the DJ movement. This moment lifts us to another world, our fantasy world where we let our imagination take us into a meditative state to create euphoria which takes us into a hypnotic state. So, it says on the label but usually after 5 minutes we are fast asleep till someone turns off the music.

That someone this time was Saria who had arrived to do the small tea after the official plaque revealing at noon and the funerals purvey in the afternoon. Then Debbie the dispatcher popped in or Debbie Downer as we call her because she is always in a depressed state. I have always wondered how she can get out of bed in the morning with all the illnesses she has. The moment someone tells her they have an illness then the next day she comes in and tells us how she has caught the exact same illness. She once came in and said she had phantom leg syndrome and we asked who she met at the meeting the previous day. She said she meet a guy from fire investigation who is in a wheelchair. We all realized it was Ian or Ironside as we call him who got severely injured in an incident and they promoted him to fire investigation. It meant he could read all the test cases of incidents and had now become the brigades AI Officer when investigating fires and the reason they began. 

Debbie has a very important job in the service because our station operates the temporary control and has to be checked every day without fail well, bar weekends. If for some reason, main control goes down then Debbie has to take over and become the main despatcher for the whole brigade until the cavalry arrives to help her. Not stressful at all until it actually happens but the way she talks about it, one would think it happens every day. I think it has happened once in her career and she fainted after the other officers came in to help her. She was awarded a merit of consideration and so was the first aider who brought her back round again. Both deserve a slap on the back or a kick up the backside as the commander on duty that day constantly reiterates too. In the end we are all a team of characters with very different traits, which come in handy when we need to learn something in a quick way. Some days the station can resemble Mr Ben the cartoon series with many different professions and characters coming and going when undertaking their professional jobs.

                             Chapter 4 as in the Musketeers 

Our tea break was well and truly over and we had to go out and discuss our 21-door project with all and sundry. Autistic Alan was polishing an outside door handle when he spied JR across the carpark and let out a scream, “who shot JR” The bosses turned round and laughed and went back to scratching their heads trying to understand what 21 toilets would look like and how they would all fit in. They wouldn’t, it would cost millions to convert every public service to wee Nippy’s (Nicola) plan. In one word gran raised her voice and shouted Madness. This was the voice of reason speaking and even JR had to agree. He then came back with, I think we will go back to the status quo, male, female and disabled toilets have always worked for centuries so why would we change. Gran gave him the answer, because wee Nippy is really a wee man cut short, dressed up in women’s clothing and the bald puppet is trying to protect her. That’s how he is always bent like Mr Burns (Simpsons) he is spineless and when he eventually grows a spine (May 2026) he will be booted out of office. There comes a time when a new leader has a choice to let go of their old friends in politics and return to reason because everything eventually returns to the mean because natural law is the boss. Everything in politics revolves around money and when the money stops, so does their crazy ideas. Social Security, Care Scotland, Deposit return scheme, Highly Protected Marine Areas, Cutting Bottom of School Doors, Rejecting Nuclear, Rejecting Wood Burners, Rejecting Gas Boilers, Rejecting North Sea Oil, and bowing to the one percent club. This madness has come about because the first rule of a new government is to do as little as possible, disregard this law and we get chaos.  Once stable, then leave well alone and constantly smile and promise nothing. Remember, we left the stone age but never ran out of stones. We will leave the climate change age but we won’t run out of changing climate.

Everyone was dumbfounded and even me because gran had hit the nail on the head. There was nothing anyone could say and we all looked over to JR and he was forced to reply. I think you have spoken the words of wisdom there and I will be seeking an interview with the First Minister to explain where he has gone wrong in his new position. Deepfry butted in and said Scotland used to be a boring country, till you lot came into power but not anymore, every country knows about Scotland now. Gran replied, Aye, we have become the laughing stock of the universe, even the asylum seekers asked to be sent back home when you dumped them in Castlemilk. Old JR’s face had become a lovely crimson colour and was probably wanting to get shot so he could get away from the place.

Paisley’s, Renfrew’s and Johnstone’s pumps had all arrived so the revealing was now upon us. The fire service was great for padding, one moment there was a half a dozen of us and the next moment a couple of dozen turned up when free scones were mentioned. Time had arrived for us all to take up our positions around the community sign which was screwed to the gable wall as one drives in. As fate would have it, JR couldn’t reach the drawstring to draw the curtains because it was up too high. Deepfry and I nipped over to our bin shed and brought a couple of wooden pallets. JR used them as his soap box and went through the Scottish Government’s protocol speech which he knew off by heart. After he thanked everyone for attending and told us that tea and hot scones will be served upstairs the area quickly emptied. Deepfry and I had to stay to return the wooden pallets to the front of our big door project because we knew an uncoupling event was coming for us fairly soon.

We were in no rush because Saria (square toes) would have planked a dozen scones for the VIPs. One thing all cooks have drummed into them when they start is to hold back any food for the boss or it can come back to haunt you. Upstairs was buzzing now and everyone was feeding their faces bar me and Deepfry. Square Toes was now heading for the downstairs to make up the salad sandwiches for the funeral’s buffet later on. As we crossed paths, she slipped us a bag of hot scones so we headed for the serving table. We decided to cut them open and spread on some real butter on them. The guys must have smelt the aroma because they were round us like those wild bees where the flagpole once stood. We couldn’t hear ourselves think from all the questions asking where the scones came from. We used the Pomodoro Technique and pointed to the furthest away table at the corner of the room and watched as they all headed in that direction. We quickly devoured the scones before they came back and told us there was only the three C’s left, cutlery, cups and coffee pots but no scones. A moment later we were saved by the activated tannoy which told me and Davie to report to the general office immediately.

Deepfry and I wandered downstairs trying to drink tea and walk at the same time but when we hear the word immediately, we both enter snail mode. SDO McQuaid was standing at the door drumming his fingers on the doorframe, the minute he saw us he pointed to the back door and told us to dismantle our magnificent creation of 21 doors. We dually nodded and went outside still drinking our tea and took up our positions sitting on each side of the wooden pallets with one arm bent so our head could rest on our hand and the other holding the mug of tea. Listening intently to the birds singing in the mini forest we had created when the station got built. We call it our mini version of Central Park like New York. People who don’t know the area and go for a nice walk, get lost, and when we find them, they are in disarray. Our serene time was broken by the stations turnout system. We both looked at our pagers and no activation meant it was the other pumps who had booked home station, HRH (hazel rose station). Next minute all the guys were jumping into their pumps and they were away heading off in the direction of Paisley. 

Deepfry and I decided to get to work because the carpark would soon be occupied by mourners who will be following us in the hearse. Deepfry was the hearse’s chauffeur and I was acting funeral director where I needed to page (walk) the hearse out of the station and then a short ride round the corner to the crematorium. Main Control were fully aware that we would be off duty in the afternoon and maybe send a pump from another station to standby till we were finished. Although we were firefighters, we were only retained so our main job always took precedent unless the boss let us away. That was the reason we all usually worked for ourselves. By running the funeral business joined to the station made perfect sense to the brigade because we were usually available for immediate duty.

Old Mr Frazer the funeral director had lost all enthusiasm for the business and had left the organization to everyone who worked in the station because the funeral parlour was attached to the station and we had created a double doorway and covered it over with a large folding curtain. It meant we could come and go as we pleased. Old Frazer always appeared at the end of the month to sign the wages receipt. After he did that, he went next door to visit his best pal who was also the firemaster’s father in the care home. I think he sneaked in a half bottle because we could always hear them laughing and joking when we were cleaning the care home’s windows. It was part of our monthly checks on intelligence (fact finding mission) to clean the care home’s windows and take a tea break when old Frazer went into his room. Just by coincidence we could quietly sit on the tree log below the window and listen to everything they were discussing. 

                             Chapter 5 as in the Pentagon 

Although I had been promoted to SDO I was still the same old stoic natured man that I was born with. It meant I could see when things have a good chance of going wrong. Old JR was desperate to slide down the pole and wanted to go home and boast to his wife. I told him to go ahead but remember what happened to Bridget Jones when she tried it. I knew he was an accident waiting to happen but maybe it would be good for pole dancers tax return. I was sitting in the general office when I heard a scream followed by an almighty thud which could only mean one thing. Old JR had come down the pole with Mr Sheen at lightning speed and bounced off the soft rubber mate at the bottom.

I left the office with my heart on my sleeve because I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. The scene was like a pedestrian being hit head on by a car, JR was lying unconscious six feet away from the pole. As I approached the accident scene I leaned over and looked up the pole to make sure no one else was going to slide down. There was an eerie silence and a pair of eyes staring down at me, something shinny was also reflecting off the stainless-steel pole. The person had now disappeared back in and I could hear the pole door close. I was now resting my hand on the pole and there was a smell of polish on it and so did my hand. In a flash I knew what had happened and JR must have broken the world speed record sliding down a double height fireman’s pole. I decided to say nothing because JR was now coming round and may ban them on the grounds of health and safety.

He was now compos mentis and seemed to have no memory of what had happened but the lump on his head was a giveaway. I told him he must have banged his head on the pole at the bottom. He tried to standup with my help and then felt the bump on his head which resembled a small egg. I felt really sorry for him, for not telling Autistic Alan to keep away from both poles in the station. The rest of the crew come down poles with one hand on the pole and their rubber sole boots wedged between it. They are safer than stairs but not this time and I don’t think old JR will forget it nor the visit. With my help and JR shuffling his feet we managed to make it into the canteen so our very own first aider Square Toes (Saria) who was also the cook was there to lend a hand.

Right away, she was over with a bag of frozen peas which she pressed on JR’s head. He fainted again because of the shock and both of us were holding him up till we managed to sit him down on the nearest seat. Then she darted into the kitchen area and came out holding a steaming hot towel and banged it against the lump on his head. JR let out a yell and we both smiled knowing he was back to his old self again. She told him she has got to do this to bring out the bruising, reduce swelling, soothe joints and relax muscles. After 15 minutes the redness was subsiding and a tinge of blue was appearing on his forehead. She darted back into the kitchen and came out with some smelling salts and gave him a sniff, he nearly choked and pushed them away. She still wasn’t finished and this time came out with some painkillers and a glass of cold water, where he readily gulped them down. Good old Square Toes had performed admirably and followed every step in the brigade’s manual of bringing someone back round from abyss. 

The way JR was feeling he just wanted some peace and quiet so she told him he would be better with a mug of strong green tea and a bar of chocolate surrounded by trees. This meant he could recuperate in a nice half hour before he left in our lovely forest walk, we had created between the care home and our station. Holding a strong mug of tea (Any tea bar green) and biscuits, old JR went out the back door and through the archway Mick and Deepfry had cut in the big hedge to give us all access to nature. Square Toes holding a cushion followed him to show him where our favorite bench was or the only bench was. The queen gave it to us, well, in reality she had donated it to Jamieson (firemaster) and we rescued it from a skip, done it up and bolted it onto the granite rock so it didn’t grow feet and disappear again. This exact same bench was never out of the newspapers when it went missing and old Jamieson had to call in the special branch called the bench police to track it down. In the end he failed to prove it was his because we had camouflaged it by staining it brown, now it looked like any other bench when he took part in the bench ID parade and couldn’t pick it out. It meant it was ours to keep, we even screwed the brass HRH name plate back on.

                                      Chapter 6 as in a dice

The funeral was now the focus of the day and the breakfast club had arrived and I had to introduce myself to them. First person that came into the general office was reverent Rolan Bacon who was the local priest. He had heard all the jokes about a roll in bacon and he told me why he was christened Rolan. It was due to another clerical error when his mother got told she was having a baby girl and decided to buy all the pink babywear. When the day arrived to give birth, she was so upset that a baby boy arrived. This anger led to her changing the babies name from Rosslyn as in the chapel to Rolan as in Grangehill and father Bacon was stuck with it.

He then began to describe the order of merit for the day regarding the funeral and who was involved. He was saying Bishop Ash Brown would be taking the leading role because he knows the firemaster’s father very well when he visits the care home. I was beginning to realise why they call them the breakfast club, with Rolan Bacon and Ash Brown, all they needed was Deacon Tom Sausage and we had a full English. They both would be traveling in the funeral car behind the hearse and would minister proceedings at the crematorium. Once that was complete, they would all come back to the station for a light tea upstairs. As long as it was someone to do with the fire brigade then we were allowed to use their facilities by giving a donation to the firefighter’s trust charity. Many things could be used in the fire service for the employees, as long as they came back in the same condition they went out in.

Next person to walk into the general office was Bishop Brown who was in a panic because he couldn’t find his mitre. I told him the last person I saw wearing it was wee Square Toes because she had forgot her togue or chef’s hat as we called it. Before we could even shake hands, he was off down the corridor heading for the kitchen. Father Bacon and I just starred at each other in bewilderment. A few moments later the bishop was back with his mitre and then searching both desks for sellotape. Again, me and father just looked at each other in amazement. The moment he found the sellotape he began to unroll it the wrong way round, round his four fingers. Once he had enough, he meticulously dabbed the inside of the mitre.

He then went and gave us a full description of all the infections lurking in the material when multiple people have been wearing it. Father Bacon and I looked at each other until the bishop asked him what the joke of the day was. This will be said at the middle of the service to bring some light relief to the congregation attending the service. Father Bacon said the deceased always told me this joke about a guy called Quasimodo who worked as a bellringer in France. One day when she was on holiday there, she was walking by and asked to identify a body that had fallen from Notre-dame. She went over and said “I don’t know him but his face rings a bell”. We all laughed together at the punchline.

Bishop Brown then asked for the exact time and we all noticed the station’s grandma clock was 5 minutes fast. As I went to adjust it, father Bacon intervened because he has one just like it in the chapel house. Not wanting to steal his thunder I let him bring it up to speed because his time keeping was impeccable. He had no sooner removed the old newly polished heavy clock when it slipped from his hands and hit him squarely on the face and tore a strip down his left side. Bishop Brown said “You now looked like scarface” and I replied by saying “I don’t know about that but his face rings a bell”. The three of us were laughing when Autistic Alan came in still holding the can of Mr Sheen.

We all headed back down again to wee Square Toes our resident first aider. She was busy preparing the sandwiches when she couldn’t believe her luck, two patients in one day. She needed to treat another four to receive her passing out certificate and receive an extra pound in her hourly rate. The first aid box was out again and she was dabbing the cut with sterile water. Her next trick was to apply a thin layer of antibiotic ointment to keep it moist. She gave father Bacon a sterile dressing with ointment on it to dab the cut when he thought fit. He had now got a reprieve from participating in the service as the bishop’s wingman and could only act as monitor. Mick and Deepfry were trying to wake the dead by beeping the horn to let us know the show was on the road. We all headed for the cars to join the funeral cortege and that’s when JR made an appearance feeling rejuvenated after his catnap. 

He made for the kitchen door and opened the top half of it when Square Toes appeared resting her elbows on top of the bottom half. He asked her what she was doing and she replied “I’m making salad sandwiches, boring Kale as in Sir Keir, Rachel Radish, leaves a bad taste, Rayner Rubarb, the tart with a heart and how could I forget the Liz Lettuce as everyone else has”. Sounds like a Prime Ministers lunch he replied.

The moment he made for his car, wee Square Toes went through her sales mandate. “Would you like to buy a mass card? Or what about some flowers? Are you a smoker? I do a nice range in vapes your chauffeur will enjoy the smell”. JR smiled and headed for the car to take him back to Holyrood. Sea gulls had now descended on the carpark, fighting over half eaten brick scones that wee Square Toes had made earlier.

                              Chapter 7 as in Dwarfs 

The moment JR opened the car door a sea gull pooped all over the car and splashing his new Harris tweed jacket. It was a final tribute to a horrible day. His first words were “Take me home Charles (his chauffeur) and what does it all mean, this place is truly haunted”. Charles responded “Well, you will get involved with the commission and I should know because my sister is married to the transgender one now called Michelle after their mother. Sit back, close your eyes and I will tell you the story as we head north. You may need a pen and paper to keep note of the massive family tree that the commission is part of, like a big spider’s web with the old gran right in the center of it.

She once had a beautiful daughter whose eyes were as turquoise as the Reform party’s colour. Her name was Michelle McQuaid and was married to a merchant banker of the name Merrill Lynch. One day she came home and found him dead as a doornail and the bank’s name had to change. The government brought in the army to investigate it but it was a complete mystery. Michelle was just a shell of her former self and took solace in the church they used to attend. In a dream she was comforted by the Arch Angel Michael who told her to go on a pilgrimage to find her true self. This led her seeking Devine Inspiration and the priest told her about a secret pilgrimage to a small monastery in Ireland called St Fionan’s. It lay deep in a small island called Skellig Michael off the coast of Southern Ireland”. JR butted in “I see that’s where the name Michael comes from”. Exactly, Charles replied, it was named after the Arch Angel Michael who told her to go on a pilgrimage so it all made perfect sense. What no one is sure of is who were the twelve apostles who accompanied her. Some say it was Cardinals from all over the world and some say it was Billionaires seeking a spiritual retreat for a period of reflection of why they were chosen to be so rich. No one will ever know unless they find Michelle and she confesses.

During the year’s retreat, Michelle gave birth on the last day to five identical boys and called them all Michael after her guiding light the Arch Angel Michael. Her dream prophesy had all but came true and she didn’t know what their future held because she woke up half way through the dream. We don’t know if they all lived happily ever after or it turned into a nightmare so maybe that was the reason she ran away and abandoned her babies. Another reason could be to do with one of the twelve who they have nicknamed Judas who had received bad blood after an accident. The day they arrived he jumped out of the boat with the rope and slipped on the rock and slid into the sea. He was then immediately bit by a serpent and never fully recovered during the pilgrimage. A doctor administered first aid and they all thought nothing of it. Weeks later the wound became infected and his body took him into a fever to burn out the infection. He slowly recovered but was forever plagued by bad thoughts and visions of doom. No one knows what became of him after the pilgrimage. JR butted in again, “Do you think he is the father of the boys? No one is sure because they are all pretty good but no one knows their future.

Another bizarre thing they had to do on the island was forage for food. They had only taken limited supplies because they were meant to be there for three months. After three months the weather turned nasty and they couldn’t get back to the mainland because when they tried their boat got damaged. Another Devine Intervention that made them live they’re for over a year so the father is one of the twelve. One is not sure if they all ate mushrooms laced with psilocybin and psychoactive compounds which is converted to psilocin in the body to produce psychoactive effects. They may have all gone mad and turned into sex maniacs and with one attractive female God knows what could have taken place. My sister tells me it truly is a mystery and even if they track down Michelle, she may have no memory of how she became pregnant”. 

JR responded by saying we are home now and I want you to come into my kitchen for a coffee as I have gone off green tea for life. They both left the car and made their way into JR’s  detached house in the highlands. The moment they had their coffee JR took Charles outside to the patio at the bottom of his garden. He pointed to the house over the hedge and said “Do you know who lives there? Don’t have a clue replied Charles. Its one of the five brothers who works for the police called Mike. They both looked at each other and shuddered with fear, and they knew there strange day had come to a resulting full stop.