8.12 am
Friday, July 27, 2012 at 8:00PM
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.
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!
Reader Comments (3)
As people in the south of the US are wont to say....
"Ain't technology GRAND!!!?????"
I didn't 'get' the 8:12 bell thing - I thought that 2012 was at twelve mins past eight in the evening. But then I've never been a 24 hr clock person.
I thought the bell ringing sounded like a great idea - and a very English image. I imagined people ringing handbells in the street and out of car windows - rather like icecream sellers used to do in my youth in Sydney. I like your story a lot. It was probably happening all over the country!