Straight Up!

Set in 1972 the novel “Straight Up!” follows the exploits of twenty year old John Pearson. Fresh from working in a bank it was the mantra, “It will be better once you get on the fire station” that kept him going through the thirteen weeks of being run around at the Fire Service Training School. To say he had been out of his comfort zone was an understatement. But now here he was on his first day on Fairborough Fire Station as a fully fledged member of Red Watch. ‘You can forget all that training school rubbish, this is where you learn to be a fireman,’ he was informed by Cliff Davis the officer in charge of the watch. After days of feeling like a fish out of water John starts to think that perhaps he had made a big mistake and that being a fireman was not the job for him after all.