I've been fired before but this is ridiculous.

6 Hurt in blazes,Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland); January 1, 1997 ; 48 words...yesterday. Brothers Donald and Ian Smithson were rescued by firemen from their flat in Crappington Drive, Drumroll, along with neighbours Rob Shaw, 71, and Dozy Brugger, 32. A couple were also treated after a blaze in Riverside View, Newton Stewart...


Anne had woken me up in the wee small hours and said that she could smell burning.
She did this all the time, normally if I was smoking in bed, but before I could say ‘bugger off’, I noticed smoke coming from under the front door.
The lights on the landing outside were off and the only illumination was an orange glow that was coming through the frosted glass insert in the front door.

We were in a tiny little bed, in a bedroom that we shared with her Father, at his first floor, only accessible by the stairs, one bedroom flat.
I always slept closest to the door so I could see down the corridor to the front door whilst still lying in bed.
I used to prefer this because a little bit of extra warning that the front door was going to get kicked in and I was about to get the shit half belted out of me, might, at least, give me the chance to get my trousers on and retain a modicum of dignity.

It was that sort of place.

“SHIT!...GET OUT!... GET OUT!” I shouted, as I hazily realised that the bloody building was on fire.
Thankfully I was still wearing all my clothes, even the heavy wool Crombie overcoat that Rob, Anne’s Father, had given me.
I’d passed out, pissed, in a freezing flat in the middle of winter, what can I say?
Of course, had it been the middle of July I would still have woken up fully clothed after passing out, pissed.

I scrambled out of the bed, suddenly very sober, and rushed into the front room where we’d left wee Ian sleeping it off on the couch.
He always did this after speaking Swahili and constantly checking his money for four hours.
He had to constantly check his money because each time he took it out to count it he would drop some, or somebody would ‘borrow’ some, or he would put it into another pocket and immediately fail to remember where he put it, or somebody would find some that he’d dropped.
The amount was different each time he checked, which meant he’d have to check it again, and again, and again.
He’d do this, between gulps of Kestrel Super (which we all drank, a brew of such evil proportions that it carries a Governmental Sanity Warning) and shouting abuse (we think) for about four hours , the Swahili slowly turning into something completely unrecognisable, then his head would loll forward and he’d crash out.
He would come to about three or four hours later and quietly shuffle himself off downstairs.

I got him up and mobile and the three of us went out onto the landing.
It was filling up worryingly thickly with smoke, so we started to run down the first set of steps.

It was obviously Ian’s flat, beneath us, that was on fire.
The only way out was past Ian's front door, the smoke was streaming out from all round the doorframe and flames could be seen licking at the inset window.

I was ( I thought) the last to leave the flat. On about the third step I noticed that Rob wasn’t with us. I’d assumed that Anne had got him up and out but he wasn’t here. "I’LL GET ROB!" I shouted, as Anne and Ian continued down and out. I rushed back to the door that was still open, ran through it and down the corridor into the bedroom shouting Rob's name as I went.

It was only as I shook him that I realised he wasn’t kipping in a drunken stupor as I’d thought , but was actually unconscious .

The room was full of smoke.

Shitshitshitshit, GETHIMOUTOFBED!

The problem with this was he was heavy.
He wasn’t my Brother and he was very, very heavy.

The smoke was really quite thick now and I positioned him to get him into a firemans lift, but I was out of practice.

I'd been trained how to do it when I was in the R.A.F. but hadn’t done it in ten years and I couldn’t lift him into position.

Ten years of drinking to keep the drugs company had taken it's toll.

I did manage to lift him in a sort of reverse bear hug and manhandled him out of his bed and over Pat’s and mine.
The effort was tremendous as he was a big bloke, 6’2” and twenty stone of sparko dead weight. I managed to pull him a short way across the floor with his heels dragging but was severely hampered by the fact that I couldn’t breathe standing up anymore.

The smoke was so thick I couldn‘t see it.

I got down on all fours so I could breathe and try to pull him along the floor that way.

I think I managed to move him not one inch.

There was no way that I was going to get him out of the flat and down the stairs like this.

Crawl to the front door and swing it shut to keep the fire out a bit 'someone

must have

noticed a fuckin flat on fire by now they fuckin must surely someones called the fire brigade by now surely where THE FUCK ARE THEY!'

I got back to Bert and put him into the recovery position so that his mouth was as close to the floor as possible, there wasn’t any clear air there but the smoke was slightly less thick but getting thicker.

The only light was an orange glow from the front doorway.

I don’t remember any noise.

I quickly crawled into the front room and under the window. I know about not opening windows and doors so I took a deep breath and stood up to look out, by cupping my hands between my face and the window I could see out and saw that the Fire Brigade was there, but didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. I realised that they might not know about Rob and myself as I couldn‘t see Anne anywhere down there.

I stood there, holding my breath and waving my arms and completely failing to attract any attention.

With all the smoke and all the lights out they couldn't see me inside the flat.
I opened the window to let them know that there were two people who could probably do with a little help please, thank you very much, and grabbing a lung full of lovely cold air at the same time.
They immediately responded with “SHUT THE WINDOW!…burble….BACK WINDOW!…barble…”
Thinking, not unnaturally, that whatever they were going to do was going to involve the back window, I did as I was told and shut the window and started to crawl back to the bedroom to get to the back window to give them a hand when they came in.

The corridor now is sodium orange and HOT!

Trying to hold my breath but not able to and then breathing in solid sandpaper.
A really bad asthma attack feels like this, your lungs are trying to get non existent air into them and they feel like they‘re collapsing.

Put your lips round the neck of an empty plastic bottle and breathe in, inhaling really hard so that the bottle squashes in on itself, that small amount air you get? That’s less than you get with every breath, and the way that bottle’s all squashed? Just how you think your lungs look.

There was nothing outside the back window except darkness.

There was nothing inside the flat except darkness.

I was passing out.

I’ve passed out enough times to know when it’s coming on.

I knew if that happened, I was dead.

Survival instinct kicked in and I can remember actually thinking “sorry Rob, you’re on your own now,” as I slowly crawled toward the front door, all thoughts of saving Rob forgotten.

It was Me time.

Exactly one second after this thought a fireman appeared in front of me, reached down and pulled me up to my feet by grabbing a handful of thick woollen overcoat shoulder.
I wanted to ask him if could I please have a breath of that lovely air please please please from your mask please please please but all I managed was ...“hhh”.

He put his right arm round my shoulder and rushed me through the corridor and down the stairs.
As we got close to Ian’s flat, flames finally got through the glass window of his front door and flew into the stairwell, across the hallway and across the ceiling.
We needed to get past that to get out.

“RUN!" Yelled the fireman through his face plate.

No shit Sherlock.

We ran through the flames with him protecting the majority of me with his flame proof uniformed and fully oxygenated body, me thinking, "yeah youre alright with all the gear on you BAStard!"

As soon as we hit the fresh air I dropped on to all fours and started taking huge rasps of air.

It hurt great.

It's amazing how quickly you can go from nearly passing out to not nearly passing out.

At the same time as I was being pulled to safety other Firemen had used a ladder to enter the flat through the front window.
All the neighbours were out to watch now, you could spot the non-drinkers as they were ones that had wasted good booze money on dresssing gowns.
"These fucking ghoulish wankers are loving this", I thought as I saw the looks on their faces as Rob was being carried out semi-naked from the window.
It was only when I saw them carrying his unconscious body out of the window and down the ladder that I realised that he had no underpants or trousers on.

How come I didn’t notice that before?

Dont matter coz hes dead hes dead he must be dead unconscious all this time and breathing in all that smoke he must must be dead.

They carried him into the Ambulance that had come with the Fire Engine.

Not surprisingly, nobody had taken any notice of me after the Fireman pulled me out so I stood up and staggered over, the Crombie overcoat trailing smoke, to one of the paramedics and tried to explain that I’d been in the fire as well and that my throat and chest were hurting like buggery from breathing in all the smoke, with a side order of fry.

I managed... "hhh".

I was ushered into the ambulance where Rob was now alive again and replete with oxygen mask* and facing him were Ian and Donald, both, unaccountably, with oxygen masks also on. Donald was out of the flats before the fire really started and Ian and Anne had gotten out well before the smoke had become a problem.

Donald is Ian’s brother and flatmate and without a shadow of a doubt the more, I'll be polite, insane, of the two.

He hadn’t even been in the fire but HAD started it by accidentally setting fire to his bed with a roll up cigarette.
It'd slowly dawned on him that his bed was alight, so he naturally ran out of the building without so much as a, “Sorry! But I’m just trying to kill you!".

Then stood outside and watched as the fire took hold.

They had all been standing there when the Fire brigade , Police and Ambulance arrived.
Thankfully one of the other neighbours had alerted the authorities, only because they were worried about their own stuff going up in flames but, nevertheless, welcome.

Both Rob and myself had sustained blisters on the lungs caused by the smoke and heat but apart from being a little shorter of breath than usual, we were both fine, thanks to the Fire Brigade.

Four Flats were gutted.

Anne, Rob and I were re-housed in Council supplied temporary accommodation in a pub, a doss house, a very nice fully furnished flat and then finally, Anne and I were given a flat of our own, as was Rob.

Donald and Ian were also eventually re-housed.

Their new neighbours were given free smoke alarms.

*As I was on all fours I noticed that Jakey, our gorgeous black and white kitten, who’d somehow managed to escape the inferno without all the fuss that us humans seem to require, had a mini oxygen mask on and a Fireman all to himself. We later found out that after making sure that he was alright, the Fireman had simply put the cat on the pavement where he ran off, he new not where.
A Policeman at Drumroll Police station the next day was mystified when he noticed that a panda car seemed to have become a kitty car and appeared to be going ’meow’.
He decided to investigate.
Jakey had managed to find a nice, comfy place to get away from the noise, smells and general excitement that were all around him after the fire and curled up under the back seat of the Police car, unnoticed until the next morning.

As I wasn't climbing up the stair...

I didn't see a Man who wasn't there.
But I have had some experiences that didn't actually happen.

If you see something that isn’t there, and you are aware that it isn’t there, then you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

The carpet, for instance, becoming a sea of tiny, golden, glowing, crabs.
Or a gently blowing curtain that is waving at you.
Or people’s faces melting into themselves.
Or a painting that is breathing.
Or clouds that soundlessly laugh at you.

I could go on.

If, however, you see something that isn’t there and you are NOT aware that it isn’t there, that’s when you freak. A good example, might, for instance, be…

AAAAAGHH! SIX FOOT LONG EARWIG'S MUNCHING IT‘S WAY OUT OF MY KITBAG!
Then, picking up my old .22 air rifle (my pride and joy), I fire off fifty pellets into the kitbag.
While reaching down to pick up yet another pellet, and taking my eye off the kitbag for a second, the kitbag has become full of fluffy, pink and blue, toy bunny rabbits. Alive, but toy bunny rabbits just the same.

I don’t question, in my mind, what’s just happened, it just, happened.

This is much nicer, I can settle down a bit and watch them rummaging around inside the bag and have a few swigs of my favourite drink, a cocktail of Safeway’s own, cheapest, ‘whisky‘, white cider(a recent refinement), and Special Brew. All carefully and precisely decanted into an empty white cider bottle where, by dint of a deft swirl of the wrist, they are blended together.

It was with about two pints of this that I’d swallowed forty Dothiepin tablets half an hour ago.

Just to see what would happen.

One of the fluffy bunny rabbits looks at me directly in the eyes.

He grins.

He has row upon row upon row of fangs. I can see the second and third rows through the gaps in the front row. His attention to me has alerted the others and now they are all starting to turn their heads toward me and slowly grinning those teeth at me when they establish eye contact, and going closemouthed when I look away from one to look at another.

Then they start to walk purposefully out of the kitbag towards me.

All grinning.

Now I’m firing pellet after pellet after pellet, as quickly as I can reload, directly at their heads from a distance of three feet but it has no effect.

They keep walking towards me without getting any closer.

Then, behind them, crawling out of the kit bag, Mad Alex, naked.

He’s a mate I haven’t seen for ages and he’s sitting on the floor, facing the brick wall of the garage in the squat where I'm , well, squatting.

He’s complaining that I’ve just shot his eye out.

It's as I'm saying how sorry I am that I’ve shot his eye out, and that it was an accident, “honest mate! You should have SEEN what was in that bag with you!” that I notice his legs are embedded, up to his thighs, in the wall.

It now dawns on me that I may be hallucinating.

The show, as they say, must go on.

Whether you are aware of it or not.