Friday 24 November 2006

drama in 3 parts - part 2

James located buckets and receptacles to contain the water coming through the ceiling.

‘Oh, no, you can’t switch the alarms OFF’ said my landlord at the end of the phone ‘You’ll just have to wait until they stop on their own.’

The ringing in my ears had subsided to a dull yet debilitating wah, wah, wah, wah. It was as if I could hear the blood pumping through my ears.

‘What should I do? What should I do?’ I asked in my headless chicken like state. Someone instructed me to find some ladders so we could unscrew the alarms. The neighbours, possibly suspicious of a late night disturbance and alarms blaring down the street, did not come to the door when I knocked in an attempt to borrow theirs.

However, all was not lost. James located two chairs, created a makeshift ladder out of them (with me clinging on, anchoring one to the other, fearing for his safety) and managed to unscrew 4 of the 5 offending alarms.

The remaining alarm, the one which was stemming some of the flow of the neglected bath, continued to screech, water pouring out through the vents designed to sense heat and smoke.

‘I’m not touching that one’ said James ‘not with the water coming through’.

He made his way back upstairs. I followed him, not wanting to be alone in the vicinity of my now very angry downstairs neighbour.

As we sat in the kitchen, assessing where we would spend the night (the remaining alarm annihilated any chance of sleep) and trying to locate more buckets to appease the situation we heard a BANG then another BANG along with the vibration of a load hitting the floor followed by an ARGH.

‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooooooooo’

Our downstairs neighbour had attempted the two chair ladder trick and tried to detach the wet alarm.

Now he was lying on the floor, electrocuted and it was all my fault.

7 comments:

dormerportal said...

You should have gone to the string emporium (all your string needs under one roof) instead of running a bath, you will never encounter misfortune as long as you have the right string in your possession. This is the true meaning of "string theory", which the physicist keep getting all wrong. Just ask Ariadne.

dormerportal said...

I meant to say physicists in the plural - I think there's probably more than one of them

Joanne Hartley said...

my local emporium of string 'strings 'r' us' is not open 24 hours unfortunately. So, unable to buy string, I resorted to bathing with disastrous consequences.

dormerportal said...

Bathing with disastrous consequences, is that like swimming with dolphins? In future I'd try bathing on your own in the nude - call me pedantic, but it seems to work for me.

Annie said...

I was given your blog address by my friend who works with your brother (I think) in England, and thought I should say hello. So, hello!

Anonymous said...

I'm the missing connection between Annie and your brother so I thought I'd say Hi. I don't work with Paul, we went to university together, he's one of my favouite people.

Annie - you were going to include him in that coffee table book you never made!

I enjoy your blog

Joanne Hartley said...

awww...thanks.

What's this about a coffee table book? What has my sibling done to be worthy of this?