Plot
While Mainwaring is testing his new communication system, talking through sweet tins strung together by string, trouble is brewing on the horizon. The ARP Headquarters has been bombed the previous night, and the town clerk and vicar have given them permission to move in with the Home Guard at the parish hall. Mainwaring, naturally, is appalled at having to share his office with Hodges, and the hall with his "rabble". He orders his men to get rid of him, and Corporal Jones chases him out with a bayonet.
Hodges returns, this time with the full power of the law, and takes over half the hall. The Home Guard platoon struggle to come to terms with this new sharing arrangement, and even Walker who's usually shrewd in business is unimpressed, through he takes the chance to sell the Wardens a 'firelighter' to light the stove. While Mainwring and Hodges are wrestling for control of the office telephone, a call comes through warning them of a fire that has started at a large building next to St Aldhems church. After initially calling for the fire brigade, they realize that it is in fact their own headquarters burning, and the chimney set alight by Walkers' firelighter.
The Wardens and Home Guard combine forces to try to put it out, entailing a rooftop drama with a hose and buckets of water. Eventually Wilson puts out the fire with a pinch of salt, despite Mainwarings scepticism. Just as they are about to exit the roof, Mainwaring, Hodges and their men are trapped in a thunderstorm by a falling ladder, leading Mainwaring to ask Wilson if "the Fire Brigade wouldn't mind popping round".
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)