“Beep!”  “Beeeeeeep!”

I was definitely awake for that one.  Now I’m completely alert, and after another five minutes punctuated by this persistent noise I find myself swinging out of bed to investigate further.  There are only so many electrical components in the house that can be the cause of a sound like that.  First port of call is each of the three smoke alarms that have never done anything of note other other than irritate us at the most inconvenient times.  This time they’re all merrily glowing green though, so I continue on to check the house alarm, fridge and any other appliance I happen to come across on my rounds.  The house alarm is content, and the fridge for once hasn’t shut itself off.  That leaves me back to the smoke alarms which are of course located in the most inaccessible places (probably to stop intentional home-owner vandalism of the type I’m about to engage in).

Armed with the pole from a mop that has seen better days, I patiently reset each of the smoke alarms a couple of times.  This has no effect on the periodic beeps which echo around a quiet house in such a way as to make it impossible to figure out if the culprit is the one right above my head, or on another floor.  The last time there was a noise-related issue with one of these it involved an awful lot of time and effort just to pry the one alarm with a red light off the wall enough to be able to wedge sharp implements into its guts and eventually extract the offending battery.  Getting a new one inserted back in again was a whole other story and involved multiple attempts by different people over a number of days.  I’m pretty sure this is going to turn out to be something similar, and at 2am in the morning I’m just not up for declaring a war I doubt I can win.  After a couple of experimental swipes with the pole I establish that they’re not magically going to detach from the ceiling and return to bed in defeat.

By this time the noise has woken even the heavy sleeper of the house.  I’ve barely climbed back into bed before he takes off to roam the house in a zombie state.  The scrape of chairs being dragged into place and thuds from above and below indicate that he’s taken the same route – the continuing beeps every couple of minutes tell me his attempts are proving about as successful.  He returns looking none-too-pleased in the gloom.  No comment is passed on the situation as we individually attempt to get some kind of rest despite the noise.  It’s the aural equivalent of trying not to see the elephant in the room.  Although desperately tired, I find myself constantly tuned in and actually waiting to hear the next beep each time.  Thankfully there’s some kind of cycle which eventually involves a long enough period of silence to fall asleep before it begins complaining again.  I manage a very light sleep with dreams punctuated by that bloody sound.

At around 9am we finally abandon all hope of that weekend sleep-in we were desperately looking forward to.  It’s bright outside and we’re awake enough now to attempt a collaborative assault.  After comparing notes we rapidly put two and two together.  We’re agreed that our tormentor is the one on the top floor.  I’m confident it’s the battery despite the lack of a warning light, but after a bad experience with the one downstairs, didn’t attempt to balance on chairs and remove the unit last night to confirm this.  ”No, it’s not that.  I removed them all from the ceiling last night and disconnected them from the mains, and it didn’t work”, the other half says.  With a  dawning sense that perhaps we should have had this conversation hours ago I respond.  “Um… you know that it’s probably beeping because the battery is getting low… which is still going to power the unit when it’s disconnected from the mains?”  Two minutes later the unit is on the floor, more or less in one piece.  After wrestling with the battery for another five minutes I find a scissors sharp enough to pry it out – miraculously managing not to dismember anyone’s digits.  The alarm is literally in pieces on the floor where it will quite possibly remain for some time.

There are no more beeps.

Today we opt to leave the early bus go on its way packed to the gills, and hop on the slightly later bus that will leave just behind it.  This gives the advantage of a lot more space as we start the long journey home.  As usual there are a couple of people dotted around the bus who are engaging in rather loud conversations which can be irritating at the end of a long day.  Time to put on headphones and tune out.  We seat ourselves at the front of the bus where across from us a pair of men are having a long and boring discussion about their commutes to work.  The bus takes off and people settle in for the long haul, making sure they’re securely seated as we hit the first of what will be many potholes at high speed.  The bus swerves sharply around corners almost dumping a few people off their seats each time.

We leave the city centre behind and start to head out into the suburbs of Dublin.  Seats nearby are suddenly filled with a group of guys who are obviously on their way to a party somewhere.  I turn up the volume on the music I’m listening to but it has little effect.  The ringleader of the group is an excessively loud man whose voice is raised loud enough to dominate the entire bus as he regales his entourage with amazing stories of his feats and adventures.  As he gets warmed up, all other conversation rapidly comes to a halt and a pained expression appears on most faces.  For at least thirty minutes every passenger is unwillingly captive to some of the most idiotic and filthy tales I’ve ever heard at such volume in a public place.

“Chicks, chicks!” he keeps shouting, as if that will magically rustle up some admiring women that will swoon over him.  Whether it’s at the sight of some random billboard displaying scantily clad over-sexed women, or the  female passengers in a fancy car that happens to be travelling ahead on the road for a space – we’re all privy to his opinions of these chicks.  I’m pretty sure we’re also all highly tempted to share our opinions of him.  I guess like attracts like when it comes to stupidity though – for some reason his ‘friends’ actually seem content to listen as his stories become more and more implausible by the minute.

He’s over in London at some random photo shoot.  And of course the model is merrily dispensing with her clothing.  She has some sunburn “and as it happens, someone had just tossed me a tube of sun lotion!”  ”No!  They didn’t… really?!”.  His thrilled buddies are almost as excited as he is at the thought of applying some lotion to a random woman’s shoulders and listen in awe – even though that seems to be about the sum of the debauchery he actually managed to get up to despite the build up.

Finally the torture ends as the bus reaches the stop the group has been waiting for.  They slowly tumble down the stairs and off the bus.  Everyone on the left-hand side cranes their necks and shakes their heads in disbelief at the state of the wannabe Lothario unsteadily leading his posse off.  The sudden silence in the vacuum of his departure is blissful and is gradually filled once more by the buzz of normal background conversation as the bus returns to its usual state.  The two guys that had been sitting right in front of him for the full surround-sound effect burst into convulsions of laughter that keep them shaking on their seats for the rest of the trip.  I wonder aloud how long it’ll take that guy to clear the entire house at the party he’s going to.  Not long seems to be the general consensus.

Five minutes later my laptop has grumbled its way out of hibernate and new emails start filtering into various folders on the screen.  Having located the correct folder, I blink blearily at the culprit email containing details of why I’ve just been paged and can’t seem to make much sense of it.  Maybe I’m still not quite awake.  I repeatedly re-read all the data entered waiting for inspiration to strike.  But I’m still at a loss as to what I’m supposed to do to fix this particular issue.  Sure looks like a hardware issue to me.  I’m definitely not the right person to diagnose the innards of a machine that won’t boot up correctly.  I’ve been having enough trouble diagnosing problems in the software I’m supposed to be supporting without throwing hardware issues into the mix.

A few minutes later and my diagnosis still hasn’t changed.  ”Nothing to do with me”.  Someone has totally misdirected this problem to one of the few people that’s not actually in their timezone.  Nice.  This has also apparently dawned on them as while I start trying to track a more appropriate home for this issue, it gets bounced on to someone in a location where it’s actually daytime now.  My ‘work’ here is done.  I find myself gazing out the window as dark clouds scud past the backdrop of a sun beginning to make its weary appearance.  I track its progress for a while as I wait for my adrenaline levels to return back to something approaching normal.  Then I amble back to bed for a few hours in the vague hope of eventually getting a little more sleep before I have to face the new day again.

Suddenly we’re running out of space despite the empty cycle lane to one side, and a good gap between me and the wall on the other.  It’s for that reason that although there were about five seconds between first sighting the bike and it bearing down on us, we only took note of it instead of considering immediate evasive action.  After all, this is what brakes were invented for.  If you’re needlessly cycling on a pedestrian walkway then logic dictates you make good use of those brakes to ensure you avoid the pedestrians, rather than the other way round (unless you’re in Japan, but that’s a whole other story).  Yet unbelievably this girl is literally staring us in the face as we watch her high speed approach in disbelief.  She seems to have absolutely no recollection of where the brakes are, or what you use them for.  In fact she’s continuing to pick up speed as she flies past the entrance and exit of the petrol station, lucky that no vehicle is currently emerging.

As soon as I draw the inevitable conclusion that there’s no way she can now stop in time before she reaches us, I find my impulse of dodging counteracted by the way she’s wobbling madly from side to side.  There’s a high probability that at this point I would only move into her path going on the assumption that surely at the last second she will at least try and avoid me.  Trying to dodge something moving at high speed is harder than letting the faster object move around you.  Yet I find myself face to face with her and there’s a split second before impact where my brain is still rationally telling me not to panic, she has to have hit the brakes by now.  Nope.  Logic has no place in this situation.  After what seems like a very brief moment of contact with the front of the bike, I find myself flying backwards through the air.  Next thing I know, I’m on the ground just in time to watch as the force of the impact sends her soaring over the handlebars and doing a textbook nosedive to land, face-first, straight onto the pavement beside me.  Just the kind of maneuver they’d love to get on video for a “why you should wear a helmet” demonstration.

There’s silence for a couple of seconds.  My brain is still trying to process the illogical notion that someone just knocked me over at full speed without even attempting to limit the damage.  The guys are standing on each side with a similarly confused expression on their faces.  The silent plateau is broken as a wail pierces the air… “My nose!”.  My assailant commences rolling about on the ground clutching the aforementioned nose and regularly reminding us that her nose hurts.  As no one seems to be reacting much, I gingerly pick myself up off the ground, experimenting to see if anything feels seriously damaged.  Who would have thought a bike could pack such a punch?  I successfully get myself upright, dust myself off and even retrieve my scattered objects.  Now we wait to see whether this idiot is hurting badly enough to require us finding some assistance.  With the lack of a sympathetic audience, the performance eventually subsides and she manages to mention that she’s really very sorry.  I’m pretty sure I look completely unconvinced about her sincerity.  In fact at this point my body is coming out of shock enough to start registering that there are an awful lot of aches and pains requesting attention.  Now that she seems to be in one piece, I have to admit to a strong feeling of disappointment that she hasn’t at least come out of this with a broken nose.  It’s not even bloody for all her wailing.

Something else descends upon us from behind.  A young boy dives into the midst of the group to pick up the bike, and an irate mother starts berating the girl at the top of her voice.  After the first few lines it’s loudly established that the girl was already going too fast before she came around the corner and started her race down the hill.  Serves her right that she fell off her bike, apparently.  Without so much as a pause to consider just how her daughter came to such an undignified halt, off the group goes down the road in a blaze of noise.  Just like that, it’s all over.  I’m feeling like I inadvertently volunteered to take the stunt double part in a bad action movie.  I’m also a bit surprised that I’m still mobile afterwards.  If I’d had the chance to consider my chances in advance I would have been expecting more obvious effects from a high speed collision.

There’s nothing left to do but to limp the rest of the way up the hill and go see what the damage really is.  I find myself extremely glad that I was wearing jeans as I view the state of my legs.  My knees are swelling up – evidence of what took the full force of impact.  An odd striped pattern of nasty scrapes makes it look like I got savaged by a short, but vicious cat.  The bruising below the surface is harder to assess.  For now it seems like I got off lightly all things considered, but I find myself repeating the journey out to the store to pick up some antiseptic cream in the hopes it will do some good in speeding the healing process.  This is what I will smell of for the rest of the week as it slowly seeps into my clothing.  Apart from that, I can look forward to limping for a couple of days until the swelling dies down.

A lesson I wasn’t expecting to learn in my first two weeks in work:  If you see a cyclist moving fast along the footpath on a collision course with you although there’s a perfectly good cycle path available to them, your first mistake will be in assuming that they are in any way sane.  In fact, you should assume they are actually mentally unbalanced and out to kill you if at all possible.  Seek a large solid object to hide behind and hope for the best.  Can’t wait to see what I learn next week – what it’s like to get hit by a bus, or maybe a train?

The store itself is massive – you can clearly see that from a distance.  Surrounded by an abundance of car parking areas which give the not so subtle hint that this place is built for large numbers.  This was a quiet Tuesday morning in the city of Dublin.  The store was just about due to open.  Speaking as someone who’s not fond of shopping in busy places, the sight of a substantial crowd lurking at the entrance was not a good omen.   I kept well back as the tannoy blared into life and announced with great ceremony that the store was now open.  People surged towards the door as if there was a danger that someone in front of them would manage to clear out all the good stuff.  Leaving them to fight their way in, I sauntered back to the car park to locate my mother who was only just arriving.  A short while later we joined the steady trickle of people appearing as if by magic at intervals.  You can’t help but wonder how so many people can afford to be out buying this stuff if they’re not working during the day.

We were taken straight to the top floor, just to ensure there was no possibility of early escape via a window.  As an extra precautionary measure, there were also no windows to be found at this level.  We were then optimistically provided with large bright yellow bags to carry the load of items we were obviously expected to pick up during our trek through the murky interior.  And so we started through the long winding maze, following the arrows and checking the maps periodically when it seemed like we might be infinitely looping around the labyrinth.  Swedish efficiency dictated that we be able to pick up pencils and special shopping lists designed for us to indicate items and locations.  Thus marking a trail of potential purchases, like breadcrumbs through the store.  Unfortunately, they haven’t figured out how to prevent customers from rebelling against the clearly marked pathways through the sections, and persisting in moving against the heavy flow of traffic passing through the store.  We wound our way past numerous display areas crammed with so many items that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees when it came to finding anything particular.  There was a strong sense of being a small component placed on a large conveyor belt designed to force you to move slowly through the entire structure, viewing endless products until you were finally compelled to part with your cash in an effort to gain an exit.

Sure, there was some excellent value to be found, and some nifty features on show.  Trying to appreciate this whilst being jostled along by the flow of people and tripping over those who were wandering about in a senile haze of perpetual confusion was another matter.  The thought of repeating this experience on a weekend with who knows how many more aggressive crowds was almost enough to make me faint in horror onto the nearest display bed.  A couple of times I almost considered picking something up, but the thought of lugging items an unknown distance was enough to deter me.  I was quickly coming to the conclusion that this was definitely not the place for browsing.  You would need to be furnishing an entire room (or better yet a whole house) for it to feel worth the trial.  You could also do with a Swedish dictionary as Ikea seem to be under the delusion that Swedish is commonly spoken outside of Sweden, so they should display many larger store signs in a language that means nothing to most of the world.  I can understand not repackaging the products themselves, but more prominent English signs would have been very useful.  Some objects we examined in detail and still failed to come up with an explanation for what their Swedish label meant, and what kind of function the object might serve.

As we discarded yet another item whose purpose remained a mystery, we realised we’d been in there almost two hours and claustrophobia was starting to set in as we searched in vain around each corner for any sign of an exit.  Perhaps we should have come equipped with camping gear and a packed picnic?  Eventually, as we reached the bowels of the building we saw the long lines of customer units waiting to pay their dues before finally exiting.  Being empty-handed, we scouted along until we found a small gap where we could squeeze through to freedom.  At this point we were ravenous.  We succumbed to the inevitable and made our way back to the restaurant area where we found a surprisingly small choice of dishes… all available for sale in the Swedish market downstairs.  So, just another display of stuff to buy then.  We made our selection and seated ourselves at one of the rickety tables provided.  No matter how many items we tried wedging under the legs, the table surface rocked and bucked alarmingly with every move of a knife or glass.  None of the neighbouring tables appeared to be in any better shape.  Somehow we managed to consume the food without sending plates flying.  This left us with quite a few qualms about the quality of the tables being sold in the store.  Of course having finished our meal, we found that despite our best efforts, the only way to exit was to proceed back through the entire store again, watching intently for any of the minor shortcut options.  Finally we staggered back out into the sunlight, leaving the mammoth blue and yellow building to its dedicated congregation.

My exit from the parking area and back to civilisation was slow.  Just ahead of me one of the many elderly folk that had littered the walkways inside was chugging along in a laden-down car.  Perhaps realising that I had failed to be converted, he endeavoured to prevent my departure by repeatedly coming to a stop at random points along the exit road.  No lights, no junction, just felt like stopping suddenly.  Cursing, I kept increasing my distance back from him.  As we finally pulled out onto the main road and headed for the motorway, I decided to avoid the potential disaster of ramming into the back of his car and changed lanes so I could safely pass the obstacle.  Slowly I accelerated along the lane, just to make sure I didn’t startle the obviously witless driver into more crazy antics.  As the car drew alongside and was almost halfway past, he merrily turned on his indicator and swerved into my lane.  Much frantic pumping of the brakes later, I slowed quickly enough for him to complete his insane maneuver without actually running me off the road.  Sighing, I returned to my original lane and put as much distance between him and me as I could.

I returned home feeling older, and wiser.  It’s safe to say I won’t become a regular member of the Ikea congregation.  I’ll be happy to continue roaming the comparatively deserted aisles of the local DIY shops for my future small purchases.  The next time there’s some major redecorating to be done, I’ll venture forth to Ikea fully prepared for war.  With a compass, people-repeller,  sandwiches and sleeping bag.  Possibly an evacuation team on standby.