So it was supposed to be an uneventful nightstop in Abuja, Nigeria. A shortish six hour overnight flight, a restful day and returning on the daylight flight early the next morning. We stay in a hotel that is notorious for its bright psychedelic colour scheme, and I was allocated a room on the green floor. No problems there, but I am still cringing and laughing at what happened that evening.
After an enjoyable work out at the gym I got back to my room and stood under a very hot shower for a very long time. Oooh, it was lovely! Blissfully high pressure, lots of heat and I was using the water to massage across my shoulders and to create a great little sauna for myself. But my bliss was interupted by a very loud and very persistant intermittent horn. Blaaaaaaaa - Blaaaaaaa - Blaaaaaaa. I tried to ignore it but then I panicked and thought I had better get some clothes on quick because it sounded as if the horn was coming from my room and not the corridor. Imagine my horror when I stepped out of the shower and realized that my lovely sauna had enveloped the whole of my room and that it was my fire alarm that was now alerting the whole hotel to the possibility of smoke and fire. I froze. Then it was even more of a mad panic to pull on clothes, any clothes I could lay my hands on (which turned out to be my pyjama bottoms that I had carelessly dropped on the floor earlier and my uniform jacket that was hanging right beside me) and I launched myself at the phone to try and alert reception to the non-emergency status of my room. Except the line was engaged. I tried the emergency only button but again it was engaged. There was nothing for it but to wait for the knocks at the door, and they didn't disappoint. They banged and shouted and bearing in mind that the alarm was still blaring and only a couple of minutes had actually passed, I was very impressed with their quick response. With my hair still a bedraggled mass full of shampoo, smudges of old mascara blackening my eyes, water dripping everywhere, and my arms clutching my jacket across my chest, I had to open the door to await the reaction of my rescuers. Of course I didn't even need to open my mouth because as soon as I opened my door, the steam billowed out into the corridor and the leader of my emergency response team, just gracefully flashed me a huge white smile and said "Madame was having a shower?" and he carried on grinning. "Yes," I replied, "I'm sorry," and I felt myself shrink into the floor. They were wonderfully polite and probably extremely relieved at the lack of real smoke and they turned on their heels, picked up the big emergency tool box and left me in peace to wallow in my embarrassement.
The spooky thing is that just before the alarm went off, I was thinking "I wonder if I should close the bathroom door" ...
