THE NIGHT IT ALL WENT BLACK . . .

So let's rewind a bit and talk about the night before I went to Rhodes. Because THAT was a fun night . . .

. . .

. . .

NOT!!!

As we all know, I suck at packing.

(Completely. Utterly. Could not suck more if I tried! Anyhoo . . . )

So it got to the Friday before I went away and I still hadn't really packed. I wasn't stressing though. I went out for dinner and then headed back early-ish thinking, "it's all cool, plenty of time". Spoke to my sister for a bit on the phone (I needed a rant), cracked open a bottle of rose, looked at the clothes I'd started laying out on my sofa . . . No problem, I reckoned, it will all be done by later on tonight. I decided to watch a dvd for a bit (Anchorman - one of my faves) and then get started.

It was only eight-ish and was still fairly light. Then my lamp went out. My laptop switched itself off. And "Anchorman" was no longer playing.

We have a lot of power cuts. The last one, weirdly, was the morning of the day that the guy ended up asking me out. More often than not, they're specific to our flat and something has tripped the fuse. We always need our landlord's help though! But not this one.

Apparently the whole of G20 and G12 postcodes were out. Our neighbour (isn't it funny how you only speak to these people when these kinda things happen?) said it was going to be back on by about elevenish.

Me and my flatmate looked at one another in horror. So much to do and we were stuck in the dark, without electricity until nearly midnight??? That was so NOT good!!!

We lit as many candles as we could find and I proceeded to try and pack. That was a whole other problem entirely.

First of all, I grew up in a house which was fundamentally anti-candle (I bet you haven't heard THAT phrase before!). My parents do not light candles, think they are fire hazards. The only ones we had were the ones we had been given for our confirmation or communion or something like that. Which were used more as mementoes than functional things. I've always LIKED candles personally but only in a scented-candle-cos-i-want-things-to-smell-nice kinda way. Not to try and LIGHT my way.

Especially when (and this is point two!) you are waving items of clothing near naked flames.

Yeah, that just doesn't work. I'm wary enough that I had to stop trying to pack pretty damn quickly! (Probably a good thing given I was drunk)

On schedule, at 10.58 pm or so, the electricity flicked back on.

By which point I was pissed and couldn't face packing/shaving/fake-tanning my legs.

But that wasn't the issue here. The main problem?

That there was this random, UNBELIEVABLY LOUD, bleeping going on at intermittent intervals!

At first we thought it was just the fire alarm. It seemed to be making a noise initially. But no, we stood next to it and nothing was happening.

"It sounds like it's coming from your room or maybe the other kitchen" my flatmate said to me. They're at the other end of the flat. So we headed on the trek down there. But when we got there and waited for the bleep, it sounded like it was coming from whence we came!

This was the point where we realised how reminiscent it was of the episode of "Friends" (which I incidentally just saw tonight) where Phoebe can hear the bleeping in her apartment and is trying to switch it off but can't. But in OUR case, we couldn't even source the noise. But at least we knew it wasn't a spaceship!!! :)

FINALLY we realised it was coming from the carbon monoxide alarm in the other kitchen. (We didn't even know we HAD a CO alarm so there you go. Suppose we should be grateful for that!)

Of course, we still had a problem here. Because we have fairly high ceilings . . . and the alarm was nearly AT the ceiling. Given that neither of us are tall, what were we meant to do??? We couldn't bloody REACH the thing, let alone work out where the button to stop the bleeping was!

In the end my flatmate's boyfriend gave it a go, but we couldn't get it to stop at all. We ended up having to leave for Rhodes with the infernal thing STILL bleeping! Luckily, by the time we got back, it had been resolved!

Apparently, one of the other flatmates had returned after the weekend to hear it still bleeping and had asked the one remaining flatmate if she knew what it was. Bearing in mind this girl had been putting up with it for nearly two days. "Oh," she'd said. "I could hear it but I wasn't sure what it was." So she hadn't even THOUGHT to ring our landlord (who we'd already spoke to several times during the blackout/bleeping incidents) despite the fact that she must have been supremely disturbed by the thing.

I REALLY don't get some people at all . . .