Strange Tings

At 07.30 yesterday morning I texted Will Fixit

“HELP the smoke alarm in the loft keeps peeping and it’s keeping us awake.”

An hour later I emailed

“Hi Will

Sorry for the early text but it's been going on all night and is driving us demented.

The night before last, 05.00am, the smoke alarm on the loft landing started peeping every 7 seconds.

As you can imagine this led to some shouting and screaming.

Thunderthighs, being tall enough, got it out and we blew and shook a feather duster at it, and it eventually stopped.

Until 1am this morning when it started again.

Getting the dust away didn't seem to help and it's been at it ever since - like Chinese water torture.

If I knew which fuse it was on I'd pull it out.

HELP

or if you can't please let me know who could.

Desperately

Ben”

Will arrived at lunchtime and confirmed that it was the backup battery in the alarm that was letting us know it needed to be replaced.  The backup is there in case you have the misfortune to have a simultaneous power cut and conflagration. He will be coming back soon to put new batteries in all three alarms: hall, landing and loft landing.  The same ones have been there since we had the loft extension in 2012.  Considering they have a life of five years they have done very well and owe us nothing.

He'd brought a suitable battery with him.  After he fitted it we came downstairs and stood in the hall for some minutes just to check that there was no more peeping. 

Suddenly we heard a ‘ting’.

“Is that your phone?” I asked.

“No” replied Will as puzzled as I.

“It wasn’t a peep though.  It was definitely a ting.”

There was another ‘ting ’at a slightly different pitch.

“And it’s not coming from up there, it’s coming from in there” Will indicated to the living room.

Amongst the brass Welsh ladies and other ornaments on the mantelpiece I have a musical ceramic-lady-knitting-with-cat which, when wound up, plays Lara’s Theme from Dr Zhivago.  She was an 18^th birthday present and hasn’t been wound up for years, but there she was giving out a ‘ting’ every now and again.

A rational explanation might be that the heat of the sun through the bay window had caused something to expand and the mechanism to move and play a note or three.

However, as I said to Will Fixit, if the Edelweiss playing Swiss chalet music box, which I bought for Mum on a school trip to Interlaken, starts chiming in I’m fetching a priest.