Sir - Late last year, a family friend returned from a long day at work, as he turned in to the street in his car, he discovered his way was blocked by a couple of ambulances, a fire engine and a three police cars.

He had to park on the corner and he hated parking his car on the corner so he wasn’t in the best of moods. He sat down to watch the news as he normal did but his wife broke the news to him, that his best mate and all of his family who had lived next door , people who they had known for over 30 years ,were all dead, because a pair of idiots had killed them, and he was one of those idiots.

Turns out that the air vents that he and his best mate had blocked the previous week end, because he had accidentally knocked the flue from the gas boiler with the ladder, because the boiler and the cooker had not been getting enough fresh air and the boiler flue wasn’t working properly, it had been enough to produce an ample amount of carbon monoxide enough to kill the whole family.

My friend is now, having to see a counsellor as well as a solicitor. You see it was he who told his mate that having their gas boiler serviced annually was a waste of money, it was he who had knocked the flue with the ladder, it was he had suggested blocking the air vents, it was he and his mate who had fitted the second hand gas cooker his mate had got from a junk shop in town.

An apocryphal story in support of gas safety week.

Ivan Carter

Worcester