It’s one minute past midnight here at TLCB Towers, and this writer – for complicated home/partner-based reasons – is sleeping in the office. Or trying too.

An eerie whiring noise awoke said domestic refugee, which was followed by the unmistakable sounds of Elven rage.

Sigh. At least sorting out whatever shenanigans were going on would break the monotony of failing to sleep upright in a wheelie chair.

It turns out the shenanigans were rather unusual; an Elf, perched high up a Technic ladder, was squirting water down upon its previously-slumbering colleagues, much to their wrath.

The cause of the commotion was just as unexpected; a glorious fully remote controlled vintage fire truck, complete with a working water pump.

Flickr’s Nikolaus Löwe (aka Mr_Kleinstein) is the builder behind it, and not only does his vintage fire truck really pump water, there’s remote control drive and steering, motorised support legs, and an enormous elevating, rotating and extending ladder, which the previously mentioned Elf had deployed rather cunningly to soak its unsuspecting brethren.

Come to think of it, perhaps this TLCB writer should use a big ladder to get to the bedro… No, no… that’d probably make things worse.

You can check out more of Nikolaus’ beautiful build at his ‘Fire Ladder Truck’ album on Flickr, whilst this writer ponders his current predicament.