Alarming

During what should be sleeping hours, there is occasionally the very disturbing sensation of the real world impinging on your deepest dreams. This is doubly upsetting if the dream in question involves certain images and actions which “ if biologically possible “ you’d really rather not interrupt.

The doubling of anxiety is ratcheted up to a spine chilling treble once your aural nerves transmit the alarming audio stream to a REM concussed brainstem. It takes but a second for a sleepy brain to instigate a full body audit followed by a manikin like jerk out of bed. Because that noise is not just a noise, it’s the frantic bleating of the alarm system, which represents the final barrier to a scrotal removal of your property.

And it’s worse that that, it’s not the house alarm, it’s all gone off in the barn where the bikes hang unlocked at the mercy of anyone with a crowbar and a careless attitude to other peoples’ property.

My headlong charge through the house and up the garden was arrested by a bleary Carol suggesting that, any challenge to my property authority would carry significantly more gravitas if I was wearing any clothes. I’ve always found trousers a bit of a challenge and a body stressed with extreme anxiety helped not at all as we desperately played the right leg, wrong hole game. During this hour or so, the claxon call of the alarm proceeded to wake about half of the village.

Finally appropriately trooned and with no concern for personal safety, I mounted a one man pincer attack on the barn, ready to scream challenges and lay about this crack crime syndicate with nothing more than a righteous expression and a battle cat*

My plan was cruelly thwarted by a locked door which I fully expected to be broken open and filled with the silhouette of rapidly shifting bikes. I released the cat “ whereupon it furiously maimed an innocent badger “ and scrambled with a logistically tricky two keys for a while before the door gave way.

I checked every nook and cranny using an approach first honed at the age of eight when being convinced there was a bogeyman hiding in the cupboard. Run to door, pause and whimper a bit, grab handle and wrench open while offering up a don’t mess with me” granite gaze but taking four rapid steps backwards just in case a hundred overlapping teeth were slavering away.

No bogeymen, no obvious reason for the sensors to have kicked into life. Obviously I checked every window and door at least three times and equally obviously I barely got any sleep for the remainder of the night. Or the next night come to that.

So I’m giving up on technology. Instead my plan is to install a very large dog and not feed it very often. Either than or I’m googling for some ninja voles.

* to create a battle cat“, take one semi domesticated and wide asleep feline, grab by the tail and begin to swing around your head in an every increasing arc. Once your foes are in sight, release wailing, pissing cat at face height just as it reaches terminal velocity. Then hide behind a bush until the screaming stops. At this point, your opponent is probably dead and if not, almost certainly mentally and physically incapacitated.

6 thoughts on “Alarming

  1. Grahame

    ‘Tis now.
    OED said:

    Trooned – (1) True-ned (v) Genuine scottish chav. (2) Troon’d (adv) wearing of clothing confusing to IT professionals. (3) Troon-ed (v) to suffer a near terminal attack of small cornish town.

  2. Alex

    Genius! Grahame, when the post of OED editor becomes available, put your name down. You clearly have a gift 🙂

  3. Pingback: I want my life back » Blog Archive » Is nothing sacred?

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