"So, there I am lying in bed reading yet another dodgy enforcement notice"

I mentioned in a previous blog the depression that can be brought on by witnessing the enforcement of fire safety legislation. So, there I am lying in bed reading yet another dodgy enforcement notice. I could cope with the complaint that there were no evacuation procedures (it’s a block of flats for which stay put is appropriate for crying out loud!). I could even cope with the alleged defective fire alarm system that would prevent evacuation, on account of such heinous crimes as the printer chopping the tops off some characters (as the English did to that true character, Wallace). Does it not occur to anyone, I wonder, that fire alarm systems are not required to have a printer in the first place?

But the last straw was the crimes committed against the English language in the enforcement notice. Aside from the dreadful sentence construction, there is no reference in the Fire Safety Order to preventative (sic) measures; it’s preventive measures. It comes from the Framework Directive, and even those strange, foreign bureaucrats in Brussels could get it right. Does no one in management do any quality assurance on enforcement notices?

I mean, the ACO, whose name appears on all their enforcement notices, hails from the other side of the globe, so he cannot blame the dreadful education system of this country. On the other hand, every time I see him he is smiling (he is a very personable chap), so I assume he does not read the prose sent out in his name, or he would be depressed too.

When I reached the split infinitive, my hand automatically reached for the bottle of 30 year old Talisker, given to me as a gift by my generous and long-suffering girlfriend. (Much as my mother used to reach for her cigarettes to calm her nerves every time Arthur Scargill and the other miners’ leaders came on television. I once picked up one of the Scottish leaders from the most expensive hotel in Edinburgh when I was doing black taxi work. When I coaxed him away from his routine of saying “Goodnight Comrade” and Goodnight Brother” to all and sundry, we set off for a house in one of the most expensive suburbs of the city, the likes of which the Comrades and Brothers could only dream.)

To my horror, the bottle was empty; it had set my girlfriend back two hundred quid and it lasted no time. I usually work on the principle that an enforcement notice from Scotland or certain shire counties of England warrants a gill of the amber nectar, while a bottle only lasts for four enforcement notices of the enforcing authority of a capital city (though not that of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland), and this was indeed the fourth notice. (I anticipate seeing the ACO at a party in July, and I feel it is incumbent on him to replace the Talisker.)

It was too late at night to wake the cats with Proclaimers’ songs (it was 3.30am), and my normal practice at that hour is to ring my girlfriend, wake her up and rant at her. (She used to work for the forerunner of the CLG, so I work on the basis that it’s all her fault.) Then I thought about the shame a relationship with a civil servant brought on my family.

My sanity was saved by a bottle of Glenmorangie, which I was keeping for time of dire need, and the thought of a forthcoming fire risk assessment training course for an East Anglian fire and rescue service of long and happy association. I drifted off to sleep remembering the great fun of their previous course and of my good friend Christopher, surely the most enthusiastic fire safety officer on the whole planet... Suddenly, I found myself experiencing a nightmare in which I was a fly on the wall of the Secretary of State at Communities and Local Government... But more of that next time!