My Beeping House
After being separated from my family for a week, I was told to work from home, and I was therefore able to join the gang at the beach house. Living together like this takes some getting used to. It’s a steep learning curve. That said, I am very fortunate: we had just finished the renovations. The beach house was supposed to be a sanctuary; a quiet place for our older days; somewhere to recharge, write, run and do some much-needed yoga. But life never happens the way you plan it, and here we are, a few adults and some moody teenagers, relocating to the seaside during the pandemic. It sounds idyllic, right? The reality is that we live together in a place that’s not designed for this. No choice: we have to make it work. It feels like I have never learned so much in such a short space of time…
For instance, I have come to realise that I miss my old flat in Paris. It is not really that I miss it, it is just that it was awfully quiet. Compared to the beach house, that is.
The problem with the beach house is that there is always something beeping. Mind you, I am sure that it helps my cerebral activity, because I have to react fast, which is good given the actual circumstances. It keeps me on my toes, right? When I hear yet another beep, I have to think about what it might be. Because otherwise, it might get worse. Much worse.
If it is the oven, it means that it is now pre-heated. I can ignore it, it won’t happen again. Lucky escape. If it is the microwave (yes, despite being French I use a microwave), it means that I need to get the food out of it right away otherwise it is going to beep again thirty seconds later. And again. And again.
If it is the dishwasher, I have to press the on/off button, otherwise it will keep beeping until the end of the night. Nasty, that one.
If it is the washing machine, it will beep every 5 minutes until I turn it off. Nightmare.
Then, you have all the unidentified sounds of the phones. It can get complicated. Some beeps mean that you are running low on batteries, others that you have received a message or that someone is calling you. It is a different beep for Skype, and more recently I have been using Teams to work from home, which makes yet another different sound. To be fair, I am still unsure of what some beeps mean. It is nothing short of a miracle that I am still reasonably sane (I think).
But that’s not the worst. In my house, if you burn your toast or your meat, the fire alarm starts and a maddening noise fills the whole house in a matter of seconds. You have to think fast, climb the kitchen table and press everything you can to try to stop it. Failing this, you have to open the windows and hope it will stop. It usually does. Phew!
Then, you have the security alarm. It is the worst. It starts with small beeps and if you don’t enter the code within a certain time (like a couple of minutes), you are sure to wake up half of the neighbours. If it happens in the middle of the night, it is simply terrifying, because you have to rush downstairs in your PJs to stop it. Not to mention that for some reason my alarm doesn’t like it when it gets windy. I don’t know what to do about it. I have been having panic attacks when the wind blows outside for fear it might set off the alarm. Honestly. And that’s on top of the stress of this pandemic, obviously.
But yesterday, I heard a new beep. It wasn’t any of the usual suspects. It started low and went louder and louder. I didn’t know it, but the house has been fitted with a carbon monoxide detector, and for some reason it went rogue. My luck again. I kid you not. Don’t get me wrong, I know that it can save lives and is one of the big domestic killers, but right now I long for some peace and quiet. How does everybody cope with all the noise during isolation?
As for me, I am becoming beeping mad.
