FRANCESCA FLYN tells Limited Edition why she sometimes finds the high-pitched wail of a fire engine siren a comforting sound.

One minute I’m a single mum to a lively four year-old girl, living in a high rise and struggling to manage on benefits then, in what seems like the blink of an eye, that four year old is a 14 year old “challenge” and I’m preparing to return to work after the birth of my third baby where I will spend the night with five men . . . . . . none of whom is my husband.

My job? I’m a firefighter.

Why the Fire Brigade? As a 26-year-old single mother I wanted a full time job that allowed me to spend more time with my child than just an hour in the evening and every other weekend.

I happened to be dating a fireman at the time and quickly found myself more interested in his job than I was in him … it was a short lived romance!

Suddenly my ideal career was staring me in the face: family-friendly shifts, an active job to suit my sporty type of personality, exciting, varied and challenging work. What could stop me?

Well, taking part in a badly taught aerobics class for one thing — remember the Jane Fonda days of co-ordinating leg warmers and tights?

I was right in there “going for the burn” with my bottom bisected by a 2 inch strip of multi-coloured lycra …(“does my bum look big in this?” er, hello? In what exactly?)

After one class consisting of 45 minutes of leaping up and down on my tip toes in canvas plimsoles, followed by a particularly enthusiastic bout of “rovers revenge”, I sustained a knee injury (surprise, surprise,) which meant it was three years until the selection process finally delivered me to and through the training centre at Southwark in 1994.

Once serving at a station, I found the reality of the job could be humdrum as well as interesting and exciting.

One minute we could be fishing a cat out of a tree. I’ve personally “saved” three in nine years (though as one of my colleagues says, when do you ever see a cat skeleton up a tree?) and the next I could be part of a crew that rescues someone from a fire or cuts them free from the wreckage of a crash.

Then there’s the mundane servicing and cleaning of equipment, and the more interesting fire safety talks where we meet toddler groups, schoolchildren and other community groups.

We may be doing routine drills in the station yard one minute and the next, find ourselves in a field of standing corn alight, thrashing about with a scientific piece of equipment called a beater … a stick with a flat length of canvas at the end.

Sometimes the simplest things can be the most effective! A firefighter has to be prepared to see and deal with some horrendous situations but as part of a crew you work together successfully and on these occasions, nothing is more fulfilling than the feeling that as a team you have really made a difference.

And what of the famous fire brigade humour?

Humour yes, but subtle and highbrow it ain’t … much hilarity can still be achieved via the old raw-egg-in-the-boots trick or how about the ever-entertaining goofy-goggles-and-moustache drawn onto the helmet visor . . . hey, it never fails to make me chuckle, and, when in Rome!

You do need strength, stamina and fitness, which is what led me to train and qualify as a fitness instructor. That and the eagerly awaited demise of the bum flossing leotard. Present day finds me now running my own fitness business teaching classes and personal training, as well as teaching at the Walnuts Leisure Centre in Orpington.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I met and married a wonderful man who took me and my daughter on and somehow persuaded me that a couple more children would enrich our lives — most days he was right!

The decision to expand the family came along with a determination to be sleeping through the night and back to full fitness before I hit 40. Two years to go and I’m on track with the fitness, but sleeping through the night seems like an unattainable dream!

The other night I managed to have a catch-up chat with my fantastically supportive husband. We laughed and talked for about half an hour, agreeing that it was so nice to have a complete uninterrupted conversation.

The trouble was that it was midnight before we turned the light off and I had to get up to feed the baby at 3am, followed by three trips in to the two year-old between 3am and 6am (shouting out for no apparent reason).  At 6am I had to be up with the toddler who was closely followed by the baby.

Later I had to fit in a visit from a salesman regarding an advert for my business in the local supermarket and around tea-time an attempt to talk with my troubled teenager just as the other two “hit the wall”.

Trying to remember how it feels to be 14 and misunderstood whilst a whingeing two year-old complains that her turkey slice is ‘too smooth’ and the baby decides its time to give her lungs a vigorous workout, is not easy, but a typical day in my life.  It’s funny how I can sometimes get a strange yearning for the calming wail of a fire engine siren.

Francesca, 38, is a qualified freelance fitness instructor running her own business, Flin's Fitness. A variety of different classes are held at Crofton Junior School, Petts Wood. Membership is not required and classes run throughout the year.

For details about classes or personal training, contact Fran on 01689 811452 or 07976 412027 or e-mail francesca.flin@ntlworld.com