Sitting having an afternoon coffee and having a bit of a read when the peace and quiet was interrupted by a terrible helicopter street sweeper kind of noise. The dog started barking, the neighbour started banging at our front door, while calling the fire brigade with her other hand. There is a fire at the back of your house she yelled. Sure enough flames and smoke were licking over the back fence accompanied by the terrible noise. Allan grabbed the hose and ran to start squirting the fire out. Honestly we could have held the barking dog over the fence and let her pee on it, with all the good the water pressure in Lakelands does. The home owners had run inside because they were terrified that the gas bottle which was in the thick of their barbecue furnace would explode. Allan is very good in a crisis and doesn't panic, unlike me who had the same fear as the neighbours and was yelling at him to get away in case it blew up. (The noise was getting louder). The home owner eventually felt bad and came out to help, the emergency was extinguished, just in time for the fire brigade to arrive.
Not all of us are good in stressful situations. I once ran over our family cat - Rusty. She would lay on the drive way and not bother to move for cars. Troy who was a P plater at the time would roar in and out without giving Rusty a thought. I would get out of the car and shoo her away. I was always moving her, so why me? I came into the car port one evening singing happily to myself. Rusty saw me coming and though Mum's home, dinners up so ran across in front of me. I thought I had killed her and was screaming for Allan to come and help me, He was in his office playing his guitar (we were going to music practice at the Church in a while) and didn't hear a thing. Finally, he responded to the mad woman banging on the office window and came to see what the screaming was about. 'Get the car off the cat' he yelled That thought hadn't occurred to me. I had assumed she was dead, when in fact she wasn't. I also was scared to back out again in case I ran back over her. I couldn't bear to look. Anyway, the poor little thing died, and I still feel traumatised when I think about it.
In my defence I have occasionally stepped up to the plate though, when I was 8 months pregnant and was home with three children all asleep, my neighbour opposite whose husband was also away called to say she heard someone in the carport. I told her I would have a look. I gathered up my trusty baseball bat that I kept handy when Allan was away, and set out across to investigate. I was standing on the verge of her house peering into the carport when the thought struck me that she was safely in her house, and I like an idiot, was very pregnant and on my own late at night on a dark road. Thankfully, I didn't need to use my bat, although it was probably stupid as most women get weapons turned on themselves instead of getting to be heroines. Another time I extracted a 20 cent piece sized peppermint from quite a way down a choking two year olds throat, by turning it sideways and pulling it out. I didn't cry till after the crisis was over.
