Mini Stories
-
Steersman
- Posts: 5
- Joined: 16 Dec 2014, 09:27
- Currently Reading: War and Peace
- Bookshelf Size: 4
Mini Stories
This is just for a bit of fun. Add your mini story to this thread. Here's mine, and it's a true story:
We live on the outskirts of a small town about 20 miles west of Reading UK, and on the road where we live, just opposite us, is a thatched cottage.
A few years ago the old codger who lived there died and the house was sold.
The fellow who bought it didn’t move in straight away. He modernised the inside first, doing much of the work himself, and helped by his nephew, a young fellow in his early twenties.
Now the nephew lived quite a long way away, so one weekend he decided to sleep over, in the house.
It was cold that night, so he decided to light the fire to keep warm (there was no central heating). Unfortunately, in the chimney there was a bird’s nest, which he wasn’t aware of.
As the fire grew hotter, it set the birds nest on fire causing sparks to fly out of the chimney.
I happened to look out of the window just before going to bed (it was about 11 o’clock at night) and saw the sparks flying through the air. I thought it would be OK, because the wind was blowing, carrying the sparks upwards, and away from the roof. I was wrong. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was the young nephew from over the road. “Can you help me” he said. “The roof has caught fire. I tried to ring 999, but I haven’t got signal for my mobile phone.”
I looked out of the door at the thatched roof, and sure enough, there was small flame in the thatch just next to the chimney. “The whole roof will go up at any moment” I thought to myself, so I quickly rang 999 for the young fellow and explained to the emergency services the predicament. They said they would send a fire engine.
Now, very anxiously, we both stood outside my house. It was very eerie, there was no traffic that time of night, and being in the countryside there is no background city noises either. In the silence I began to worry if anybody was going to come, and if they did, how long will it take them to get here. Half an hour? An hour? If it takes that long I thought, the whole roof will be ablaze. What can we do? We can’t just stand here.
Then I thought – garden hose. We have a long garden hose, and a tap on the side of the house. That’s what we’ll do. I told the nephew my plan and dashed out the back of our house in to our garden shed, to get the hose, which we keep on a reel.
I connected one end of the hose to the tap and between us we ran the hose across the road to the cottages garden. I dashed back to the tap and turned it on. Then ran back to watch.
The hose worked a treat. The nephew aimed the water jet upwards on to the roof and managed to hit the burning area. A few minutes later the flame was out.
Then six fire engines turned up!
The firemen quickly jumped down and got a hose laid out, but of course there was no fire. So they ambled about for a while muttering to each other. Their leader went in to the cottage with the nephew, presumably to inspect the chimney, then one of them climbed up on to the roof to check for hot spots, which he found, then pulled out the hot straw and threw it to the ground.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking, I would quite like to go to bed now, so I hovered round the outside of the group of firemen trying to say “excuse me, can I have my hose back please.” Eventually I got their attention and was able to retrieve it. The only thing they said to me was “you might have got electrocuted from the nearby overhead electricity cable with that hose.”
It was a fair warning, but I had the sense that a nose was put slightly out of joint, so I silently coiled up my hose and went home to bed.
We live on the outskirts of a small town about 20 miles west of Reading UK, and on the road where we live, just opposite us, is a thatched cottage.
A few years ago the old codger who lived there died and the house was sold.
The fellow who bought it didn’t move in straight away. He modernised the inside first, doing much of the work himself, and helped by his nephew, a young fellow in his early twenties.
Now the nephew lived quite a long way away, so one weekend he decided to sleep over, in the house.
It was cold that night, so he decided to light the fire to keep warm (there was no central heating). Unfortunately, in the chimney there was a bird’s nest, which he wasn’t aware of.
As the fire grew hotter, it set the birds nest on fire causing sparks to fly out of the chimney.
I happened to look out of the window just before going to bed (it was about 11 o’clock at night) and saw the sparks flying through the air. I thought it would be OK, because the wind was blowing, carrying the sparks upwards, and away from the roof. I was wrong. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was the young nephew from over the road. “Can you help me” he said. “The roof has caught fire. I tried to ring 999, but I haven’t got signal for my mobile phone.”
I looked out of the door at the thatched roof, and sure enough, there was small flame in the thatch just next to the chimney. “The whole roof will go up at any moment” I thought to myself, so I quickly rang 999 for the young fellow and explained to the emergency services the predicament. They said they would send a fire engine.
Now, very anxiously, we both stood outside my house. It was very eerie, there was no traffic that time of night, and being in the countryside there is no background city noises either. In the silence I began to worry if anybody was going to come, and if they did, how long will it take them to get here. Half an hour? An hour? If it takes that long I thought, the whole roof will be ablaze. What can we do? We can’t just stand here.
Then I thought – garden hose. We have a long garden hose, and a tap on the side of the house. That’s what we’ll do. I told the nephew my plan and dashed out the back of our house in to our garden shed, to get the hose, which we keep on a reel.
I connected one end of the hose to the tap and between us we ran the hose across the road to the cottages garden. I dashed back to the tap and turned it on. Then ran back to watch.
The hose worked a treat. The nephew aimed the water jet upwards on to the roof and managed to hit the burning area. A few minutes later the flame was out.
Then six fire engines turned up!
The firemen quickly jumped down and got a hose laid out, but of course there was no fire. So they ambled about for a while muttering to each other. Their leader went in to the cottage with the nephew, presumably to inspect the chimney, then one of them climbed up on to the roof to check for hot spots, which he found, then pulled out the hot straw and threw it to the ground.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking, I would quite like to go to bed now, so I hovered round the outside of the group of firemen trying to say “excuse me, can I have my hose back please.” Eventually I got their attention and was able to retrieve it. The only thing they said to me was “you might have got electrocuted from the nearby overhead electricity cable with that hose.”
It was a fair warning, but I had the sense that a nose was put slightly out of joint, so I silently coiled up my hose and went home to bed.
