Take That You Evil, Little, Beeping, Circular Thing!

Well I am tired! We got woken up at 4am by an insistent beeping which we eventually decided was outside. So with my wife and youngest child standing inquisitively in the front porch I went outside and up and down the street in the pouring rain trying to work out which house the noise was coming from. I suppose having eliminated any of the immediate neighbours I should have given up but any beeping now matter how quiet keeps me awake so I trudged on through the not-really-that-bad floods until the weird sideways head movement that passes for range-finding, pin-pointed the noise to a pile of debris outside a house that is currently being renovated. There, stuck to a discarded piece of internal wall was a still-functioning smoke alarm which must have been confused by the trauma of being made homeless because it was beeping away under a deluge of rain. I wrenched it off the wall and started to walk home with the intention of disarming it, or at least nicking the battery but despite pulling it apart the thing kept beeping. When I got back to the house, I read “Battery cannot be removed” and so had to ask for a pair of scissors to give it the coup de grace. Of course there was no point going back to sleep though the youngest toddled back upstairs as soon as he knew what was going on and went straight off again. So you can see I managed to avoid resembling Basil Fawlty attacking his car with a tree branch but I am glad I didn’t meet any boys (and I use that word in its truest sense) in blue while I was muttering at the wet indignity of being dragged from my bed and dreams of fame and fortune by a snivelling little piece of technology. The momentary worry that there actually was a fire and I had let the place burn down came to me but vanished after a few days – er… minutes.

I have just discovered that the final ‘c’ of coup de grace should be pronounced, because coup de gras means “blow of fat” rather than “blow of mercy”. That is a hyperforeignism if you wanted to know.