I’m in the room at the top corner of the 70s concrete building stood atop one of the few hills in Norwich – our view covers the city centre, giving us a perfect vista for spotting fires in the city. There are six of us there, my boss, Simon, and a co-worker, Teresa, have already shown something of an enthusiasm about firemen. We’re setting up a new system for the council, collecting data and importing into the new database. Very occasionally we’ll get a call, mostly they’re from database support people returning calls made by the team leader.
One day, I don’t even remember what day it was, I take a call from a guy with a heavy Irish accent – “Theres a bomb”, he said, “lots of people are going to lose their lives”. This is not something I’d ever been trained for, but I knew that you were supposed to keep them talking. I don’t know that you can ever really deal with these kinds of things well, even if you’re trained for it. Its not like its something you get to practice much.
So I try to keep him talking. And while I am doing that I write the word ‘bomb’ in big letters on the jotter pad next to the phone to show to someone else in the room. My mind isn’t enough on what he is saying to remember it all, those words above are all I can remember now. He hangs up.
I’m shaking, and I try to explain to Simon what just happened. He calls the police, who come and evacuate the building – we share it with Norwich Union (I think, since I used to take great pleasure in walking in with a Legal and General umbrella, its the small things that make life interesting).
Outside, once they’ve made sure the building is safe, I talk to the police who take a statement from me. Not that I’ve really got much to say. We file back in, life goes on.
The next day I find out that seven or eight other council and utility buildings in the city had similar calls, nothing suspicious was found in any of them.
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