Ringing the changes

Today, we went shopping in Salisbury and it was a pleasant interlude. Try the warm home-made quiche in Poppy's Tea Shop with lashings of home-made coleslaw – mmm! Anyway, the main point of this blog (the second in two days – are you impressed?) is to tell you about my doorbell episode. Hence the title.

For about two weeks now, our front doorbell has not worked. I bought a new battery for the bell-push, having got the digital meter out and established the presence of insufficient voltage in the current one - see what I did there? It still didn't work.

During our perambulations, we happened upon Robert Dyas (I can never go past the damn shop) and I spotted a wireless doorbell on offer for 15 GBP instead of 30. You can even record and play your own messages or download music to the chime unit. I did toy with the idea of recording a shouted message along the lines of "open the fucking door, someone!" but thought that might upset the Salvation Army if they ever called, so I opted for the default Big Ben chime (in my opinion rather grandly referred to in the manual as the Westminster). This was the least offensive of the 8 pre-loaded tones available included among which is the Lambada and the Mexican Hat Dance. You would probably find people dancing on your front doorstep. Hmmm.

Well, the bell-push already had a nice CR2032 button battery installed but I had to nip over to the Tesco Express opposite to get a couple of LR14s (aka UM2 or C) for the chime unit. Before I did that, however, I was in the kitchen fiddling with the new bell-push. When I pressed it, the old doorbell rang.

Bugger.