Aren’t firemen lovely

They say that relationships always end in tragedy, but for me the opposite is true. Tragedy is how they always seem to begin.

I was a shy seventeen year old, could never work up the courage to talk to a man. There was this one guy I particularly liked, I used to see him around town, a fireman he was, called Dave and looked really handsome in his uniform. I tried to find a way of meeting him, but we had no mutual friends, he didn’t go to any pubs or clubs as far as I knew and I was simply not going to humiliate myself by walking up to him in the street.

I conjured up a plan to get the fire brigade round my house. I left a cigarette burning in an ashtray immediately below the smoke alarm in the flat I’d just moved into. When the alarm went off I planned to phone the fire service from the phone box over the road, pretending to be a worried neighbour, then get back to the house, have a very quick shower and be ready to meet the firemen wearing very little. I couldn’t be guaranteed that it would be Dave that would call, of course, but to be honest there were quite a few good looking firemen and was prepared to be unchoosy if necessary.

I made the call and crossed the road to return to the flat, but not being used to yale locks, in my excitement I’d forgotten to bring my key and had locked myself out. ‘Never mind’, I thought, I can play the helpless woman locked out of her house routine, and get Dave to break my door down. He had big, muscular shoulders and I pictured the image of

I could hear the fire alarm still ringing out from my flat, but was surprised to find that I could also smell smoke. My senses playing with me? No, I had really started a fire. It turns out that my cigarette must have caught a nearby magazine or piece of paper, from which it slowly shifted to the whole house. I knew nothing of this, but it slowly dawned on me that I had a real fire on my hands and I was trapped outside while I slowly watched my home of just two weeks burn to the ground.

The fire service took ages to arrive, there was a factory fire the other side of town that had needed every fire engine in a 50 mile radius. By the time Dave and his crew finally arrived my flat was reduced to cindered nothing. Worse than that though, the fire had spread to the other flats in the block, gutting six homes in all. Poor Mr Bradshaw, the elderly gentleman in the upstairs flat I had only met once, had taken medication to help him sleep and consequently never woke up. My stupid attempt to attract a man had resulted in a meaningless death. Another family hadn’t kept up the insurance on their house and were made homeless and destitute. What a twat I was.

I did start seeing Dave after that. He took care of me as I stood their in tears while they put out the remnants of the blaze. We went out for a few weeks, but the relationship fizzled out.

I should have learnt from that tragic experience, but I didn’t.

Being single again I became obsessed with the good looking, young dictator of Libertia, President Hurrah, who was constantly on our TV screens condemning the west. I came up with the crazy notion of becoming a politician, with a vague idea of using this as a platform for going to Libertia to meet him.

I didn’t believe in any of the political parties, so I set up my own, the Nice Party I called it, as I believed that was something missing from British politics. I stood on a ticket of no more wars, ending university fees and embracing the European union. Amazingly my campaign took off and all around the country people joined my party and we had candidates standing in every constituency. We won the general election by just three seats, but none-the-less I was Prime Minister.

In my victory speech I announced that we were going it alone in Europe, that I would triple university fees and declared war on Libertia. I hoped that a victory would enable me to meet the defeated Hurrah and, well I didn’t know exactly what would happen after that but my plan had worked with Dave and I was hopeful that things would find a way of working out.

Of course it all went wrong. My policy of halving spending on the military meant that we had no means of fighting Libertia at all. Sending an aircraft carrier with no aircraft was, in retrospect, a bit of a joke. Britain suffered the first, humiliating, military defeat in living memory, 4,000 unsupported and under-armed British troops died because of my crazy war.

I was sent to Libertia to surrender and sign a peace treaty. Dear reader, I actually met him, President Hurrah. I was left alone in his personal suite, he spoke excellent English, with a husky middle-eastern voice. He insisted I ‘pay personally’ for the war and subjected me to the most intense yet pleasurable day’s sex I have ever experienced. After this he forced me to sign away billions of pounds of UK taxpayers money in ‘reparations’, but it was worth it, just for that day. It really was the best sex ever.

Now I’m stuck being Prime Minister, with high taxes and no services, and, worst of all, no boyfriend. There is one bloke I’ve seen around that I like, but I don’t know how to approach him. I’ve spoken about him to some of my advisers and apparently he’s part of a specialist unit in the home security office that would be responsible for cleaning up the country after a nuclear disaster. I’m desperately trying to think of a way I can get to meet him.