Episode 183: Siobhan Priest

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2:03Hello, I'm Safiyyah DeSpexta, and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women, who also happen to be mothers, about how they make it all work. I'm a singer and I've released eight albums in between having my five sons, aged between seven years old and nearly 22, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a little bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. I hope where I'm speaking to you from isn't going to be too annoying and loud and buzzy because I'm actually on my tour bus and I've realised that it's not a very quiet environment.

2:48It's like a hum coming from something. But anyway, hopefully it's all right. It is day one of two things. Day one of the festivals this summer. So I am at a place called Farm Fest today. It's also day one of the heat wave in the UK. And I'm wondering how many people are already complaining about the weather. We have had really sort of dodgy weather for the last few weeks. You know, it's been quite cold and rainy. And now we're at the beginning of proper heat. So I think today is around 29, 30 degrees. And guess what, guys? It's a bit hot out there. It's like pretty full on. And this is going to continue for about a week minimum.

3:33So let's see how many people are still loving it all. a couple of days in but it is nice to see a blue sky and it's nice to you know wear lighter clothes and have your pins out and that kind of thing I mean I say it would say that I'm a tot um I hope your week's been all right this week I've had quite a funny one actually um I have had six flights in seven days I did a gig in Ibiza I did a gig in South France I did a gig in Milan and popped to and from each time I went just because of coming back to London either for work or just, you know, being my family. And then yesterday, Richard and I went to the Ivan Novellos, which was actually really special.

4:21The Ivan Novellos are songwriters awards and what I love about them is firstly, they're not televised so they always feel quite warm and relaxed. but secondly they're really prestigious like if you for example won 120 years ago like Richard did it might be something you might casually still bring up in conversation to this day perhaps you know it means something they're a beautiful award uh yesterday was incredible for the people that come to be in the room to give eloquent moving speeches and what songwriting means to them so Harry Styles, Rosalia, Elton John, Jacob Alon, CMAT, Tom York they were all in attendance and it was really really special and honestly there's so many conversations that people are having and speeches that kind of moved me made me want to cry and I was trying to think what that is why did it make me want to cry when people were talking about what songwriting meant and I realized it's because it just resonates so deeply like the idea firstly of having a voice that you want to put to something and letting that out that catharsis but also the absolute magic that is the alchemy of songwriting and how it can move you and involve people but it always starts off intimate so a lot of people when they got their awards they'd be very emotional k tempest and sam fender were both clearly very emotional and i think it's because it goes to a really intimate place you know the song might finish being sung and you know hands in the air and tens of thousands of people whatever but it starts off it's generally only a few people maybe even just one in a room with an instrument letting that feeling move through them and it's it's just a beautiful kind of magic and that was very nice um hold on a second um hello oh he's not here sorry about that i'm back i'm back i don't know uh hopefully richard's turned up by now yes that was my tour managers up looking for richard so the bank and sound check uh where was i i was talking about me but i think it's time i talk about my guest uh if you follow her on instagram you want to hear it as the fire mum uh which is how i first came to know a woman who if you know a bit better you might call siobhan brist who's our guest this week if you're really good friends with her you might know her as shiv uh shiv is someone i started following because she shares her account of being a London firefighter.

6:52She works in Lambeth and she's really open and positive and enthusiastic about what it is to be a firefighter. But there's more to the story than that because actually Shiv came to firefighting only in the last three to four years. She was a successful model for a long time. She has a 16-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son and she just had something in her that felt like she was looking for something else and just had an instinct that firefighting might be that thing and she was 100 % right about it I mean you're going to hear just how much being a member of that fire brigade gives her how much she loves being in what she calls with her brothers the other 10 chaps that she works with at the fire station her absolute dedication to the job how much it makes her feel alive focused energized just you know whip smart around the edges with the business of fighting fires so as you can imagine as soon as I was following Shiv I thought I have to interview this woman it's fascinating to me I'm always interested in people who've absolutely changed the course of their careers but also what's it like to do something that has risk something that's very in the moment something that's very demanding something that aspects of the job you might need to compartmentalize from your family life but also something that is so important so powerful where you're actively trying to save people's lives and save buildings and possessions that mean things to people it's um yeah it's an amazing thing to be able to keep calm in that environment when a fire is raging and just had the skill set to know what to do so Shiv will take us into her world and also maybe give us a few tips of how to keep safe um there's also an unlikely uh detour our conversation takes via Glastonbury Festival very happily um so yeah there's lots to Siobhan and obviously happily for us above all a lot of generosity in what wisdom she's learned so I leave you with our chat while the band are sound checking and I'm hiding in my tour bus bunk see you on the other side

9:18it's really nice to see you today and I said see you not meet you because it turns out we've met before we have met before yes in my my day job and you're one of your other things you get up to Yeah, so for the last 11 years it is this year, although there's a fallow year. For the last 11 years, I've worked at Glastonbury on the Park Stage as artist liaison. And you came and performed with us in 2024 with Peggy Goo. And you were phenomenal. And you had a huge crowd. And we'd love to see it. You were brilliant. So yeah, we have met before. But obviously, you were very busy. And I was just doing my job.

9:55Well, thank you for making it so much fun. I love the Park Stage. It's my favourite stage at Glastonbury. and it always has really cool stuff and it's very much got its own vibe yeah um you know people who go to glastonbury will know but each there's lots of people that work at glastonbury that have been there year upon year upon year and it becomes very much like a family yeah and and each area has kind of got a slightly different tone depending on who's working there and i love all that about i think that's what's special about glastonbury yeah one of the things that's the vibe we go for at park is to make it feel like a little family in a home and yeah we love it oh you've definitely achieved it and it's funny because yeah I did the thing with Peggy Gu where she was doing her headline set I just popped out to the murder on dance floor and I said to I said check I did a bit of loose fact checking that then I was like on stage this is the first ever female DJ to headline park yeah I've said it like it's true I think it is true phenomenal yeah I mean I'm not 100 % sure but I will take your word for it yeah me too that's basically it you say it it becomes law yeah that's it but you had an enormous crowd so yeah such a high oh it's really good it's brilliant hopefully it'll happen again and when I was there I sang uh murder on dance floor which uh leads me to feel I should apologize because I realized I've been carelessly threatening to burn a house down for some time oh gosh are you here to lecture me about what could happen if you know what I'm not going to lecture you about anything I'm not going to there might be a couple of subtle fire safety things that I'll throw in there but no oh please Well, I'm fascinated.

11:24So basically we're speaking because you have come to my attention as the fire mum, you're known on Instagram. And it's basically documenting your love, passion and relationship with what you now do, which is working for the London Fire Brigade. So how long have you been doing this now? Yeah, so I started as a firefighter with the London Fire Brigade just over three years ago. it was always something that I wanted to do but it was always a job where I thought that's so cool but so is going to the moon like I never thought that I'd actually be able to do it I just thought it was kind of one of those things that like other people do that are really cool and I looked into it over the years and I kept going away from it and coming back to it and going away from it and coming back to it and I think the reason why I did that is because there wasn't the visibility that I'd hoped for and I don't mean in the sense of like you know pictures of female firefighters in advertising campaigns I mean like the true you know social media real people I couldn't find what I was looking for when when I was looking for it um so yeah it kind of it took a while for me to actually get there and go for it and I think as we get older we kind of realise oh stuff it I'm just going to go for it with a lot of things and when you've got kids as well and you're preaching to your children you should do this you should go for it go chase your dreams blah blah blah and then you're not doing that it's you're a hypocrite so that's that's how I ended up just going for it I was like sod it I'm doing it and I'll see how far I can get and that's that's where it all began really well that's incredibly inspiring and um i think that you're right it's one of those things where you're encouraging with your kids uh exactly what you want to model but that being said it's still taking a leap into a bit of the unknown and i understand from listening to you you know i've been listening to conversations you've had before where you said that part of the reason you've got your presence with your instagram and your social media is because you wanted to be what you couldn't see and give a bit a little bit of a path to other people and an insight into the realities of what you do and actually also to touch on it you mentioned about not seeing many female firefighters but actually I don't know the current stats but the ones I could find online were from I think 2023 where it said 8.7 percent of operational firefighters are women yeah so nationally it's eight percent in the LFB we've got 10 because we've got a lot more firefighters than any other brigade in the UK.

14:00So, yeah, nationally it's 8%, which if you look at London, if we've, say, got 5 ,000 firefighters, and 10 % of that is 500, it's minimal. It's minimal. So, yeah, like, it is difficult to see us out there. And it is quite funny because when people do see us, they kind of go, oh, it's a girl one. You're like, hey, that's right. um but yeah going going to the um the social media stuff I yeah I scoured the internet when I when I knew that I was going to start training school I scoured the internet and I was like right I need I need to find answers I need to look for people who can answer my questions what kind of questions did you have at that point then I wanted to know how the shifts worked with having kids I wanted to know what it would be like for a woman in the fire service like genuinely what it would be like I wanted to know um you know how I would cope with the things that I was going to see I wanted to know you know I wanted to see if there's someone relatable I had just so many things to ask but mainly you know the shift work and kids and and how so I'm trying to think to your daughter she's 16 now is she so she'll be 16 soon yeah right yeah so then she would have been yeah just approaching her teenage yeah years right yeah and your son he's eight yes he's eight now so then he would have been about five yeah so still little at the time when you're thinking all of this yeah that's it I think as well that was probably one of the things that made me go for it as well is because he was starting school post-covid he was starting school and I was like right if not now when I've just got to do it um so what was the first step then for you in terms of that starting on that journey so my mindset was I'm just going to see how far I can go with it and and that's that i'm not putting pressure on myself yeah no pressure on yourself exactly so um with the london fire brigade we have like an outreach process that you do before you get given an application form and that's a series of things that you do to give you as much information about the job as possible so you can figure out and they can figure out if you're right for the job and if the job's for you um so that was the starting block really um and yeah it all started like an online teams meeting and then like experience days and things like that and that's something that we still run now which I think is great you know so that's part of the non-going outreach for them is it for recruitment yeah and so was it a bit of stars colliding in terms of you'd always thought that looked amazing and then you also saw something was there was a new drive for recruits or were you actually actively like I'm gonna see what they're doing around here that will work for me.

16:42Yeah, I kind of, I just kind of like actively went for it. I was like, I'm going to see how far I can get with the job. And I kind of knew one or two people that were firefighters, but not super well. So I could ask them questions, but there were men, you know, there weren't women and they didn't have children. And it's not quite the same. You know, I wanted to like ask a mum. Yeah. What's it like? And, you know, I'm not the only girl in the brigade that has got children. We've got so many women that have children in the brigade now, which is brilliant. You know, what a great example for us to set to to our kids in the future.

17:21But yeah, I just kind of actively went for it and thought, just go for it, Shiv. Just do it. Well, maybe we can work through the questions you had and then the answers you found for people out there thinking along the same lines. So you said about the shift work and how that would work with raising a family. So what's the answer to that at the moment? I couldn't imagine not working shifts anymore. It's been absolutely fantastic. Like I work two days, two nights and then have four off. And, you know, the two night shifts, I can be, I can come home, I can have a sleep, I can still do the school run.

17:56And then I can spend the early evening with the kids and then go off to work. And it works so well. And then having four days off altogether, it's just, it feels like you have a proper break. Not that, you know, I need the proper break, but I can have like a proper break and a rest from work and I can take the kids away for the weekend if it falls on the weekend. It sounds like you can make plans. Yeah. And you can regulate your time a little bit because I'd imagine the nights and the days take a lot of your focus and energy. Yeah. um and I suppose for the family and we'll talk about it more but when you had your babies that was in your modeling career days and actually there's a lot of uncertainty that can surround that line of work yes but now it sounds like things maybe are actually much more sort of predictable within that I mean putting aside the emotional demands but the actual weekly what your family expects you know when you they will see you when they won't that kind of thing yeah it's actually a lot more manageable in some ways absolutely like I started modeling when I was 16 I got scouted and I had a like I had a great career I'm not knocking it I had brilliant brilliant time modeling I went around the world I met some incredible people worked for some amazing brands earned good money but I had my daughter when I was 24 and I think it worked well in the sense that obviously being self-employed you can manage your own time your own diary and stuff but I did crave bit of stability and I think that's why coming into the fire service and having that routine and stability later on in my life has just worked so well because it is the opposite of what I was doing before and I just really needed it yeah and having that predictability like you say with the kids um it does work well for them as well as me and with just for your picturing your sort of working week when you're doing your shifts are you with the same group of people yeah so So we call them watches.

19:55And the reason why we call them watches is because back in the day, fire stations had watchtowers. A few of them in London are still there in the real historic stations. They had watchtowers where a firefighter would sit and keep watch over that area. It was a really tall part of the building and they would look out for smoke. And then they would shout down to the other firefighters, you know, that there was an incident. And that's why we call incidents shouts. And we call our crew a watch. So my watch that I've got at work, I work with them all the time. We're always together on that four on and they become like your family.

20:32And, you know, on my watch, there's 11 of us. So I've got these 10 brothers and me and it's absolutely brilliantly wild. We have a great time and we work together very well. We see things that, you know, you wouldn't really wish anyone to see, but we cope with it together and we work through it together. and that is the beauty of one of the things in the fire service yeah well I suppose that's one of the questions you had before you started the job was um wondering how you would cope with what you come into contact with through your work yeah I mean officially we have a lot of um resources available to us we've got counselling and trauma services with the London Fire Brigade there's lots of charities as well like the firefighters charity they supply like free counselling services as well there's loads and loads of official support that we've got that we can access that's fab but what works for me and a lot of other firefighters the most is just talking with your watch and just decompressing over what you've seen and you know what like different things affect different people like some of you know some people that I work with might not be affected by seeing something as much as what I would I'm trying to think of an example one being one of one of my colleagues is really affected if he sees anything to do with animals you know if there's like a dog or a cat involved in an incident that really affects him and like it might not affect me as much but if I was you know if I have to deal with children in any way it might affect me a little bit more or and so we kind of work together like that we know each other's triggers and we you know we're very aware of that um so yeah working with your watches yeah and I guess learning about yourself what what it is that as you say yeah becomes the the bits that that stay with you for longer yeah absolutely I feel like I've learned a lot about myself and what I can cope with and you know what I feel like I'm really proud of myself and I've really surprised myself with with what I can experience and and how I can deal with things because you you never know until you see something or you're dealing with something how are you going to deal with it yeah and I think um that is the beauty as well of coming into the job a little bit later in life is we do have that life experience that we can you know go okay I need to check in with myself I'm not feeling great you know you you can like you know your emotions better you know yourself better um that's very true actually and i think as you're making me think the people that are in your watch is your 10 brothers are a lot of them people who've been doing it for a very long time and how was it for you when you were the new person we've actually got a fairly young watch which means that there's not any well there's a couple of people that have got like quite a lot of experience and they're our officers they're in charge of the watch and then everybody else has kind of got a range from like 10 years experience and below that's fairly young for the fire brigade you know normally it's like a real mix of anything from you know zero to 30 years experience um but yeah they've really helped me because they've seen things already that I haven't seen and they've dealt with things and you know you they know what my triggers are as well you know so yeah we do just work together as much as possible um it does sound like you have to have that yeah the sort of um what would you call it the structure in place to really support each other and keep an eye on one another yeah absolutely and I'm thinking that I was talking about actually with my kids on the way to school this morning about what you do and what I would find the hardest thing and I think for me as well it's the idea and you call it a watch actually is a really great um way of me framing it because I've realized that there's lots of jobs maybe where you have to be um just ready for for the signal that it's time to go so anyone who's involved in observation and making sure everything's safe and then noticing at the moment danger starts but in yourself when you're responding to an emergency so you're trying to picture how you regulate your adrenaline and your focus it was that something you already had an aptitude for or is that something that has surprised you about yourself or is it just something that when you're in the setting and in the uniform and you checked your kit and you've done all the checks and everything is primed it kind of all kicks in yeah I think a lot of that kind of yeah those adrenaline kicks that you get you really get those at the start of the job when you first start going you know to incidents and even now like if we go to something that's particularly traumatic sick you can't like I personally can feel my heart pumping and the adrenaline going or if we go into an incident and I'm driving the truck you know you've got a million things going around in your head like where's the hydrant for the water supply you know what is the layout of that building are there people inside of that building um and you're driving at the same time and you're you know overtaking traffic on the wrong side of the road and you're going through red lights and you know you're using all of your training all in one go and it does feel like a spin out sometimes but you just get used to it as well like it seems wild to say that but you do you kind of you know certain incidents that come through you're like right okay I've got my I've been trained exceptionally well by the LFB I have now got three years of experience that if we're going to a road traffic collision I know exactly what I've got to do when I get there it might be slightly different you know in whatever way to the previous RTC, road traffic collision, but I know what I've got to do.

26:22And it almost feels a bit sad saying that you get desensitised to stuff, but we do. And it's just, you know, that's, yeah, that's the truth behind it. Yeah, and I think also you've really said when you say experience and knowing what you have to do. So I think it's, I think that's actually, I find that reassuring. I don't find that unnerving. I think that's reassuring because, you know, i'm sure everybody's got their version of some sort of trauma they've been involved in like that where you do rely on the people the first responders and my goodness it's you don't you don't need the uh the peripheral to be cloudy you want people to come with a clear presence of mind who are calm efficient uh experienced yeah um and just with a really clear objective of how it works because at that point you you as the person involved in it have got to probably you know you need help and you're you've reached your limits yeah um but I am thinking that it's funny because you're smiling when you're telling me and I'm thinking this sounds great and then I'm saying oh no this is like really dangerous and and and you're also dealing with people where they are they are in a situation that is completely for them they've been going about their day and this is the the the drop of the in the middle of the concentric circle yeah and you know that for them this is the moment which was there will be there was a life before and a life after but you're there in that moment yeah and um how did you know that it was firefighting that was that because you can find elements of that elsewhere I guess but what is it about your job that made that the thing I had a real yearning to do a job where I wanted to help people So even when I was modeling, I used to volunteer for various different charities.

28:12And I, you know, I always did things on the side where it was always like helping roles. And the penny didn't really drop with me that that's what I was doing until I became a firefighter. And then I was like, this is it. This is what I was looking for. I was looking for a helping role where I was at the absolute like point of depth, you know, and awfulness for some people, which sounds wild, right? For you, you're probably thinking, why would you want to do that? I don't know. I can't understand. I don't know if I feel like I could be that helpful in that situation, but I'm so grateful for people like you having that yearning, but also understanding that they're capable of really actually actively helping.

28:54Yeah. Yeah, I just, I don't know. I guess you call it purpose, right? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, fulfilled. I feel fulfilled in my role. I feel like this is what I was always supposed to do. and I know it's cheesy but you know when you meet those people and they're like oh find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life I feel like that and it's crazy to think because you know we kind of we don't get paid loads and loads and loads of money even though like our wages are good but you know and the stuff that we experience is awful and we could end up with PTSD and things like this but I just still feel like this is what I was supposed to do.

29:32Yeah I can see that it's kind of radiating off you a little bit actually i think so i think so and also i just think when you were describing driving the truck and having all those thoughts and also you know trying to assess preemptively what you're going to need when you get there but also navigating the roads as you do it i was thinking uh just there must be a privilege and feeling so much of your brain stimulated and engaged yes because when we're talking about about so many things that are valuable a lot of it is about being so in the moment and so present but also if you've got all these parts of yourself that matter to you and they feel like they're dormant yeah I think saying you were yearning for it is a really it's a big a lovely big word to use actually yeah because a lot of people maybe don't have that feeling of like that desire but also acting on it yeah and I'm also I was thinking to myself we could in another version of this story I'm sitting opposite you and you're telling me about how you spent 20 years in the fire service and now you spent three years modeling because actually it could have been like that that's where you found that world but maybe we can scroll back to the beginning so you mentioned you had your daughter when you were 24 so what was going on in your professional how long you've been so you said you was modeling from 16 so this has been something you've done for quite a while straight out of school yeah straight out of school I did go to university I stood in music and I had a great time but I always modelled whilst I was doing that and then when I left uni I had all the intentions of getting a proper job in inverted commas as my dad my dad put it um and then I just ended up modelling because it was it was good money I was I was flying around the world I was having a great time um and so yeah I kind of got caught in that and then I became a mom to my daughter I was a single mom um when I was 24 and then I moved to London with her when she was a baby and met my now husband when she was about two um and so yeah I kind of had like had a bit of a rough ride in my mid-20s um navigating life being single with a baby and still trying to support her and model and do all of these things um but again I feel like that in my life has just given me a greater appreciation for things as I've got older and a better empathy and understanding for other people and again you know that reflects in the in the job that I do and the way that I try and treat people now yeah and also how you I don't know when I was 24 uh just before I started going out with my husband uh I had just come out of quite a long relationship and I thought um that already screwed up my life a bit I was like well that's yeah I've got it wrong yeah already and isn't it wild that we can sit here now and reflect on all the all the what happens next in the story it is but at the time you just feel like you've kind of done all this stuff and it hasn't amounted to what you expected it to if you'd have told me when I was 25 just after having my daughter that I'd be sat here with you talking about being a firefighter and influencing women you know now I put I would have I would have thought you were crazy like there's no way I would believe it you know I was on the verge of a breakdown I was so unwell like after having her it's such a hard time um but you know as women we are strong characters and we rise don't we so we do but it's a nice idea I guess to know that you can reach back and be like actually turned out better than you thought yeah but that sounds like it was a lot on your shoulders at the time so I'm sorry that's a really difficult way to be a new mum I think feeling isolated and worried about how to keep things rolling yeah I mean what and also that's a lot isn't it to look back on from me for you now I think yeah oh yeah absolutely but like I say it gives me a greater appreciation I think for how well things have gone you know and and yeah life is good.

33:41Do you ever find yourself scrolling through headlines and thinking, possibly screaming, at least on the inside, that can't be true? There's rising rates of vaccine-preventable diseases and someone on the internet saying that watermelon juice is a natural alternative to sunscreen. Just no. I'm Chelsea Clinton, and That Can't Be True is back for season three. My guests and I cut through a lot of chaos to help all of us understand what is true, what is overblown, and what's false. There's never been a better time to get outside and experience the benefits of nature. Discover nearby trails and explore the outdoors with AllTrails.

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34:55Search is doing its thing. So why do your marketing results look the same as six months ago? That's because you're fishing in the same pond as everyone else. Podcast listeners are a different audience entirely, more engaged, harder to reach through traditional channels, and ready to act when someone they trust makes a recommendation. We're Acast, and we put them right in front of you. Browse thousands of the world's leading podcasts, book host reads or run your own ads, and track every conversion in real time. Same skills you already have, brand new results. a cast a cast.com slash advertise so did you keep modeling you were yeah obviously kept modeling after you had her and oh yeah yeah yeah carried on she's you know she's done bits with me as well commercial shoots family things like that um and yeah i mean even i've done a little bit i've still done bits of modeling stuff like qvc i did a lot of um since i joined the fire brigade as well but But my time for that is kind of narrowing because my time in the, you know, for the fire service that I'm giving to the fire service is becoming greater and greater.

36:04So what how was it for you with did you worry about your career with modelling when you became a mum? Yeah, I did actually. Yeah, I did. But because I was so young, I could I kind of could pull it back. You know, it's almost like that people couldn't tell that I was a mum. And that's, you know, it's a terrible thing to say. I listened to your podcast with Ashley James and she was saying something and I was so profound when she was saying, oh, you know, people say, oh, I'm a two mumsy. And, you know, why is that a bad thing? And it made me think like that's exactly what I was like when I had Jessie and my daughter's called Jessie.

36:41And I was worried about, oh, what about if I'm two mumsy now and I don't fit into the categories that I need to fit into? Like, that's a terrible thing now. you know as a 40 year old woman I now look back and think it's awful yeah and I still think we're still um evolving how we think of motherhood and what it can it's definitely a lot better now than my so you just met my big boy so I was yeah I had him the same month I turned 25 and at the time in 2004 I didn't see uh as many incredible role models for how to be a new mum and also retain some sort of identity that was not inherently as awful I don't mean this disparagingly or dismissively but not always through the gaze of and you're a mum yeah and I think for in my late 20s I felt like it was um regarded as a very frumpy yeah accessory that's exactly it yeah which I think is such a shame and I do think we've got better with that yeah I do as well and all the good stuff that can come with the the transition and how many adventures you can still have yeah post that time but I think you know you're discombobulated you're getting your brain back in order and who am I and what matters to me and how do I feel doing this version of myself and that version now that I also have this new person I'm responsible for but also culturally people telling you oh I hope you weren't expecting to go back into that yeah that doesn't quite fit you in the way it did oh culturally I feel like even though it's got better you know when I was going to join the fire service my parents were like oh what about the kids oh you know and you you know we're kind of it's I feel like saying you're gonna ask my husband about his career and what about the kids no it's just you know but it is the way it is I guess it's the way it has been for a long time and it is it is changing slowly and our children are becoming you know they're they're changing that narrative you know like my daughter now she's you know she will quite proudly say I'm not sure that I want to have children actually and I'm like yeah cool like whereas you know when we were younger it was just kind of the like when you grow up and you're a mum and it's just you know like we just that's very true that's very true and I guess also in a nice full circle part of what you said was your motivation for what you now do are exactly the life lessons you're passing down to your daughter and your son about all the things all the options they have and what they could expect for them their wild lives yeah and you thought well how can I hope that they understand that from me if I'm not answering what's in me yeah that's it absolutely and you know what like sometimes I have to be very careful what I how much I disclose to my children about exactly what I do so I will water down the things especially with my eight-year-old I'm not going to say to him you know oh yeah I've been to this incident with this um but with my daughter I'm very real with it you know I will obviously within reason I'll say to her we've been to this incident and you know explain to her like and and hopefully get her to understand how how lucky she is in the in the setup that she's got and you know we're very privileged to live in a home that's safe and warm and you know and nothing tragic touch wood has happened and you know it's just kind of instilling that knowledge and and like respect for how fragile life is with the kids so yeah I hope that I'm doing that I'm sure you are yeah but how do you deal with that when you're seeing things sort of turn on a moment um actually let me reframe that how how did you know you were someone that was able to be calm in a crisis because I think that's a wonderful quality to have but had you been introduced to situations over the years where you just could see that you were able to think quite clearly I think so yeah it's funny because my friends and my family always used to say to me um oh you're really good in like difficult situations but it never really clicks I didn't really kind of think oh yeah you know because maybe that's just not having the kind of deep confidence in myself but yeah I was always told you know my by my family and friends like oh you'll be great in a in a crisis or whatever um and and yeah I guess I guess I am um it's a great quality and it's always good when you've got a friend like that as well yeah yeah you just keep those people around like a great great yeah yeah over to you what are we doing now that's it at Glastonbury when there's a crisis it's shiv no no I'm joking not really oh no don't you're joking now but honestly if I'm over there and I need someone I'm coming to the park stage that's it like she's she's not on the list she's not coming backstage oh gosh yeah that's brilliant what are your favorite things about what you do my favorite things about what I do uh there's so many I love the fact that every day is different every single day is different it doesn't matter even if we go to a fire that day and a fire the next day they're going to be two different types of fires i love the fact that it is so like it's fun my job is fun i know that sounds sick because we are going to people's worst days of their lives but putting a fire out is so much fun like we're trained to do the job we go in wearing breathing apparatus ppe we know what we're doing and it's actually quite fun doing that um which is it probably sounds a bit ridiculous um I don't think it does because also I've I watched your day in the life and I know that of course sometimes it's deeply harrowing but there's a lot of it which is about problem solving yeah and helping people and not every call out has got that level of trauma and desperation sometimes it's things where you can be just be really efficient and effective with the things you've been the tools you've been given yeah to problem solve oh yeah absolutely and you're working collaboratively and you guys must be amazing at how you communicate with one another and all of the shorthand to get it sorted as quickly as possible and i think that's incredibly satisfying and i think there's something quite there is something pleasing and fun about that it's been given a bit of a riddle like oh no i know how to do this if you do that and that and that yeah you you everything dials down and it goes back to the calm yeah that's it we say that we're professional problem solvers because that's exactly what we do and it's fun like yeah we get to use our brains and it's hands-on I love that um I love the fact that the people that I work with are beautiful people and we have a good time together and yeah I work the shifts so I see my kids and there's just so many things that I love about it and am I right that your daughter Jessie is now involved in a sort of youth program so she's yes she's in the fire cadets so fire cadets is like it's a national thing it's not just london and it's a free which i think is amazing it's a free program that kids between 13 and 18 can do and you basically go once a week to a designated fire station your local fire station that runs fire cadets and we basically will do drills with them where we teach them how to use ladders and how to use hose and how to use the fire engine and we do mini versions of what we actually do at work that's so good it's so it's so good at my local place that sounds amazing honestly it's it's brilliant it's confidence building the kids that we get are children from different backgrounds and they all come together and they work together really well they get that problem solving element they get you know new friends we get to take them on trips where otherwise they wouldn't be exposed to it on the in the outside world we get to take them on the fire boat um we just do so much stuff with them it's brilliant they get so many opportunities and it's free that's incredible so if they sign up to the fire cadets are they going every weekend for a certain amount of time or so it's it will be during the week so it'll be one evening a week so say like tuesday six to late 30 and it'll run term time get half terms off and things like that um and yeah we just do we'll teach them first aid so they'll have like cpr knowledge which i think is why don't they make this a bit more of a compulsory thing for kids just to get it as a tester trial i just think it's fantastic like it really could be that every kid has you know i don't know a list of certain aspects of the emergency services that you do a six week taster course in and then you see if you want to take any further because also that It would give everybody, it would equip them to not panic in situations, but to have something in their armoury that will possibly even save lives.

45:33Well, that's it. We do a lot of fire safety stuff with the cadets as well, teaching them fire escape plans, teaching them what to do if they were to see or be involved in a fire. And not just things like that, but exactly what you say, like how to remain calm in certain situations. And I didn't get that exposure as a kid. I wouldn't have had a clue what to do. So teaching that to these teens and watching them grow in confidence and put into practice what we're teaching them is brilliant. That's so brilliant because finding yourself in a situation where you'd need the fire brigades is something that any of us could encounter at any time.

46:08So actually having a bit of that. I think we have a better relationship with first aid, but if we can incorporate some fire safety, that would be brilliant, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah. That's so good to know. Honestly, I'm definitely going to look that up. And I was thinking, actually, when you talk about the dangers associated with what you do, how did your family, I mean, I'm sure maybe your parents, how are they feeling about the idea that you're about to do something that's potentially dangerous? They weren't keen, I will be honest. My mum was like... Understandable. They were like, what are you doing?

46:46And from their point of view, did it kind of come out of nowhere a little bit or was there definitely conversations? They knew that I'd mentioned it. Like they knew that I'd spoken to them about it when I was like 20. And it was a no from them. Oh, so quite a long time before. Yeah, because I always thought that's so cool. So this really had been in your mind's eye for quite a while. Yeah. But I think my mum and dad were actually more concerned about me getting PTSD or it traumatising me, which is understandable because I even think now like, oh my gosh would I want my children to see the things that I've seen but I think it really is about like we said already just knowing what coping strategies you've got and what you know access you've got to counselling and stuff but yeah it's understandable that they had concerns but they were like what are you doing now they're very proud by the way they're they're all up for it oh no I can I'm sure and I think it's like anyone who has worries about what their loved one is situations it's it's an understandable thing you are going to emergency situations where you know they are they are the next level up yeah so I think it all comes from a place of just wanting to protect you people you care about yeah but it also means that I suppose your your social media presence is also a way of um showing everybody around you including yourself how far you've come having transparency about the what you're really doing what your day-to-day looks like yeah I really enjoyed your day in the life actually because I could see how satisfyingly busy the day is yeah and the camaraderie and how much smiling there was and amongst all of the the checking the you know the need to do your fitness every day um the call-outs you're getting how how typically are you getting to a situation where actually is a fire that you're headed to so I can't I might be wrong with these figures but I think the percentage of fires that we go to out of all incidents is something like eight percent so it's tiny but it also depends on which station you're at so the station i'm at is lambeth it's right in the middle of town like when the doors open we've got westminster like it's one of the busiest stations in not only london fire brigade but the whole of the uk wow um and yeah so we probably get more fires than obviously stations that are a bit further out that don't have as many incidents full stop um but yeah i mean even like we go to so many different types of incidents there's things that people don't even realize that we attend that we go to and because we're on the river as well i don't know if you saw um we're on albert embankment so we've got the fire boats as well we're often i've actually seen that yeah yeah we're often like attending incidents where you know there's people in the river and things like that and you know when i talk to people about the incidents that we go to they're always like oh you do that and yeah we go to cats in trees and things like that which is wild i thought that was a joke i was gonna well it occurred to me to ask if you've ever rescued a cat in a tree and i thought that's probably like a really annoying question no i have i have seeing as you brought it up i think i've had about two or three cat rescues in in the last few years i've had one where there's a cat stuck behind a radiator and it was genuinely stuck it had slipped off the window sill and got lodged with my radiator so We had to cut the radiator off the wall and release it and it was fine.

50:06And we did have one where there was a cat stuck in a tree. But more often than not, you pitch the ladder to go and get it and it just runs off. It's like a comedy sketch. But yeah, there's this sort of instance we go to. Some of them are really gross, like people putting things on their bodies that you just don't want to know about. And we have to assist in removing them. Oh no, the mind goggles. Mainly men. and yeah it's there's some absolutely wild and wonderful things but this is why I love it because you know it's no day is the same and then the spin out you know the difference of my life like you know I can be at an incident doing something and then two or three hours later I'll be sat in my son's primary school watching the nativity play after a night shift thinking what on earth is going on what is my life you know a few hours ago I was dealing with this wild incident and now I'm here watching you know Mary and Joseph on the stage yeah those juxtapositions yeah sneak up on you don't they and it's amazing how your brain can can go from one place to another and you have to like keep keep one down low and then amplify and diminish and amplify and diminish depending on which environment you're in but I think as mums we just do that like we do it so so many different ways don't we we just like exactly like your podcast we're spinning plates constantly you know got one thing going on here and one thing going on there we just get on with it yeah and now that you are doing what you do is this something you think will be what you continue to do until you can't yeah yeah I mean look the job is very physical so I don't know up until what point I'll be able to like stay in on the operational side of things I hope for a very very very long time because I love it but there's so many different avenues that I can go down which again I didn't realize and before I joined the brigade so I could go through the ranks and become an officer if I wanted to or there's lots of other avenues I've just trained to to be on the fire boat so I can do it be a fireboat reservist I would love to do USAR which is urban search and rescue you can take that internationally like there's just so many different pathways that you can go down in the fire service that I'll see what happens with you know life and where it leads me and I guess it sounds like also you've got a bit of a drive to keep keep the visibility about the options for other potentially women and who are also raising a family so they can see how it can be compatible yeah absolutely yeah I will endeavor to continue I mean having that social media account you know sometimes it people will message me and they'll be like Siobhan can you answer this question answer that question I'm like yeah in a minute like you know I'm juggling my kids and my family and I'm like and you know it's I want to keep that there because I feel like I started that as a bit of a diary for myself and then it became really helpful for other people wanting to join the fire service not just women I get loads of guys message me on there with questions about certain things and I'll do Q &As and it helps people but I think visibility yeah in a real world way not just the advertising you know in a real world way needs to stay there and grow yeah yeah and actually from that hopefully there will be a bit more representation and things as well because I mean I wonder what it was when you were 20 that made you start thinking about it yeah was there something that was like a trigger do you think I remember I had one of my really good friends her husband was a firefighter and he I remember asking him questions about it because you know I'm quite inquisitive like that oh tell me this tell me that what's this what's that asking all the questions that now when people ask me I'm like oh do you really want the answer to that um and he I don't know I think he just like planted the seed for me of that sounds really cool um but yeah I think it just simmered the idea just simmered in the back of my head yeah not having that visibility I think had had there been an account like mine years ago I would have joined the fire service sooner because I would have had access to what I needed to to know and see yeah because I suppose that we're sitting here now with you you know so so happy to be talking about how well it's worked out for you but yeah it's worth remembering that if we were talking four years ago you were still in the so many unknowns yeah and I guess with a young family it's a lot to ask them to bear with you while you oh yeah start a new endeavor oh absolutely like my husband's been phenomenal like he is so unbelievably encouraging and supportive you know with all of the crazy things that I'm like I'm gonna join the fire service and he's like what okay you know it's like do we still get the tickets to glass yeah he is please tell me you're keeping going with the glass debris artist liaison that's exactly it that's exactly it just say where my mind would go yeah cool but um but yeah can we keep the festival stuff that's exactly it that's it yeah um but yeah he's always just being like really supportive of you know any kind of wild and wonderful ideas um and my kids you know my little boy he's a character because when I said I was joining the fire service and becoming a firefighter he's just like what what are you doing you know whereas my daughter's like go mama he's just like yeah whatever um but yeah they've all had to adapt to this new you know this new mama um and this new way that we've had to just you know organize things after school clubs for the little one you know and knowing that sometimes I won't actually be back at 9 p.m when my shift finishes at 8 p.m because well I will be stuck on an incident and it's a it's an adaptation for us all you know but it's the the pros outweigh the cons yeah in that way I'm guessing as well within the modeling world I know you were doing that I mean was it 20 years you said you're modeling for that is an incredibly successful modeling career I mean people don't usually yeah have such long legs that's a bad choice otherwise such uh long roots and long legs obviously as part of the job but there's not usually such an extraordinary yeah time spent doing it yeah but was that something that you were already thinking the life after yeah to be honest and my husband reminds me of this now I was done with modeling way before I stopped modeling I was done with it I wanted stability I wanted something more exciting and like I said I don't want to diss the modeling career but I just did not feel fulfilled I would go oh I've got to go to work or you know yeah it was all right yeah I just didn't yeah I mean I would say and we've I've had quite a few conversations with people where that's part of their world or was part of what they've done and I think it's an it offers some amazing opportunities and is often a great way to experience the world I think it can lead to quite a lot of fast forward you quite often find yourself with independence at a very young age yeah traveling rubbing alongside you know people you'd regard at the time as proper grown-ups yeah when you're in your teens and early 20s um and obviously it can give you amazing you know you can get paid very well but quite quickly when you're young but on the flip of it I think it can be quite lonely yeah and as someone who has only got a few months of experience from when I was in my late teens doing it I found that I I lacked much agency in my fate yeah you know you would turn up and very much be for want of a better term a bit of a prop with someone else's vision yeah and I felt like it wasn't stimulating no much of no my gray match I wouldn't say yeah often I would turn up and just be like oh my gosh you know like I don't really want to be here but I'm getting paid really really really well my mom would be like because I'd say to my mom afterwards oh yeah it was all right she'd be like oh she's born like you know come on you're getting paid loads of it i know i know i know i'm grateful for it yeah i just need my brain yeah and that's not to say there's also not ways to stimulate that i think of it you know if you're you find the creative aspect of it stimulating and you've got ideas if you've got you know ideas for creative creatively ways to do it there's some people who really end up completely finding their own space within it but i think if it's not if it's not doing that for you then you do feel a bit like yeah um I really want to talk about something else or just be be involved a little bit more in what's going on here yeah and that that's the bit I found a bit yeah underwhelming I suppose lonely yeah yeah exactly yeah that's the word yeah so I think it's amazing but what other things did you have in your mind's eye or was it just that this was where you felt like you were headed I didn't feel like I was headed here at all no because like I said it was it it really was something just post-Covid where I was like right go for it um I don't I don't really know where I was headed to be honest I felt I did feel a bit lost um that sounds a bit you know like get the violins out but I did you know I just had my little boy in 2017 and then obviously you just kind of get stuck in the in a rut being a parent sometimes and I haven't got family nearby as you can tell from my accent I'm from the Midlands but I've lived in London a long time and my husband's Australian so we haven't got any family nearby like no one so I was kind of just like going through the motions day to day you know with the kids and then Covid struck and yeah it was I didn't really have like any idea of where I was going.

1:00:09Maybe in some ways that helped though because it was like I might as well just I've got to just see what happens if I do this and it sounds like when you did start the recruitment process all you found was people with like open arms going yes come here come closer yeah we really do need people like you and I imagine for for the the watch you found yourself in what you bring with your enthusiasm and your passion is for other people around you yeah engages them too yeah I think it's quite funny because sometimes like the boys on my watch can be like Shiv just calm down a little bit like because I'm like I've got this great idea let's do this let's do that and yeah I mean it's it does I hope it encourages of the people I think having my insta has done that because of the people like oh she I've seen you've done this event oh can I get involved next time or you know how did you get involved in that and I'd really like to do it and I love that like and there is there is this thing that is kind of like a saying within within that abrogate and it's like it's not not really a saying that's probably not the right thing to not the right term but anyone that works in a central London station right generally has to pass three four five fire stations on their way to that station because not not many firefighters will live in central London obviously for the obvious reasons it's too expensive and so there's got to be a reason why you choose that station in the heart of London that's going to be busiest rather than the one that's close to your home and it's because you're keen and you want to be there and so really a lot of the people that are on my watch that I work with at my station all have the same sort of mindset as me and that's lovely.

1:01:51That is and actually you mentioned before about where some of the terms come from and the historical aspect and imagine you do feel part of something that's got real history as well. Yeah I love that a lot of our I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to like buildings because my dad's an architect I think I've kind of had that instilled in me. The history in the fire service is awesome. We've got really old fire stations, really old buildings, loads of history. At the station that I work at, we've got the memorial site there, which is beautiful. And yeah, that is something I love. I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to history and especially like relating it to the fire service now.

1:02:30Well, yeah. And I was thinking about the fact, you know, and if you're at a primary school in london when you get to year two it's all about great fire london you know it's like it's part of what gets taught and it's part of the the city's history yeah it's been defining yeah so i think i think that's really powerful do you know that's probably it might be i don't know but when women did start working with them like as operational firefighters yeah i think it was 1980 so the first female firefighter was 1960 something okay that's really bad i should know that but no no that's But that wasn't in London.

1:03:04I'm pretty sure that was in Norfolk. Okay. I'm pretty sure. But the first female firefighter in London was Sue Batten, and it was 1980-something. Wow. I should know that. Well, no, that's way more information I was expecting and also really recent. Yeah, it is recent. But part of me is like, I was born in 85, so that was, what, 40 years ago. I'm kind of I kind of wish that you know there was even more women um like between now and then that have joined the brigade it's still only 10 percent I'm like how have we only got 10 percent in 40 years well I think for a lot of women I think it was 82 that suits the super okay I mean I'm trying to think what would be um what wouldn't just what might be a discard I do think for some women the idea of being part of a big group and it's all everybody else is a man is quite yeah can be quite intimidating um i do agree that kind of happened to me by default with my when i first started singing in a band i went on tour and i was yeah the only girl on the tour and at that point i'd just come out of an all-girls school i was just i it took me a while to make eye contact with people i think yeah but through that experience is how i got to spend loads of time with lots of men and then got much better at it yeah but I think if you're looking for a career path that might be something that you don't know I mean before we started recording you were saying you've just come back from a stag weekend with so we do know that there's ways to have gorgeous relationships with all the people you're your colleagues yeah but um even it does set you to butlin sometimes yeah in fancy dress but um I think um I think that might be one element and maybe the the idea of having to uh be physically as capable maybe yes I agree it can feel daunting the thought of going into a male dominated role because like you I studied music at uni I was one of two or three girls on the course and it was mainly boys um so I've not got any issues with being in male-dominated areas but with a job like this where in in my mind in my like I was you know I had the impression in my head oh there's all these like big strapping lads you know I've got to fit in with them that's just I mean they're obviously strong but that's not the case like you know there's a good mix again of people um you know especially in london like we're a diverse city aren't we and so the brigade reflects that we are diverse and i just think it is daunting to go into it but it's not what you think what you would think it is what i thought it was it's very different you know we've got everyone's everyone's somebody's son and like a lot of the lads on my watch have got children you know and they're the the you know they're sons of single parents and everyone's got their story and it makes them who they are and and that's lovely I think so too and I also think like from hearing you speak I just I could just there will be people that get really excited about the idea of of following following on from in this conversation for sure definitely yeah I was thinking to myself I would like to do some sort of fire safety course I've done a first aid thing why not a fire thing I would be as we currently stand I'd be absolutely flipping rubbish in a fire situation I'd like to be less rubbish actually yeah I'd like to know what you're supposed to do and how what's the best route and how to make sure that kids get out of the house safely as possible yeah I mean for people listening for like a family um fire safety aspect um what would be some tips you could maybe pass on for people feeling like me yeah so firstly we do things called home fire safety visits so in between all of the incidents that we go to we will people will book home fire safety visits which are free and they can do it on the website and we will attend people's home addresses and we'll go through your home and say right have you got smoke alarms um we'll have a look at perhaps the plug sockets that you use if they're overloaded with certain types of extension leads and things like that we'll have a look at um if you've got any missing fire doors we'll have a look at your escape routes so um you know if you're asleep upstairs have you got any like blocked stairwells or anything like that so we go through stuff you know to give people home fire safety advice and then we'll also talk about um you know if you if you're on any kind of medications that make you drowsy or if you've got anything in your home that could be a potential risk to us like oxygen cylinders some people are on oxygen cylinders sorry oxygen um what do you call them like the c-pap yes yeah yeah yeah sorry brain all right um and so we will go through and identify any kind of like things like that that could be a risk to us if there was a fire at your house or stuff that we need to be aware of um so it's basically like gathering knowledge and giving advice and that's why we do home fire safety visits for people that are a bit more vulnerable we can fit smoke alarms if needed as well um and yeah we'll give you advice on how to create a fire escape plan um so basic basic things that we recommend when we go into to people's homes and give them home fire safety advice is that we you don't block any kind of like fire exits so you don't block your front door with any you know kind of bits of clutter or whatever that we all end up with with a family or your back door um have have that conversation with your children how would you get out of a fire if out of the house if there's a fire at the bottom of your stairs and mommy and daddy weren't around like have that conversation with your children you know I get my kids to think about different situations not that we sit there doing this on a Friday night but you know what I mean like I've got them to think about right if you were here and there's a fire here how would you get out you'd use that window you know you would oh god you're so right I was thinking so much about the home and then I'm thinking put it anywhere any venue any anywhere you find yourself yeah that's it like have a think about what you would do in certain situations and it's not to like make you paranoid or catastrophize about things but it's just having that it's being prepared yeah yeah i think that's super smart and it's a really it's a really um yeah it's a good way to prepare yourself and to be as as engaged with the what if so that you can enjoy yeah right now as well yeah yeah absolutely i'm into that too yeah one of the things that i always say when we do home fire safety visits is get yourself a carbon monoxide alarm because that is one of the incidents that we go to that is awful because it's a it's a gas that you can't smell or see yeah and it's it's deadly so i'm always like get on amazon get yourself a the carbon dioxide alarm yeah done well thank you so much i think there's so much to take away i do want to book in for the home fire safety um you know the ability to go through it yeah the visit i'd like that I love the idea of the cadets for the kids yeah but I also think the overwhelming thing for me is how magic it is to listen to what you're being told in yourself about what you would the potential you have and about acting on it and don't let the unanswered questions be the thing that stops you but to get out there for yourself and actually get the answers because it might be something that leads you to feeling as excited and fulfilled as you do yeah which is very very catching actually it's infectious thank you oh thank you and see you at glastonbury hopefully not an emergency situation just just a glass just fun

1:11:13yay thank you so much siobhan and how cool is that about glastonbury what a funny shift that we we'd met backstage there fun though and how inspiring is it that Siobhan is so excited about being a firefighter and also wants to influence other women to potentially follow in her footsteps and I'm sure there'll be people listening who thought actually there's something in that that resonates with me in the blurb to the podcast when you look on the wherever you get your podcasts so not on the instagram post but on the sort of blur bit that attached to the podcast episode itself there's also some extra info for you there's your home fire safety checker and the website where you can find out more about that which is um simple and practical and specific advice on your family your home and how to keep safe and also uh information about their charge safe campaign because on average there's a fire from a lithium battery in an e-bike or an e-scooter every two days and that's just in London so lots of stuff you can find out about that um so you know it's an interesting story but also one that might they might learn something that's actually gonna be something you can carry forward in that way a little bit of fire safety can never be a bad thing but uh yeah it's just so brilliant that she came around and was so generous with her time so thank you very much Siobhan for absolutely painting a picture of your world and what led you to go from being a model to a firefighter and uh thank you so much to claire jones for producing the podcast thank you to richard for um well doing the sound check at the moment but also editing my podcast thanks to lma for doing the beautiful artwork and of course biggest thank you to you and your lovely ears whatever you're up to this week i hope you managed to you know if you're in the uk keep your factor 50 where you can find it you're going to need it for the next little while.

1:13:11Got another glorious guest for you next week. And actually, I need to come out of my little cocoon and go and do some of my other, my day job. It's back to the day job. But I'm actually, look, I'm really excited because I think it was last summer we ended up doing so many festivals in the rain and they are just a bit miserable. You just want to be warm and happy. So I'm on tonight at about quarter past 20 past eight. So it's going to be, you know, sundown, beautiful, gorgeous springtime, hot evening. I mean, come on, there's worse things to do with your time, aren't there? I'm looking forward to that.

1:13:44If you're coming to any of my festivals, I can't wait to see you. All right. I will be back again next week. Have a good one. Lots of love. Thank you so much.

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