When you are in the State Emergency Service, you are never quite sure what is going to happen during what is normally your spare time. On Friday night I came home and was settling down to a quiet beer before the TV, when the call came through about a collapsing veranda in Randwick.

We went out to the job to find a first storey veranda that was structurally sound in the middle but completely rotten around the outside. We ended up demolishing half of the veranda before it could fall down.

Then on Saturday there was a call about another house in Randwick that had slate tiles falling off the roof. It was a steep slippery roof on a two storey building so we had to call in the aid of a cherry picker. Once it arrived, the job was cleaned up fairly quickly, but the cherry picker took forever to arrive. It is always interesting to go back to my normal job on Monday and be asked “What did you do on the weekend?” and show them the photos.