‘I think we might need a lesson in how it works,’ my wife says

Tim Dowling: the burglar alarm’s turned me into a pliant zombie

I thought our faulty burglar alarm – which sets itself off for no reason at random intervals – would break me, and it did: I now rise wordlessly from bed to turn it off, as pliant as a zombie. Some nights the youngest one gets there first. In the silence that follows the sharp chirp of deactivation, I can hear him trudging back up the stairs, while I’m still trying to find my glasses in the dark.

“4.30am,” I say, looking at my phone.

“I called them again,” my wife says. “They haven’t got back to me.”

Meanwhile, the burglar alarm has become just another noise to adapt to, like the smoke alarm that lets the whole house know someone is making toast. The possibility of fire no longer occurs to me.

On Friday afternoon, my wife pulls open the door of my office shed.

“They’re coming on Tuesday,” she says. “Are you in, in case I’m out?”

“The alarm people?” I say.

“No, the oven people,” she says. “I haven’t heard from the alarm people.”

“Oven people?”

“I’ve ordered a new oven,” she says.

I blame myself. During a recent conversation with an oven repairman, I asked about ovens that didn’t break all the time or require the constant replacement of expensive spare parts. He recommended a model of catering oven, and I became taken with the idea of owning something utilitarian and sturdy, an appliance that would lend my kitchen the businesslike air of commercial premises. Then I found out catering ovens cost £3,000.

That put an end to the matter as far as I was concerned, but my wife quietly opened a separate line of inquiry into reliable domestic ovens.

“Tuesday,” she says.

On Saturday, my wife stops me on my way up the stairs.

“Are you here on Thursday for the alarm man?” she says.

“I’m here on any day for the alarm man,” I say.

“I just think we might need a lesson in how it works,” she says.

“He can come at four in the morning, if he wants,” I say. “I’m up anyway.”

On Tuesday afternoon my wife asks me to step into the kitchen. There are two men standing there, hands in pockets, with the old oven halfway out of its slot.

“They’re saying they won’t install it,” my wife says. “Because the worktop is wood.”

“It’s not the worktop, it’s the splashback,” says one of the men, referring to what I believe is more accurately known as the upstand: a three-inch wooden skirt running where the worktop meets the wall.

“It’s regulations,” the other man says. “For fire.”

“What do you want me to do?” I say.

“Fix it,” my wife says.

“What, in front of everyone?” I say.

“Yes!” she says. “Before they take the oven away!”

The upstand behind the oven is glued to the wall, and comes away with a crack after I attack it with a hammer and chisel. But the adjacent sections are screwed to the worktop, and cannot be worked loose.

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“How much of it has to go?” I say.

“70 mil, either side,” says the man.

“Can’t you just saw off two chunks?” my wife says.

“Won’t that look weird?” I say.

“I don’t care,” she says.

“You will care,” I say. “Anyway, I don’t have the right saw.”

Only after the men leave do I have a bright idea: removing the worktop altogether by unscrewing it from beneath. It takes five minutes.

“Too bad I didn’t think of this sooner,” I say.

“They can’t redeliver until Saturday,” my wife says. The smoke alarm goes off.

“Who’s having toast?” I say.

“I am,” says the youngest one, appearing.

“Why are you having toast now?” I say.

“Because I’m hungry,” he says. “Why are you taking the kitchen apart?”

On Thursday, the alarm man arrives and replaces a spent battery, solving the problem. Then he demonstrates how to engage the alarm in a way that stops the cat setting it off.

“Four-digit code,” he says, pointing to the box. “Then C for cat, then yes.”

“Code, C for cat, yes,” I repeat solemnly. My wife stands next to me, taking notes.