The bells! The bells!

As tenants in our lovely old Victorian villa we all had a lot of time to get together and swap stories about the behavior of our contractors, Mears.  These initial conversations took place usually in the early hours of the morning, the middle of the night or around the babies Bath n’ Bed Time.

Those were the times when the fire alarms in various flats would suddenly go off. Mums would whip screaming babies out of hot baths or warm cots; grab a couple of towels or a blankie and stumble off into the cold, dark front garden to await the fire-brigade.

That never took long.  The first couple of times they came in with sirens blaring, back-up, and grim, business-like faces. Then they started not to bother with the sirens. And finally they would arrive with bored faces and frequent references to the value of their time.

 Because there never was a fire. Often no-one was even using so much as a toaster.  Being woken to flashing lights, ear-piercing alarms, and being rushed into the cold – and often the rain – began to have an effect on the babies and toddlers.

And the parents became wrathful.

For in those days we would all obediently stay outside until the Fire Brigade came and checked every square inch of the place… while kids screamed and sobbed and parents described the ancestry of every Mears employee  to  other to each in colourful terms.

Because the Fire Brigade could neither turn off the alarm nor reset it, nor secure the entrance doors.  Only some nameless person from Mears could do that.  And it could take this unidentified person up to 4 hours to come.  Four hours in which we couldn’t return inside where the sound levels and flashing lights meant children became totally hysterical.  And where the two epileptic single mums feared for their kids if they – the mothers - were to take a fit as soon as they re-entered.

We rang Mears.  We wrote to them.  We entreated them. We even appealed to their Duty of Care – which was rather silly in retrospect as none of the Lower Management who were our only contact within the company recognized any such concept. We spoke to Council.  We spoke to the Fire Brigade. We asked repeatedly for someone to come and check the alarms.

But it took a year before we realized that the Log Book in which each incident should have been noted  was nowhere to be found. When we demanded it be put on display we found it to be as pristine as the day it was printed.  Not one single entry marred its pages.  To this day it records merely 2 incidents.  If Lower Management were ever to be called to account,  a tally of two false alarms wouldn’t be considered by anyone to be anything to be called to account for.

That was when one of the tenants persuaded someone to pass on the mystical secret of the Turning Off of The Switch. 

It’s done responsibly.  The read-out is checked to see where the “fire” is and that door is visited first. Every other flat is subsequently checked and a quick reconnoitre of the building is done.  Then we switch off the alarm and parents spend the rest of the night trying to lull kids back to sleep.

It can still take up to four hours for anyone to come and reset the alarm and secure the building while the “I’m unlocked” beeping continues to broadcast that information to any passing would-be burgular. Fun times.

But, teeth chattering, heads ringing and half-dressed, we all came together in that first year by taking turns with traumatized kids, sharing the odd cigarette, passing round extra blankets and towels….and talking.

 

And we soon realized that what we had each, separately, thought to be individual problems within the building were not isolated occurrences, but manifestations of a policy which had evolved to re-enforce our marginalization; to ensure our lack of power; and to discredit us completely.

We also realized this policy was one which applied not only to us, but across the wide spectrum of  marginalized tenants across Brighton and Hove.

We were being dissed.