No, it's not the start of a crappy joke, this was for real!

Last Wednesday the alerters went off sometime after 10am, just as was I departing to deliver a load of paperwork to the accountants (in the hope that they may be creative in their accountancy practices...).Intricate-izzy

Got to the station to find that Blue Watch were off on a Water Rescue exercise and three of our wholetime/retained crew were needed to make up the numbers (Ian 'Billy' McMillan, Ben 'Horney Ben' Horne and Rachael 'Princess' O'Connell). We then kept a crew on station to cover the town.

You can read more about the fallout from this exercise in a later post.

We were informed that while on standby there would be some Community Fire Safety work that needed attending to. It couldn't be something as simple as a visit to a little old granny to give advice and install a smoke detector. That would be too easy!

It seems that Roman Hill Middle School were successful in bidding for an elephant at a charity auction in Norwich. Successful to the tune of £7000! You could probably get a real one for that amount, although you'd be for ever shovelling s**t! You'd have the best roses in town though...

The elephant - 'Intricate Izzy' - was secured to a trailer being towed behind a van from the school. We followed the van in the PRT and were met by a wall of noise as we approached the school. Around 300 kids shouting and chanting 'Izzy, Izzy'.

Let's just pause for a few seconds and answer a couple of questions I'm sure you've already asked yourself...

Why has a school bought an elephant? And why were Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service roped into carrying Izzy into the school?

Answers for both questions... I'm still not sure!

Read this article that has appeared in this weeks local press, which may help with why they've bought Izzy.

As to why we were invited to carry Izzy... Well I think one of our firefighters has a sister working as a teacher at Roman Hill Middle and we have done plenty of educational visits with them too.

Now back to the arrival of Izzy at the school...

The van and trailer carrying Izzy drove through the assembled throng of children and up to the school entrance. And because Anglia TV weren't there as yet myself, Al Soards, Greg Osborne and Jason Balls manhandled Izzy back to the gates. Izzy-carry

All the children we reset in position as the camera was readied. Then it was off through the screaming masses with us carrying Izzy. And in true TV style, we had to do a retake!

There then followed photos for the press (we can autograph these, for a price!) and a short interview with the reporter from The Lowestoft Journal. She asked me what I thought about being asked to carry an elephant and I replied, "In this job you expect the unexpected". I thought this was a cracking quote as did the lads, unfortunately it didn't make it in to the paper...

And that was it.

Back to the station for sausages, egg, beans and chips courtesy of Lil and Amanda and then back to the office to pick up where I left off four hours previously.