Cause for alarm

Midnight, a hotel in Toronto.

The alarm clock goes off. Mrs Nunn (mostly asleep) first blames Mr Nunn (mostly on a different continent) and then me. As this didn't happen the previous night, and she's the only one who's touched it in the interim, I think we can guess who might be to blame. (She had previously struggled with the lightswitch for a good three minutes before giving up.)

I disable the alarm. We go back to sleep.

1 a.m., the same hotel.

Another beeping starts. Mrs Nunn blames Mr Nunn again, then changes this quite quickly to "Laura, what have you done now?" She then checks her mobile phone. I explain to her it's the fire alarm. She insists we evacuate. We are on the 23rd floor of the hotel, and we can't use the lifts. The hotel staff say that there's no need to evacuate, they're just seeing what the problem is. "That's what they said during 9/11," Mrs Nunn retorts, and down the stairs we go. A hotel in Toronto at 1 a.m. doesn't seem to me to be a likely terrorism target, but one argues with Mrs Nunn at one's peril. Off we go down 23 flights of stairs. Me limping quite a lot as my knee is - as a qualified physio might put it - fucked.

We watch the Fire Brigade for a bit (even though I promise I wasn't responsible for calling them this time). Then we go back up to the hotel room.

The giant city hall clock starts striking the hour every hour from 5 a.m. onwards.

I wonder what delight we'll have this evening. Niagra tomorrow. Mrs Nunn doesn't know, but I've booked her the full "Barrel Experience".