Bugbear number 1

It was a long day. It started just after midnight with a quick email if I recall correctly and I slipped into sleep as I always do, very quickly and in a certain 'sleep position'. So I was enjoying some sort of dream, probably another exciting action packed 'milk buying' dream or perhaps asomething similar when all of a sudden I am awoken by one of my major bugbears, the house alarm, not ours I hasten to add. Obviously a bit of confusion trying to work out the time, oh Lordy, only 3:11am. Fantastic! Somehow, my hearing must be pretty damn good actually considering, I hear people careering down the stairs the door after next, presumably to turn it off.


So I try to make no noise, so as not to disturb my wife, with luck she will sleep through this. Sadly however this doesn't last long and soon we are enquiring which of the alarms in our neighbourhood has gone off this time. This rarely used to be a problem, in fact rarely enough to be semi-exciting, however it is getting to the point of being elevated to official bugbear status.

Anyway, the wife courageously went out to see if it was not an alarm which we have the powers to switch off. Sadly it wasn't otherwise we could have done the neighbourhood a major favour. Unfortunately it went on and on, for 25 minutes and when it stopped I could still hea rthe ringing in my head, in fact I actually asked myself if this is what a heart attack would be like such was the majorly unpleasant feel.

Imagine my delight when 5 minutes into the new found silence, it goes off again. This time it only lasted 15 seconds. Bizarrely I actually dreamt that I was taking photos of local alarms to celebrate the moment.

This might explain the relative half shut knife feel I had all day long, in spite of some excellent badminton at work. This will be repeated next week.

So to all the alarms in our neck of the woods, we salute you, but probably with two fingers.

And my question is, when you hear an alarm, do you a) run to check if a house is being ransacked by evil criminals b) get on with life or c) think not again?

17°