Blind Date With The Fire Brigade

After a bit of last-minute panic about the blind date where I wondered if there was some dark secret Cameron hadn't told me (ie, Gary would turn out to be a misshapen dwarf, have one eye creepily looking the wrong way, a disturbing compulsive laugh, or all three), Gary turned up looking and acting perfectly normal and we went to the pub. He seems very nice but with all the teasing from the rest of the gang the poor thing was reduced to talking about cars too much for the first couple of hours.

The blokes treated us to a really great dinner at the hotel; the dining room is ENORMOUS with pressed tin ceilings about thirty feet high, built during the gold rush. After a few more drinks we all went round to a place called Paddy's Flat, which is an odd sort of motel complex / club med / mess hall. It was originally a mining camp, but Chris, the current owner, has turned the dining area into an army veteran mess hall  (he's a former Vietnam vet paratrooper) and planted lots of palm trees.

There's a swimming pool in the middle of it all, surrounded by motel units which they rent out to various workers and visitors. The mess hall is kind of a clubhouse for the town's army & navy vets (all 5 of them) and has become a social hub for all the "firies" and the police. Cameron, Gary, Chris, Justin and a couple of other blokes are all ex-army from various parts of the world, and the mess hall is decorated with all this crazy memorabilia ranging from bayonets, German kaiser hats with spikes, Japanese swords, photos, plaques, flags, a camoflage net (?) and "a bunch more bayonets in a drawer somewhere", all within handy reach of where you sit drinking.

Gary took me on a little tour of the place (merciless teasing when we got back), and I noticed a small shrine of flowers, a statue of a dog and a photo of 3 staffys - Cameron's shrine to his old dogs. There's also a wonderful old photo on the wall of 3 black labs from the second world war. The blokes were very courteous, bringing us drinks and things, so it was all sort of "An Officer and a Gentleman", a pleasant change from truckies at the pub asking you for a shag.

The guys were trying to work out who was available for call outs, and somehow Monica and I got included in the "available rescue personnel" list despite (a) not being members and (b) having a total of zero training.

So it was great to meet a different bunch of people and feel welcomed as part of the "gang"; Gary was very gentlemanly and drove me home & waited at the gate to make sure I got into the house OK. He's invited me to the police officer's Christmas Eve party tonight, I expect it will be fairly wild. I wonder who's on duty...? Not Boy, that's for sure - when I got home, Honey was straight out on barking patrol, and Boy was fast asleep on the bed. If he'd been able to find the remote, he would have been watching TV.