8.12 am

 

I heard about the Cultural Olympic event of “ringing in” the start of the Olympics and thought I’d join in the fun.  I had a meeting starting at 9am this morning though, so would likely be getting my things together to set off for Gloucester around that time.  Never mind, I had a clever idea.  I’d set the alarm on my iphone to go off at 8.12am and then, wherever I happened to be, I’d be participating in the whole affair.

I set the alarm to make the bells sound rather than the usual marimba setting which I am used to.  Well, it seemed to be the most appropriate one.

As I manoeuvred my car out of the garage, the bells started to ring.  Yay!  I wound down the window to listen out for any other local campanologists, but heard nothing – but my iphone chiming away, of course.

I drove out of the village and down the hill, thinking that it might have been a good idea to have taken the phone out of my bag before setting off.  Because, you know what happened ten minutes later?

The bells rang again.

Fortunately, by this time, I was in a line of cars waiting to turn right, so I was able to rummage in my bag and find my phone.  But I didn’t have time to hit “snooze” at this point and the bells continued for a while.

From there, every ten minutes, those ******* bells rang out, until I reached Gloucester and was finally able to turn the thing off.

 

photo-001

 

Of course, whilst driving I hadn’t noticed that if I’d simply been able to slide that bottom button across, all would have been peaceful again. 

Pah!

South sea pearls

Distractions