Day 211: I Receive A Rude Awakening

After drinking too much strong beer last night, I fall into my pit virtually fully clothed (except that I am naked). Virtually seconds later, I am woken by a sharp ringing on the door, followed by a banging. I fall out of bed onto my laminate floorboards and scuffle about in the dust looking for my "floooffy" white robe, bought for me some three months ago by a French Canadian pathologist.

I open the door, and there is an enormous man in a cap holding a gigantic spanner! "What do you want?", I squeak. "Come to fix the intercommunication device!", he shouts back. "Please! No shouting! It is early!", I mumble into my floooffy shoulder. "Sorry to awaken you! But the electrician is here NOW", he bellows. From behind him appears a tiny electrician, who looks not unlike a Super Mario Brother. He too is holding a spanner!

My brain is full of thoughts of dark beer and Canada. I wordlessly open the door wider and let them in. They do some things with spanners and talk a lot in loud voices. I catch the word "spanner" and "bangen", and sit wide-eyed in front of the BBC News for some ten minutes. The front door slams. They run up and down the stairs shouting in Dutch and also (unaccountably) some Italian, ringing on bells and shouting into intercoms. They make me feel very tired.

Then I wash and dress and get in the lift (as I am weak in the legs and head and unable to walk down two flights of spiral Dutch stairs) where I find the Super Mario Brother who is, by now, holding a gigantic screwdriver. I leave him in the lift going up and down and up and down with his screwdriver, and go to work.

Then I remember this and look it up. It is entirely my favourite thing.