Seats of power: One lot always wants to limit the other

I had this client due in for a breakfast meeting the other day. A powerful and important woman, this client, albeit possessed of such physical fragility she looks like she eats a single rusk once a fortnight. She clearly needed building up, so I started to cook breakfast for her.

Ten minutes before she was due to arrive, the fire alarm went off. I opened every window in the building and flailed at the alarm with a folder. It continued to scream. I rang the number on the alarm box in the hall. It was answered with an impressive speed which did nothing to solve the problem. They don’t tell you, when they sell you the system, that if it goes off it will shriek at such volume that you will not be able to hear the alarm company guy who’s there to rescue you.

“TEXT ME” I yelled into the phone and — hands flattened against ears for protection — went to check if the building had any room in which the fire alarm was less aggressive. I found a uniformity of volume which meant no room was breakfast-safe. The guy texted me instructions on how to deploy a plastic key cleverly hidden in the most obvious place. I found it. It was broken. Somebody in our building had used it, broken it, and silently done a “Not me, Guv” by putting it back in its secret hideaway, maimed.