If it weren’t for the insurance company, I wouldn’t have an alarm system at all, because I have nothing worth stealing. Even the television is 16 years old. But when an insurance company tells you that, absent an alarm, you’re on your own in the risk department, you get an alarm. In my case, the alarm is a bells-and-whistles job.
If a hedgehog as much as farts in the garden, spotlights come on from high up on my Martello tower, and if, embarrassed, the hedgehog tries to get out of the bright light, just as he (or she) hits the dark space, another spotlight comes on. It’s like a film premiere, out there at night. When the two cats go out of doors and find themselves spotlit, they are totally unsurprised and behave as if it’s the least they deserve.
Inside the house, invisible beams cross from one wall to another, ready to spot any intruder and set the alarm off. So far, no intruders.
That, however, does not mean the alarm hasn’t gone off. It has and does, quite frequently. It doesn’t like it when we have a power cut, and that’s a problem, because where I live specialises in reasonably short power cuts which screw with the clocks on cookers and other electrical equipment and drive the alarm nuts.
About a week ago, we apparently had a power cut in the small hours, about which I would never have known if, when the power came back on, the alarm hadn’t started to scream.
I groped for the unit beside the bed, identified the red button and, at that crucial half-second when I pressed it, realised that the red button was for major panics and that in pressing it, I had alerted everybody in the world, including probably the Pope, Helen McEntee, and Drew Harris.
I put down the unit and went to clean my teeth. In any problematic situation, I brush my teeth, believing that it improves things in some non-specific way.
In the panic-button situation, I then engaged with the alarm company, who asked me the usual identification questions. Name of pet? Maiden name? Favourite Taylor Swift track? Birthday? Current president of Uruguay? Telephone number of next of kin?
That last one threw me, because who remembers phone numbers? That’s what each of us has a mobile for. Except that I have no idea how to access such a number on my phone while talking on said phone.
Nonetheless, even without that detail, the guy accepted me as the owner and listened while I begged him to tell the Garda Síochána that I was fine and not to bother coming around.
It took a while for him to get this, because me and the screaming alarm were competing with each other, and it was winning, because it didn’t need to breathe in between screams.
After a while, he got it about the guards and shouted regretfully at me that calling them off would not be possible.
The forces of the law duly turned up at the gate, one male, one female, having made remarkable speed from Swords Garda Station and I told them through the speaker that I was grand. Good, they said, but maybe let them in anyway. It was clear they half assumed I might be pretending to be OK because of some intruder holding a gun to my left ear.
When they arrived in the kitchen, they seemed delighted by the whole saga and happy for me being just an eejit. I suppose someone grateful, apologetic, and with clean teeth is about the best you can hope for when you’re a guard on the night shift, the times we’re in.
Just a week later, I rose as always at four in the morning, took a beaker of cold-brewed coffee and shoved it into the microwave in the bedroom. Don’t ask why I have a microwave in the bedroom, because I can’t remember. This particular microwave is so retro, it makes retro look new. Normally, when I pull the heated-up coffee out after three minutes, I dose it with single sweetener pellets, which rise to the surface in pleasing little individual fizzes.
This particular morning, without any particular reason, I decanted the pellets into my hand and dropped them in all together. The coffee fizzed up like an active volcano.
Having made fresh coffee, I sat down and began to work.
One hour later, the house came apart with howling alarms. The two cats looked at me reproachfully and went out to play in the spotlight while I talked to the 24-7 alarm guy, who promised an engineer would ring me.
The engineer, when he rang, suggested a couple of actions and then said he’d be with me in 40 minutes. During those 40 minutes, I developed the distinctive headache caused by being continuously screamed at. I went out to meet the engineer — Norbert — and consulted with him in the external spotlight.
The smoke alarm has a distinctive sound.
He opined that it was the smoke alarm, rather than the burglar alarm, that was the catalyst. He had noticed the distinctive sound when we were on the phone.
This might explain an earlier event, which was drops of liquid falling on me from the smoke alarm in the hall, which would be directly beneath the hurled coffee in the bedroom.
Norbert nodded solemnly, as if he was used to people throwing coffee on their smoke alarms, reached overhead, disconnected it, and the silence was the most pleasurable ever given to a human.
The final act in the drama was the arrival, the next day, of Ben, who shares an office with Norbert.
He came with a new lid for the smoke alarm and a fob so I could turn off the alarm without hitting the panic button.
I now have that many fobs, I could probably get into Bank of Ireland’s vaults on Trinity College, no bother.
I also have half a dozen of those things Mafia dons attach to the underside of your car so they can track you to the best assassination place. I’ve forgotten what my versions are supposed to track but am afraid to throw them out in case they’re crucial in a way I have yet to discover. I put the new fob beside the bed and went to shower the coffee out of my hair.
A guest, later that day, wondered aloud if living alone, as I do, wasn’t a bit quiet and dull.
It didn’t seem appropriate to tell her about my fascinating and floodlit nocturnal visitors.
