June 09, 2004
Smoke & Neighbours
Since our daughter has been born, my wife and I have become a bit more cautious in lots of ways. The other day for example, we could hear a fire alarm going off in one of the neighbouring flats.
Now all of you who have firealarms fitted in their flats and houses might have already experienced this: you cook something in the kitchen (or at least show some good will) and the smoke coming from the hob sets off the fire alarm.
The same seemed to happen to our neigbours downstairs and at first we didn't think any of it. But when the alarm was still going strong after about 5 minutes, I decided to go and check on the elderly couple downstairs.
I banged their door quite loudly and could clearly hear the firealarm when I was standing in front of the door. After some time - which seemed like an eternity to me - one of the two of them opened and gave me a startled and suprised look.
"Oh hello, it's you !" - she said.
"Hi - is everything alright?", I replied.
Unisono, both of them then said the golden words - as if this fact would have slipped my mind:
"yeah, it's just the fire alarm".
"I was worried", I said, "I almost called the fire brigade."
"Oh no! Thanks !".
Best thing was - fumes were still coming from the kitchen but the kitchen door stood wide open - making it impossible for the fire alarm to stop its noisy work.
All I can hope for is that our neighbours would so the same for us should they hear our alarm going off...