A bleeping nuisance

My day yesterday began at 3.30am when I was rudely awaken by an insistent and atonal beep.

I traced it to my smoke alarm though there was no smoke.

Nowadays you do not get an instruction manual but have to google, which explained that the battery needed replacement.

I thought it a simple job at very least to disconnect but the outer casement proved impossible to open.

My handyman called round first thing.

He could not prise the unit open either.

This gives me a perverse pleasure, namely that I am not a D-I-Y incompetent but there is a design fault.

It’s yet another example of health and safety triumphing over consumer ease with the consumer the loser.

The company that supplied the unit do not do badly either as in finally prising it open the unit was rendered inoperative and I now need to buy a replacement.

I later took my revenge by frying up a sirloin steak with masses of smoke but, of course, no alarm!