Bembridge

Tonight we traveled to Bembridge and met with an old high school friend of Zoe's, Steve, and his wife Debbie. Steve has his own construction company on the island and is also a retained (aka volunteer) fire fighter. Steve gave us a tour of their fire house. Bembridge is fairly small and Steve is one of about 10 guys that work out of the fire house. The fire house is totally volunteer, but elsewhere on the island the departments are combination, much like at home.

Steve carries a pager which gives a simple alert tone when there is a call, there is no radio traffic. They do not know what the call is until they read the call information off of the printer at the fire house. They call their calls "shout outs". Steve has a short two minute drive to the firehouse where he picks up the engine. Steve's description of the firehouse in Bembridge just about mirrors things back home. The engine holds a crew of six and it is not uncommon to leave the slowest man behind. The bay door you see is an old fashioned, manually operated, horizontal door. Steve indicated that they have a call volume of only 50 calls per year.

After the fire house tour, we headed to one of the local pubs. Once there, we met up with another one of Zoe's old friends, Jen, and her boyfriend, Mike. Outside of everyone catching up on old stories, Steve and I talked about the fire service as well as his experiences as a builder on the island. Pictured from left to right is Zoe, Jen, Mike, Debbie and Steve.

One thing I have not touched on is the price of homes. A basic townhouse on the island probably goes around £175,000 which equals around $288,000. That is also with no land. A typical singlefamilyy home starts around $300,000. I equate living on the island to living on the east or west coasts of the US.

Our time at the pub was great, although Zoe, without her voice, was fairly frustrated in not being able to talk more. I have met Jen and Mike before and I am convinced that if I ever wrote a move or a sitcom script, Jen would be a character. Her humor and commentary on life is second to none. She is hilarious. Tomorrow night, we are meeting Jen again as well as another college friend so the fun shall continue.