"It's just a bit of fun. But it's also to get you thinking about the consequences of fire."

I'm not apologizing for how sporadic this blog is anymore, that's just how the blog is, everyone be cool. But don't cool down TOO much, because today's story is about a HOT topic. How hot? Blazing hot! Flaming hot! Firey hot! ... It's about fire. (And safety. It's about fire safety.)

When I first started at my pub job, I was told that everyone had to take mandatory fire safety training to comply with England's very hardcore Health and Safety workplace regulations. I didn't mind the idea of getting to sit for two hours of my normally pretty mobile shift, and also it was mandatory, so I signed up for a slot and showed up on the allotted Tuesday to a depressing room on the third floor with a projector screen and two basically identical tubby bald dudes in it. "You are all here because you volunteered to be your floors' fire wardens, so thank you for giving us your time", the instructor said to the three of us. Damn it.

Instructor Colin was a kindly bearded man, as well as an endless fountain of statistics about fire-related deaths and injuries, and a hero. He would probably be mad if he knew I was calling him a hero, because it is what he was constantly telling us not to be. From Instructor Colin's perspective, humans are all just a bunch of would-be fire safety heroes waiting for their moment, when what we should really be doing is running away from fires, calling the appropriate authorities, and avoiding overloading our electrical outlets.

Instructor Colin began the fire safety presentation with a super lighthearted clip of a disastrous fire outbreak in Basil Fawlty's kitchen. "You may recognize some individuals from your own workplace in this video," he said with what seemed like a legitimately enthusiastic wink. "Now, that was a bit of fun, but in all seriousness, that fire would likely have taken Manuel's life." he said, immediately after the video, with what seemed like legitimate gravitas. "On to the powerpoint."

Oh man, this power point. All the genuine knowledge and passion for fire safety that Instructor Colin had exhibited in person was distilled into hilariously worded and effervescently punctuated power point slides. This was the first one:

HOW WOULD A FIRE AFFECT YOUR JOB???

- loss of business/revenue

- public hurt/killed 

- general inconvenience 

THEREFORE FIRE PREVENTION IS ALL IMPORTANT--
HELP REDUCE THE RISK!!!

This was the second:

FIVE MAIN RISKS OF FIRE  (no particular order):

- poor house keeping

- electricity

- smoking

- cooking

- arson

Believe it or not, arson is the main one. Not that the world would know, because of the legendary stigma surrounding reporting fire accidents. "The real tragedy is that the world doesn't know the impact of fires globally, because people do not speak up. Fires are not reported. There are 270 a day in the UK alone, not that anyone would know it. Don't be peer-pressured into not taking fire safety seriously." - Instructor Colin, 2011.

If Fire is being rude to you, speak up. Don't let the Fire Bullies keep you silent.

Colin really did his best to get us all personally invested in fire safety. He showed us a few incredibly disturbing videos of real-life fires in night clubs that killed hundreds, and gave us fun examples of how we were probably going to set fire to our own homes at any minute. He also seemed very aware that there was a young lady in the classroom (me), and kept trying to make sure his examples were inclusive and personalised: "If you've got your X-box... or your HAIR STRAIGHTENER (meaningful glance) plugged in, and you also plug in your TV and a lamp, you're going to overload those sockets! BOOM. FIRE." Instructor Colin definitely understands what ladies want in an informative fire safety meeting. (Seriously though I bet he loves his wife so much and is a great husband. Just saying.)

The meeting seemed to stretch on interminably, and I think certainly went longer than it was supposed to, because against all odds, one of the only two other people in the class had SO MANY personal fire safety anecdotes he wanted to share! He was constantly cutting in to tell a story about his co-workers running a "guerilla kitchen" on the fifth floor where they brought secret, untested toasters from home and made naughty teas and risked everyone's lives for some streudel at 10 am. SHUT UP, ANONYMOUS TUBBY BALD MAN. LET YOUR COWORKERS EAT THEIR PILSBURY IN PEACE!

The main problem was avoiding literally LOL-ing at the slides or Colin's asides. On the fire alarm sound, Colin said: "It's very intense. You actually end up scringing [?!] a bit, because it's penetrating you so hard." And later: "This can be a lot of common sense stuff, and I apologise if I'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here." Colin, what is going on. What are your frames of reference, buddy?! Also, I think I love you and you may be the best thing that has ever happened to me but I am simultaneously so bored I might die right now please help. That was my inner monologue throughout most of this presentation.

This is the "Fire Triangle" and all I want to do is make a tasteless ginger pubes joke about it but I WON'T.

It continued forever and was pretty awful, and also as a Hot Tip from Colin, never leave Post-It notes on your computer screen, and definitely do not decorate your computer with ribbons. (real tip.) (hot tip.) The best part of the day came after he closed the powerpoint, looked conspiratorially at me and the two tubby bald guys and said: "Now. Who wants to go to the parking lot and play with fire extinguishers."

Such an unexpected treat! What a great time! He gave us our neon yellow fire warden vests ("You have your own choice where you want to keep these; some people like to display them on the backs of their chairs with great pride. Fire wardens are an elite group of people.") and lit a bunch of different types of fires in the parking lot that we got to extinguish. It was very fun and pretty cold. I was AWFUL at using the extinguishers. Again, Colin personalised it for me, telling me a ton of fun facts about North American fire extinguishers and how they are different from British ones. (Something about the nozzles.) (I'm sorry Colin, I have failed you.)

The day ended with a very sombre speech about how Colin had passed on all his knowledge and skills to us, but he "really prayed to God that we never found ourselves in a situation where we needed to fight a fire."

Now, this has all been very "ha ha, Instructor Colin, I'm so sure", but honestly, dude did his job really really well. Fire is TERRIFYING and can literally kill you within a minute. I am very invested (YES) in fire safety now. Also I've learned that I'm really very bad at using fire extinguishers, so education and prevention is kind of my only option. I'm not a hero, after all.