FIRE!

Or not, as the case may be.
The damn fire alarm in our building is faulty and keeps going off for no reason. Maybe it’s lonely, who knows? Regardless, I took the afternoon off today and was just settling down to do some Blogging in peace when…
RRRRRRRRRRRRRIIINNNGGGGGGGG!!!

I finished posting my comment and then moseyed on outside just in case this one wasn’t a false alarm, to find the geriatric couple from across the hall pressing all the buttons they could find on the panel in an attempt to silence the beast. A few minutes later a plumber appeared, grease on his hands, apologising profusely because apparently he was fixing a boiler on the 5th floor and some smoke appeared… and the rest is history.
Actually he didn’t really apologise, come to think of it.
It was more a statement of fact.
Thanks, Buster… shall I beat you about the head now or later?

Anyway, that was maybe 20 minutes ago and the thing is still ringing it’s head off at full volume.
Do they have to make them so freakin’ loud???

It went off in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago. We had houseguests at the time. It was somewhere around 2am and we were all well away in dreamland by then. And then the fire alarm went off.
Now normally, I sleep through just about anything.
However, as some of you may be aware, I have a mortal fear of fire.

So that night – or rather, morning – I was up out of bed almost before it started ringing. A quick lap around the apartment reassured me that it wasn’t our place that had set it off, so the next step would be to evacuate in a nice orderly fashion.
Only… speaking of fashion, I was, at the time, clothed in my purple dressing gown and matching fluffy slippers. Yeah, right, I’m going to be seen in public in that outfit and with no makeup on, hehe!
So I stood for a few seconds in the darkness of our bedroom until Hubby gave in, admitted he was awake, and very kindly (if somewhat grumpily) offered to go outside and check it out. Which he did – wearing his more masculine navy-blue bathrobe, but he’s a man. They don’t care. Do they? Never mind.
It turned out to be a false alarm anyway and half an hour later they finally figured out how to switch it off…

… Yay, it’s stopped!
Oh wait, it’s started again.
No, it’s stopped again! Yay!…

… Anyway, to get back to my story:
Oh, wait that was it. Yep, they switched it off and we all went back to bed. Our houseguests slept through the whole thing.
I was just amazed at how I will sleep through all manner of nighttime noises but as soon as the fire alarm goes off I’m up and awake. I mean really awake – and without coffee, to boot!

Phew, what a relief that the shrill ringing has stopped. Now if I could just switch off the noise in my head…