The Fire Service here is run almost entirely voluntarily. Most of the village are involved and in an emergency they are summoned by an extremely loud siren which can be heard from all over. Three blasts and everyone leaps into action. At their annual party this weekend, children's activities included climbing a ladder to the roof of the Fire Station and abseiling across the road, piling as many children as possible into the cherry picker and elevating to 50 metres, filling a room with smoke and then playing hide and seek. None of that was risky enough for Mary who decided to scramble through a barbed wire fence and sustain a nasty gouge to the back of her leg. After a bit of discussion about where a first aid kit could be found, the firemen managed a bandage, but no dressing or antiseptic, so they wrapped the bandage around the uncleaned cut and secured it with a bit of sellotape. Mary skipped off to have a go in the car accident simulator.
