Buzzed awake by the doorbell at 4:06 this morning.
I stumbled downstairs while attempting to make a dressing gown work, to see blue lights flashing through the window above the door. As I fumbled with the lock, it occurred to me that it might be related to the burning smell, rather than paramedics being called for $neighbour, who has form for such things.
I opened the door to see a) a Mk 1 fire engine, chugging away in the middle of the road b) a several of young men in black t-shirts standing at our door.
I uttered a confused "..er, I don't think there's a fire here?", at which point they apologised, one of them offered me a fist-bump, and they turned around and left. Rubbing increasing numbers of neurons together, I realised these weren't firefighters, but drunken zombie students, doing that ringing-on-your-door-in-the-middle-of-the-night-then-apologising thing, and the fire engine was coincidental.
As I closed the door the doorbell went off again, which confused me. I opened it to see if there was something wrong with the button, at which point the fire engine drove off. Barakta then appeared, having found a hearing aid and dressing gown to ask me complicated questions like "What's going on?". I don't think she really believed me about the fire engine.
As my brain had finally booted, further investigations confirmed a) no fire b) generic BloodyStudent party spilling onto the street from the house opposite in the usual noisy manner, with no obvious signs of distress c) an unimpressive spike in PM10s (the sensor's on the other side of the house) from around 03:50
I conclude that the students must have had some sort of combustion incident that had been successfully brought under control while we slept, and that arriving revellers were too drunk to get the right house, in spite of there being an extremely large flashing-blue-lighted clue parked outside.
I went back to bed and after lying there for about 5 hours got about an hours sleep, before giving up at 12pm ish. I now feel like crap and my neck has gone stiff (poor sleep exacerbating the wrenching I got in
yesterday's Learning Opportunity).