999
Driving home last week I noticed a sign warning that Old Dover Road was going to be closed on Saturday for a “999 Open Day”. Not really having a clue what this was (and finding bugger all info on the intermahweb) we decided to pop over and have a look. Glad we did, the kids loved it! Although they got locked in the cells we couldn’t persuade the police to keep them unfortunately so we had to bring them home again 
Lots for the kids to play with and look around - I didn’t take a decent camera so only have some crappy cameraphone shots 
Jake and Becca both got to have a play on a police motorbike - Becca loved it even though she couldn’t actually reach the handlebars
Then we headed inside to have a look around the cells (the locals had been shipped off to Margate nick for the night apparantly) and then we had a play with the 999 call logging system. Type in a postcode and house number or a phone number and instantly get a map of our house. Impressive details - layout of th gardens, where sheds are etc etc. Also all alleyways gates are marked with widths so they can instantly tell if they can fit a police car down them etc. The latest version also allows them to overlay google maps onto it for satellite photos. This is all available in a load of the police vehicles as well. neat.
Kids then got arrested and went to have their fingerprints taken. For some slightly worrying reason, becca loved this…
Back outside to have a look around the Coastguard displays where Jake got kitted out to be a winch guy for the helicoptors. I think he might have to grow a bit first
Surprisingly, the police then opened up one of their armed response units and let the kids play with the guns! Jake rather liked the sub machine gun best. Becca struggled to pick it up
Over to the fire station and Becca spotted the huge ladder thing that is usually parked next to her nursury - she was rather excited to be allowed to climb into the drivers seat!
Finally, the kids got to play in an *enormous* fire truck that carries containers of emergency equipment around. It had recently returned from the Hotel fire in Newquay apparantly and was full of scary looking hydraulic kit and uber clever cameras on sticks The truck itself was seriously clever and massively computer controlled. Becca pretended to drive while Jake pressed as many buttons as he could find on the computers (and there were *a lot* of buttons!) I wanted to have a play with this one
I was impressed - dunno why they don’t advertise it at all! And best of all, it was free (which was just as well as we got home and found the strimmer blew up when I tried to cut the grass and the printer died that evening. There goes my pay rise this month then!)
