17-02-2021, 12:23 PM
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The Sleeping Giant
The vast cavern echoed with many strange sounds as the children gathered round the story teller.Next the resting Goddess lay the Sleeping Giant, clad in a coat of shiny Lincoln Green. Even recumbent, it was twice the height of a standing man. With sweeping gestures of his arms, the Storyman told how when roused, the giant would rear up and could easily outreach the top of the nearest castle tower.
During a time of darkness when fire and great terror rained down from the skies, the Goddess and Giant had fought side by side to save mankind. Decades had now passed, but the guardians of the sacred cavern kept a constant vigil.
Should the need arise, they would sound the clamouring gongs and blow trumpets of despair to wake once more the mythical beasts to stand together and fight the forces of fire and chaos.
Warriors, the chosen few, wearing brightly painted helmets of wood, and bearing strange star like sigils on their breasts would ride atop the Goddess and the great Beast, alongside chariots pulled by many horses.
Man and Beast and Goddess would unite to give battle against the elemental foe, revered and cheered by the ordinary townsfolk as they did so.
And that my friends is my childhood memory of a school visit in the early 1960s to Grimsby Fire Station that still had a WW2 vintage Green Goddess fire engine, and a 1932 Merryweather turntable escape ladder kept in working order should the need ever arise to supplement the (then) modern fire pumps and turntable ladder.
In those days, Fire Brigade helmets were made of compressed cork, capable of withstanding the impact of a brick falling from twenty metres.
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