I read somewhere recently that you should test your smoke alarms at least once every few months. Not by secretly setting small fires in your house to try and catch them out, as any perfectly normal person would assume on first reading that sentence, but by pressing the big red button on the front to check the alarm is in good working order.

I have two smoke alarms in my flat. When I moved in three years ago, it took me several days to decide where to put the one located downstairs. You do not want it too near the kitchen due to the inevitable toast-related false alarms, yet at the same time it must be close enough in case you set fire to the kitchen. Again.

In then end I opted for a spot toward the base of the stairs, close enough to my bedroom to ensure I would wake up if it went off. I then put another one right outside my bedroom door as I remembered how heavy a sleeper I can be.

These positions are clearly optimised as three years of kitchen disasters have yet spark panic amongst the neighbours on the other side of the slightly-too-thin-for-comfort walls of my flat.

So, after reading the article suggesting you should regularly test your smoke alarms, I decided I would do just that. I got a chair from the dining area and stood on it directly beneath the smoke alarm. Then pressed the button.

Nothing.

I pressed it again.

Nothing.

I kept my finger pressed on it for a few seconds.

Nothing.

I kept my finger pressed on it for a few seconds with an amount of pressure sufficient to make my finger nail go white.

Nothing.

I decided that the only way to rectify the situation was to ‘open her up’. About ten minutes later, I finally worked out how to open it, just before the blood drained completely from my arms. It flipped open and I immediately spotted the problem. Three years ago, almost to the day, I had neglected to put any batteries in either of my smoke alarms.

The problem I have now, is that I am going to have to move them, because they KEEP GOING OFF.

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