A day of things stopping working

The smoke alarm we've had up since 2004 started beeping to tell me the battery is running out. Its a mains one with a battery back up so I had to turn the mains off to take it down. Then the only in the house torch died on me and the tab to push down to slide the detector off the ceiling snapped off. Hitting it with the screwdriver didn't work and I've got a couple of ads I'm doing with a tight deadline so I gave up and tried to ignore the incessant bleeping.
Then one of my studio flashes packed up and I had to swap the flash tubes over to make sure it had blown. After checking the price of a new one (nearly £100) I went all Basil Fawlty on its ass.

PS, I've now removed the smoke detector (it just fell down) and taken out the battery. Its still beeping. I suspect it may be haunted.

PPS, Just noticed this time last year. I haven't moved on really have I.