Smoke alarm

I couldn't get the smoke alarm apart last night.  And of course it was the one directly outside our bedroom that was beeping.  Despite this, W was asleep, and stayed asleep through my attempts, and for the rest of the night - I think he is getting quite deaf!

So I retired, defeated, shut the bedroom door which made a slight difference to the intensity of the sound, and slept in a fragmentory fashion until 7am.

W had a go at sorting it this morning, but he has a problem called BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo) which means that he cannot look upwards for very long without getting dizzy, and that might have resulted in a tumble downstairs.  And his height aversion would have made it impossible for him to stand like I am doing!  Even watching me made him feel ill.  The alarm has been put up in such a way that in order to take it apart you need to insert a screwdriver with some determination into the side of it which is directly above the stairs - how stupid is that.

Anyway, after some frustration, and trying 3 different widths of screwdriver, I finally managed to get it apart.  The beeping has stopped.  And W says he will try to turn the whole alarm round by 180˚ before putting it back together, so that the next time it needs a new battery, it can be attacked from on the landing.  It's a mains one with battery backup, so turning it might be complicated - depends how much leeway there is in the wires.