I’m pleased to say that we’ve got a brand new burglar alarm at our house. Not that I believe any of you reading this are committed thieves (well, there’s one or two of you I’m suspicious of) but it’s more just a sense of relief at getting the darned thing in place. Reason being, I’ve not had a great relationship with alarms and house security in the past.
When I rented a room in Wolverhampton many years ago I wasn’t given the code to the alarm, so when I returned from a long weekend and my landlady was out, I couldn’t shut the stupid thing off. Add to that a large hold-all over my shoulder and my generally shabby demeanour (it had been a long weekend of drinking, eating and 8 hours travel) and I couldn’t have looked more suspicious unless I had a small mask on, a stripy jumper and the word ‘swag’ emblazoned on a sack. Brilliantly I just stood on the doorstep telling passers-by “I do live here you know” which worked. But then that’s the reaction people get when they hear an alarm these days, not ‘my word, someone is being robbed’ more ‘there’s a bloody alarm going off, that’s so annoying.’
Another house I lived at had no alarm and I came home one day to find that my housemate had not only left the back door unlocked, but the door was wide open all day. I had no key to lock it, and he was away for the night, so I spent 40 minutes shuffling the fridge-freezer across the kitchen to block the door and slept with a kitchen knife under my bed. Me? Paranoid? Not at all, although I know you all think I am...
Then there was the alarm at our last house where the code to activate the thing worked a treat, no complaints there, but upon entering the code for a second time the unit had clearly decided I was now a murdering thief and went off with gay abandon. Still, I managed to shut the thing off by ringing the man who had installed it 4 years previous and saying “Can you tell me how to turn the alarm off, I’m not a burglar by the way.” His brilliant solution was simply “See those wires? Pull them all out.” Comforting to know that hi-tech security could be defeated by random violence.
So when we got to our new home I was delighted to find a brand new system with a state of the art control panel the size of Barnsley on the wall of the hall and sensors in every room. What could be simpler. Then it transpired it had been installed by the previous home owner who had the technical skills of a radish. The genius had managed to set it up so that you activated the box in the hall and then had a grand total of ‘no seconds’ to get out, so you immediately triggered it by moving towards the door. Perhaps he was made of gas or had the ability to teleport, like a member of the x-men, and was able to use it. Oh, and he’d left the master code as 1111, try working that one out eh? To be honest, we’d have been more protected just putting up an a4 sign on the door saying ‘please don’t burgle us’.
So now we have an uber-safe system that is pet-friendly too. By that I mean the sensors are tolerant to the cats, not that the burglar alarm chats to them while we are out.
Although, that would be ace.
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