The great fire of Norwich

Remember the date 12-7-06 The London Street Inferno Shock Horror, originally uploaded by Colonel Blink.

You can't invent what goes on in London Street these days. Someone (Not me) threw a lit cigarette butt into the rubbish bin and it sat on a styrofoam fast food container and a slight smell hit the autumn air. There was not enough smoke to photograph (as you can see) and the smell was so faint I had to keep sniffing to make sure it was there at all.
"Fair enough" you might say "This is the kind of unintentional accident that happens all the time. Nothing to get worked up about". If one thought it was going to get 'out of control' a concerned passerby could stroll over to the newsagents on the corner and ask for a cup of water to pour over it.

But you would be wrong. PC 1451 (pictured) was sufficiently disturbed to call up the fire brigade who sent a fully crewed fire engine with lights flashing and siren wailing to extinguish the conflagration. By the time they got there it had, of course, burnt out.

What annoys is the cost of the whole exercise. The memsahib and I pay £1300 a year council tax (that's about three pounds a day) and the whole of our annual payment was probably eaten up by the cost of calling out the brigade on this one occasion. If he had only asked me I would have pissed into the bloody bin and saved everyone a lot of time, money and trouble.

Aren't our policemen wonderful? And yes they should be armed.