an article of clothing, not a way of life

Our building usually has a fire alarm test at 10:20 on Wednesdays consisting of anything between five and twenty peeps of the siren to fifteen seconds (though it feels longer) of continuous tone. The sister building over the road had a fire drill the other week so I've been half-expecting one since. Just as I was wandering back from one of the extended journeys it's often necessary to make in order to find a free/working/clean/not-being-cleaned toilet (this time taking in three floors and both sides of the building) the continuous tone sounded twenty minutes too early for it to be a drill, apparently preceded by the tell-tale slamming shut of the air conditioning vents. Stopping only to collect personal possessions such as my camera bag and my defrosted morning muffin (which were in any case almost on a direct line between my position when the siren sounded and the nearest fire exit) I exited then wandered about for a bit wondering if Atholl Crescent was still our official mustering-point. Most of the rest of the department eventually turned up all looking as if they'd stopped to collect personal possessions in the form of coats, jackets and hoodies such as that sported by TFP.

As well as the time lost to the fire alarm, five minutes spent arguing with apparently non-endothermic cold-feeling colleagues (about their strange misconceptions of office-chill in the face of the fact that it's definitely too hot in our bit of the office at a wasteful and unhealthy 25.5°C) and the ten minutes wasted having a duplicate meeting with boss² five minutes after the original with boss¹ a lot of the morning just seemed to disappear, unfortunate given that someone had helpfully booked a meeting for me at 14:00 when they know damn well that my lunch-space usually lasts until 14:30. I wasn't entirely certain what its purpose was but I managed to speak reasonably sensibly and possibly informatively for over an hour. I always start sweating when having to speak for extended periods but I still think the bonus sunlight and extra space is definitely worth the slight increase in the level of overheating experienced. Should be a pleasant summer in the office for once. A long as the heating gets turned down before May.