Merrilyn and David were finally able to take off for their beach house, leaving us in charge of the inn. They hadn’t been gone more than 10 minutes before Deborah booked her first room. She was born for this, frankly – adeptly dealing with customers, handling the reservation books, taking payments and exercising her considerable domestic skills in tidying the rooms, taking care of laundry, watering plants, etc. She actually enjoys it so I don’t feel too guilty letting her run the show while I park myself in front of my portable easel, lending only minimal help when she needs me to.
Of course, our first night on our own we were awakened (along with the guests) at midnight by the fire alarm. We had to scramble for our clothes, race downstairs to the alarm control box, unlock it, and test our memory of Merrilyn’s briefing on what buttons to press and how to diagnose the problem. We were able to silence the alarm but were unable to find any infernos on the top floor where the control box said to look for the problem. We also knocked on the doors of the guests to make sure they were not engulfed in flames. They ensured us they were not. Satisfied that it was a false alarm, we went back to bed but, with our hearts still pounding, found it hard to get back to sleep. We just managed to do so about an hour later when suddenly the alarm sounded again. So it was back on with the clothes, back downstairs, push more buttons, search fruitlessly for flames, return to our flat to lie wide-eyed in bed.
Eventually we did finally fall asleep until about 2:00am when, you guessed it, the alarm went off a third time. Aaaaaarrrrgh! We silenced it once more and called Merrilyn to ask for advice. The alarm actually went off a fourth time while we were on the phone. We had to wake the top floor guests again to check for evidence of combustion (thankfully everyone was understanding, and not ablaze). Under Merrilyn’s direction we turned the whole system off and left it to the next day to sort out. Deborah and I nevertheless stayed up until 3:00 drinking tea and trying to calm down, only half believing the alarm would not go off again. Needless to say, it was a restless night.
Today the alarm technicians stopped by to check out the system, finding no obvious problems. Later they stopped by again to inform us ours was not an isolated incident. Other establishments (including Merrilyn’s sister’s inn, as it turns out) had their alarms go off in the wee hours also. They suspect some sort of power surge, probably related to the thunderstorms that raged in the night. We are really hoping for a less exciting evening tonight.
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