Reuben Jopson, Year 9, took the details of the recent school tractor fire to the next level in this short story:

On 22 June, the fire alarm went off in Social Studies. We were half-way through a quiz in F2 when the speaker screamed and deepish-sounding voice told us to keep calm and evacuate the building. Everybody groaned, “Not again!”

“Boys, wait to see if it keeps going!” Mr Howell bellowed, looking annoyed. It did.

We piled up our bags at the back of the class, struggling into our coats and scrummed around the door before bursting into the corridor and tumbling down the stairs like a sound of clanging metal. Some of us walked sedately to the tennis courts for a roll call. Others were playing around, foot- tripping, pushing, shoving and yelling towards a grumpy Mr Howell with his clipboard.

This was more serious than we thought. A fire was burning down the tractor shed. The smoke seeped out from the broken windows like an angry octopus spraying ink all over the buildings. Orange flames leaped up towards the roof like witches’ fingers.

Because the fire engine was coming, Miss Nesbit yelled at us to go to the Hockey Turf by the Sports Hall and we thought the fire was spreading into V block.

I had my cellphone and texted Dad:

The school is on fire. Can you come and pick me up? I have all my stuff and my bike.

Ok Reuben, he replied, I’m about thirty minutes away. I’ll meet you at the North Parade gate.

It looked as though we were going to get the day off. Hooray! Two fire engines turned up. The wind started getting stronger and the fire spread over the back fence onto a house and this made more work for the firemen.

Upstairs in F Block in my classroom, the devices in our bags started to melt with loud banging and crackling like lots of exploding fireworks.

Downstairs in the F Block Chemistry laboratory, gas and chemicals blew up like a bomb going off. The smell of rotten eggs from hydrogen sulphide had everybody gasping, sneezing and coughing. Dirty grey smoke billowed out of the windows and forced the firemen to take cover.

A few minutes later, a helicopter whirled overhead and swooped in with a huge bucket spraying water everywhere.

Then an ambulance zoomed in to help students who had taken in too much smoke. They were lying on the ground coughing and spluttering like an old car engine starting until the ambulance men put oxygen masks on them.

Lots of police, more firemen and reporters arrived.

The last thing I saw before Dad picked me up was a huge explosion and I thought that I was lucky to still be all right.

The next day the Headmaster announced that they would have to build a new school.

Yippee! No school for a year!

With Spring under way and the need to mow the playing fields, the School recently purchased a replacement - a second-hand, 33-horsepower Iseki diesel tractor with a frontend loader. This machine has an interesting history since it used to mow the grass at the iconic Carisbrooke rugby ground, ‘The House of Pain’, in Dunedin.