Knowing our 13-year-old grandsons were due a summer holiday visit, John started saving suitable jobs up on the farm that would keep them entertained and entice them off the internet. Anything involving the tractor is a winner.

Once a year we generally need to have a bonfire with broken pallets and cardboard boxes that have accumulated, but due to the very dry conditions this summer we hadn’t been able to. So, when we had a couple of wet days during the grandies’ stay, it was decided that at last a bonfire was on the cards.

For obvious safety reasons, we build our fires far away from our wooden barns. So the children helped pile all kinds of wooden offcuts and cardboard boxes of numerous sizes into the tractor bucket before chugging off across the fields to the designated fire pit.

During Storm Arwen in 2021, a small coppice of half a dozen trees was blown over on a rocky outcrop. The tree trunks were sawn up and removed, but the root balls were left in a circle, and John has been using this rocky base for his fires ever since.

The wooden pile was constructed and lit, with as much excitement as is to be expected from two young teenagers.

Once the fire had died down sufficiently and was safe to leave, they all mounted the tractor to come back up the fields for a second load. It was as the tractor entered the yard that John’s phone rang.

The farm at the end of our lane is about half a mile away, but because we are higher up the fell, we have a very good view of it. The farmer was ringing us to tell us that the fire brigade was in his yard, as three 999 calls had come in from holidaymakers arriving into Windermere on the train.

The train line comes along the bottom edge of what we call our railway field, and from there you would have a very good view of the bonfire.

Considering that in the middle of August most of the train users would be from far-flung places around the UK and beyond, where they hadn’t been as lucky as us to have had two days of rain, it’s completely understandable that seeing a fire would fill them with panic.

So, when the neighbour’s phone call came in, we all looked down the hill towards the main road and, sure enough, three fields away, a cluster of high-vis jackets could be seen moving in a line towards the railway field.

It’s fair to say that John took off at speed in the tractor, (without the grandies!) to intercept the fire brigade.

Being a rural area, we don’t have a full-time manned fire station. Our local fire team all have full-time jobs and then get radioed in for emergencies, so to waste their time is mortifying.

Under the circumstances, they were charming and said they were happy it was a false alarm, but next time we have a controlled bonfire it would be a good idea to call it in, with a What3Words code for the location of the fire.

John returned to the farm relieved, but with a hint of a red face.