The dog ate my homework....

There are some wonderful stories and excuses given for not doing what you should or being where you're meant to be. 
A common one in the CJS office is that you got stuck behind a slow moving flock of sheep - happens all too often - or that all the world and his dog stopped you to talk about village affairs just as you were about to walk in through the door, that's another frequent one (Goathlanders are on the whole a friendly, nosy, complaining, happy sharing lot!).  However, on Monday we heard a new one, we were waiting for our IT support to come in and have look at one of the computers which is running a bit slow (we're asking it to do too much I think), when we received an email that said:
"Sending this from the moor fire up at Levisham. Doesn't look like I'll be back tonight till dark."  
You see our main IT support is also a part-time fireman and it turns out he'd had a busy day dealing with a medical emergency in the morning (they provide rapid response paramedic cover too) and then being called out to a large moor fire that required 5 crews with 8 engines to get it under control. Read more on our local paper the Whitby Gazette here, with embedded YouTube video of the fire taking hold.