Chapter 10
Fire in the fog

Downland mists can be thick and impenetrable, cutting visibility to a few yards, the cause of many an accident on our roads. Doubly treacherous because they lubricate rubber and oil deposited on the road surface during otherwise dry weather. They are never denser than in the Spring when the moisture laden soil is warmed by the sun into giving off its water or in the Autumn when the dew evaporates in the sun which over the months loses its Summer fire. It was on such an Autumn day that I was disc harrowing a field; slowly traversing the field on a tractor towing the metal discs that break down the first rough edges of the ploughed furrows: the first preparation of the seed bed for the winter barley that provides our beer and feeds our pork and beef. Through the morning the mist alternately cleared and thickened. At times from my vantage point on the crest of the Downs I could see the sun sparkling on the sea waves breaking two miles or so to the south. Then I would be shrouded in the mist that allowed me a vision of twenty feet.

It was during one of the periods of restricted visibility when the front wheels of the tractor nearly disappeared and I had to slow down to a sub-snail's pace to avoid tipping myself and the tractor into one of the bomb craters or dew ponds which were scattered about the area that I thought I heard the sound of bells above the roar of the tractor engine. But how could this be? I was over a mile from the nearest road. And then as the mist cleared, I thought I saw a ruddy glow near the flint track that circled the field. Straining my eyes I realised it was not flames but a large red vehicle: a combine harvester perhaps? But I knew that ours was already stored away for the winter, its wheels raised off the ground to give respite to its tyres which through the harvest would carry its tremendous weight as laden with fuel and corn it circled and devoured the ever-shrinking crop. It was unlikely to be any other farmer's equipment for the only land beyond ours was the Iron Age fort that dominated the crest of the hills overlooking Findon. It was a fire engine! It was their bells I had heard. I was not hallucinating! But why here? As I saw them the crew saw me. One of them climbed from the cab and came towards me. 'What', I asked myself 'could the matter be?' A barn ablaze? A straw rick being consumed? One we had so recently struggled to build against the winter when cattle would be held in barn and need fresh bedding every day?'

As he drew near, the man asked if I had seen smoke or flames. I replied in all honesty that for much of the time I had hardly seen my own hand at arm's length. Somebody had reported seeing what looked like a fire up here. From what vantage point he knew not. And to this day I cannot imagine any but the hardiest soul venturing up to the biting chill of the Downs in mist. I can only assume that in one of the breaks in the mist, when visibility lifts and light becomes so intense, somebody saw the sun reflected off my tractor. Quite how a long-unpolished bonnet of some six feet in length could give such an illusion I shall never know.

This was my third encounter with those men who are prepared to help others at crises in their lives.