Four Firemen

Four firemen came out to fix my beeping smoke detector. It had beeped all through the night - I put in earplugs and struggled to sleep, telling myself to think of the piercing beeps as mere bird tweeps.

Today, in attempts to fix it, Nice Man had gone up ladders in a valiant, Nice-Manly way. To no avail.

I was about to phone an electrician and then my mum phoned the local fire station for advice. Out they came, in their fire truck! They didn't wear fire uniform, but their black trousers and tight, black t-shirts weren't too hard on the eye (sorry, Nice Man).

The firemen diagnosed the beeping as emanating from the carbon monoxide detector linked to the central heating and not, in fact, the nearby smoke detector. Anyway, they took it away to smash it and recommended I buy a new one. I was embarrassed not to have figured this out myself but they couldn't have been nicer. All praise be to firemen everywhere.

They'll need all the firemen they can get for the floods in England (global warming surely?). I feel so sorry for the people in flooded homes. Newsreader, Peter Sissons, was interviewing a woman over the phone as the flood waters rose in her street. He was running out of questions, and asked if any livestock in the area were affected. Well, my cat's sleeping on the bed upstairs, she said.

-C