The day that moxey was born

Well here goes.

It all started in the summer of 1989 i was on a 3 week trial at the printers where i still work now.
It was a red hot day,the sun beating down on the factory where i was a printers assistant. The
boss was going on holiday with his family in a couple of days time, he asked me if i would go to his
and help the gardener.
We got to work on the 2nd of the bosses gardens,the 1st had a small lawn a greenhouse and bbq,
we walked to the 2nd and it was like a jungle, weeds,nettles and overgrown rose bushes were taller
than me.After about 3hrs of none stop work we had cut and raked everything up, there was 4 huge
piles of plants that i had raked up,with me being on a 3 week trial i thought to myself that the
boss would surely be impressed with my work rate and i would get a contract to stay with the company then the gardener said that we should burn the dry grass stubble to finish off the work.

At that time there wasn`t bit of wind, the sun was beating down blue clear sky above then the
gardener said grab a rake and we`ll burn a bit at a time,then he lit the fire, it started slowly at first
then began to spread. We started to beat the grass with the rakes but no luck, the wind picked
up and the fire spread and spread. The gardener told me to run and tell the boss.

I ran through the garden and towards the house, as i approached it it was going through my
mind will i knock on the door or just burst through,its funny how little things like that can make
you question what to do. As i raced towards the house i saw the boss in the kitchen, i ran in and
through panting for air i said "its out of control" the boss just looked and asked "what is?"
my reply was "the f-f-f-fire"
He didnt know where to run back in the house to phone the fire brigade or out to the garden
eventually he came out to see the inferno that had now crept in the the neighbours gardens.

The tree at the bottom of the garden was starting to catch fire, we ran and got buckets of water
while the boss shouted to his wife to phone the fire brigade. We ran down to the blaze with buckets slopping water all over the place, the bosses wife and kids were filling our buckets up
and we were running to put out the fire. In the end the fire brigade came and calmly put out the remander of the fire.

Back at work and i told the lads what had happend and 2 secs later i got my nickname of moxey
the arsonist from auf wiedersehen pet.

But the story dosen`t end there on the day that the boss was going away i had to help a printer
with a thermographing job, which entails putting a freshly printed sheet of paper into powder
then onto a conveyor belt that takes the sheet into a heater,like a big toaster and when it comes
out the other end the print has bubbled up. Well i had been doing this job all morning with no problems
then as i put a sheet on the conveyor i noticed the boss was walking towards me, i must have
panicked and i didn`t put the sheet on right so as it went under the heater it was twisted and
it snagged on the side if the machine. a raced to the other side and there was only about an inch
of the sheet sticking out, i could see the sheet was darkening and was going to burst into flames.
I grabbed the corner of the sheet just in time for it to catch fire, i pulled the sheet out flung it
to the ground and stamped on it to put out the fire. By this time the boss had raced over and as
i finished stamping on the sheet he said "not content with burning my garden down your trying
to burn my f-fing buisness down".

I thought that was the end of it and it would slowly be forgotten but Billy Joel decided to bring
out a song a week later called We didn`t start the fire. And my misery was complete.