Model engine (From Penarth Times)

Model engine

ON SUNDAY last, November 17, I noticed a replica fire engine. The price label stated £99.99.

It occurred to me to wonder whether, in the course of the next few weeks, the price might be revised with an increase of some 15 percent to £115, though rumours of a much larger increase, to say £140, now seem to have been scotched.

Meanwhile, I wonder what the price of a scaled-down Green Goddess would be. I would not offer tuppence, because of the antiquity and limited capability

Though I write this without any disrespect towards those military personnel who would have to use these "toy" fire engines.

What happens to these famous "Green Goddesses" between firemen's strikes every twenty-five years or so?

Are they ever used more routinely by the military themselves, and if so, do they not deserve more efficient equipment?

I did not buy the model fire-engine, and my children too old to appreciate such a gesture.

There seemed a kind of humorous incongruity in the episode, wit and humour apparently depending on the detection of such "incongruity."

But further firemen's (sorry - firefighters') strikes would not, at all, be a joke of course.

They do deserve a decent income, though the greater realism from their leader was appropriate.

Michael O'Neill Railway Terrace Penarth