The block of flats (it's a terraced house converted into three flats) has a fire alarm system with a fault. For no tangible explained reason it occasionally makes an incessant never ending beep. Or the alarm itself sounding, just a loud beep indicating some mysterious fault. To make it stop you have to input the code and then press the silence button. This doesn't stop the beeping fault, it just shuts it up for a bit. The length of time it shuts up seems to bare no relationship to anything in this universe. Just now the beeping stopped for enough time to allow me to sit down; then it started again. Other times the beeping might stop for hours or days before starting up again.
When the beeping starts it starts at a level just quiet enough to not be heard, but then one moment you notice it's there and you can never unnotice it. Beep beep beep just below the level of conscious hearing; but there it is there it is there it is. Today the beeping shuts off for only seconds at a time. I've just returned from a pointless tussle with that fucking box. I pressed in the code and hit silence. There was silence for a couple of beats and it came right back with the beeping. I repeated this a thousand times and eventually gave up. On my way back up the stairs the hall light, which is on a timer, switched itself off automatically leaving my tumbling and stumbling about in the dark. This house hates me.
Even if the beeping was to stop, it has already burned itself into my brain, meaning that I will hear it forever regardless of whether it sounds or not. I think it's off now, but can't be sure. It's not important, I just had to share.
In other news: I'm reading The Horror in the Museum by H.P. Lovecraft, a book full of 'collaborative' stories by the dark prince of 20th century horror writing. 'Collaborative' meaning ghost-written by Lovecraft, or originally written by someone else, then rewritten by the master of the weird tale. Like any anthology of Lovecraft their are bizarre flights of fancy lasting a page or three, interspersed with longer stories often taking place within the Cthulhu Mythos. Seems good so far.
Tomorrow is Monday. Night night.
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