I Am An EP Refugee
UNKNOWN FAULT
Having just returned home exhausted from another time zone and totally oblivious to my problems, my Lord and Master was in bed, churning out zeds for all he was worth, smack dab in the middle of the day. Meanwhile my sonovabitch computer was playing up again. It seemed to boot up all right, but then when I started using it, everything was going wrong... anyway it had developed a glitch, and I get upset with anything to do with technology.
Luckily, Nature has blessed me with enough self control to always hand over matters of this type to others. On this occasion, I also exercised the wisdom and self restraint to not wake him out of his deep and well earned sleep. I wanted to wake him. I was itching to wake him. But I did not. I also resisted chucking my computer out of the window, although with hindsight that was possibly a mistake!
Long story short though. Eager to distance myself from the source of my irritation, I stood up, dusted the crumbs off my lap and aimed myself at another room. That’s when I noticed a flickering blue light bouncing off my hall wall. So I peered out of the bay window and saw that our gates were wide open. Worrying! Outside the houses of our neighbours on each side, but not our own house, were police cars. Not just two, but more. Intrigued, I thought I’d go out the front door to see what was going on, and out of the corner of my eye fancied I saw a dark shape quickly flit past the kitchen window.
Just as I was about to open the front door there came a thunderous pounding which startled me so much that I had a minor accidental leakage. Retrospectively I suppose it was stupid of me to just answer the door because it might have been that some desperado was on the loose. However, it was the police. It was clear that they intended to come in whether I answered the door or not. The one in the middle - and all three crowding in were large men - had a battering ram, and asked me if I was all right. I assured him that I was. Then they wanted to know if there was anyone else in the house, and could they come in and check. My instinct of course was to say no, but they weren’t having that.
It emerged that our unnecessarily sophisticated security alarm had gone off (although there was no sound in the house to indicate anything of the kind) and it had flashed up as an “under duress” emergency.
The hullaballoo had not the least impact on my husband’s sleep, which is strange because ordinarily he does nothing more than cat nap. (Having used that figure of speech to indicate a light sleeper, I must point out that every cat I’ve known has been able to remain comatose through a full scale Guy Fawkes night with all the windows open, and a plate of raw liver two inches away from its nose.)
My husband did wake up when the police entered the bedroom to reassure themselves that nobody was being held hostage by an intruder. He was a bit groggy, sitting up in bed. The police were hugely apologetic once they’d established for sure that it was a genuine false alarm. It was an an unknown fault in the system, according to the security company a few minutes after the police left; nothing at all to do with the problems I was having with my computer.
As soon as the cops had gone, our neighbours from each side hurried in to find out what it was all about. We don’t often get dramas like this in the leafy suburbs.
My husband came shuffling into the conservatory while I was handing out cups of tea to our visitors, so I very nicely asked him, since he was up, if he’d mind sorting out my computer. Not to put too fine a point on it, he did mind. And I was really shocked by his level of profanity.
Having just returned home exhausted from another time zone and totally oblivious to my problems, my Lord and Master was in bed, churning out zeds for all he was worth, smack dab in the middle of the day. Meanwhile my sonovabitch computer was playing up again. It seemed to boot up all right, but then when I started using it, everything was going wrong... anyway it had developed a glitch, and I get upset with anything to do with technology.
Luckily, Nature has blessed me with enough self control to always hand over matters of this type to others. On this occasion, I also exercised the wisdom and self restraint to not wake him out of his deep and well earned sleep. I wanted to wake him. I was itching to wake him. But I did not. I also resisted chucking my computer out of the window, although with hindsight that was possibly a mistake!
Long story short though. Eager to distance myself from the source of my irritation, I stood up, dusted the crumbs off my lap and aimed myself at another room. That’s when I noticed a flickering blue light bouncing off my hall wall. So I peered out of the bay window and saw that our gates were wide open. Worrying! Outside the houses of our neighbours on each side, but not our own house, were police cars. Not just two, but more. Intrigued, I thought I’d go out the front door to see what was going on, and out of the corner of my eye fancied I saw a dark shape quickly flit past the kitchen window.
Just as I was about to open the front door there came a thunderous pounding which startled me so much that I had a minor accidental leakage. Retrospectively I suppose it was stupid of me to just answer the door because it might have been that some desperado was on the loose. However, it was the police. It was clear that they intended to come in whether I answered the door or not. The one in the middle - and all three crowding in were large men - had a battering ram, and asked me if I was all right. I assured him that I was. Then they wanted to know if there was anyone else in the house, and could they come in and check. My instinct of course was to say no, but they weren’t having that.
It emerged that our unnecessarily sophisticated security alarm had gone off (although there was no sound in the house to indicate anything of the kind) and it had flashed up as an “under duress” emergency.
The hullaballoo had not the least impact on my husband’s sleep, which is strange because ordinarily he does nothing more than cat nap. (Having used that figure of speech to indicate a light sleeper, I must point out that every cat I’ve known has been able to remain comatose through a full scale Guy Fawkes night with all the windows open, and a plate of raw liver two inches away from its nose.)
My husband did wake up when the police entered the bedroom to reassure themselves that nobody was being held hostage by an intruder. He was a bit groggy, sitting up in bed. The police were hugely apologetic once they’d established for sure that it was a genuine false alarm. It was an an unknown fault in the system, according to the security company a few minutes after the police left; nothing at all to do with the problems I was having with my computer.
As soon as the cops had gone, our neighbours from each side hurried in to find out what it was all about. We don’t often get dramas like this in the leafy suburbs.
My husband came shuffling into the conservatory while I was handing out cups of tea to our visitors, so I very nicely asked him, since he was up, if he’d mind sorting out my computer. Not to put too fine a point on it, he did mind. And I was really shocked by his level of profanity.
