I was in the back of the house unaware of the fire. Our neighbour across the road, Elliott Knaggs, realising our car was still in the drive, broke open our gates, and hammered on our door. He also had the presence of mind to move our car out of the drive so that it did not explode, and took care of our dog.
I also have to say thank you to one of our neighbours who tried to restrain me from running up the drive. I am sorry I did not recognise you at the time but thank you. I think we were both in a state of shock at the time. It is frightening to see how quickly a fire takes hold. It became an inferno which ended in melting almost everything in the shed. The culprit it transpires was a hover mower, which even though unplugged caused a fire due to an electrical spark in the coil system. I think the positive aspect of this episode is, ‘Come on guys, we need more local firemen’. As we live around the corner from Goring Fire Station I have to say we always felt incredibly safe but it took over half an hour for the fire brigade to turn up, one from Didcot and one from Wokingham. They were absolutely brilliant. What heroes! Too many people to thank in person – the fire service, the neighbours who were running with buckets of water and hoses, the fireman who noticed that my husband had burnt his arm rescuing our ducks and called a paramedic who treated him immediately. He ended up with second degree burns on his arm. Just thank you to everyone who helped and also thanks to Mr Silvester, the electrician, who came round that night and restored our electricity.