I thought there was very little kindness left in the world today, but I found some in a heating engineer/plumber.

We heard strange noises coming from our chimney, we thought some soot had fallen down, but as we have a gas fire fitted we couldn't see.

The noises got louder and we realised a bird was trapped.

We phoned around various companies only to get answerphones, then finally we got hold of Ross Sutherland.

I told him the story and he immediately turned his car round and headed back to Portland.

He said he could not bear the thought of leaving a living creature stuck up a chimney and within ten minutes he was taking out our fire.

Once the fire was out we thought the bird would just fly out but nothing happened, Ross then put something up the chimney to get the bird moving and, hey presto, the bird came out and then straight out the window. We watched it fly away, it didn't seem any the worst for its ordeal. Ross then put the fire back and tested it. He charged us a very minimal charge, which was not what we had expected.

The moral of the story is we found our angel in the form of a heating engineer. A very big thank you to Ross Sutherland.

Linda Jones, Westcliff Road, Portland.