Note - this post was the first written on our arrival but only published now (28th Jan) because the alarm has been fixed. Read on.....
As you will have read from my first post, we are renting a beautiful three bedroomed detached house complete with pool in the Heldervue area of Somerset West. For the geography afficionados amongst you, this lies about 30 minutes from Cape Town and is considered to be one of the safest and secure areas within the whole of South Africa.
That said, any house owner has to fulfil all the criteria laid down by their insurers and that means that the majority of houses benefit from some pretty comprehensive security systems and 62 Acacia Street is no different.
Colin the owner had sent us a magnificent bible of information before our departure which included a very detailed page on the alarm system. Disarming the system on arrival appeared to require only the press of a button and a flashing LED response! We sat for ten minutes at the front of the house trying to get this to happen, without success and in the end decided to phone Paul the agent out here. When he answered and I detailed our predicament he said, "it won't work because I'm in the house!"
And so we walked around to the back of the house to find Paul in the kitchen and Travis, his 16 year old giant of a son sitting by the pool. We received a lovely warm welcome and a personal tour of the house which was excellent. There was a small caveat however when Paul did say that there was a minor problem with the alarm system and that he had called ADT out to rectify it.
So all was well until around 10pm when I went into the bedroom to put the aircon on to suddenly find the alarm panel starting to beep! No problem as entering a 4 digit code cleared the problem or so we thought.....!
Well the top and bottom of it was that every ten to twenty minutes during the night, the panel repeated the beeping process and eventually, Linda and I had to agree a roster of who was to get out of bed to deactivate it! It was a very long night, that's all I can say.
By the time we staggered out of bed at around 10 this morning we both looked like we had been dragged through a hedge backwards and had very dark rings under our eyes. It had absolutely no effect on our safety or security, merely our sleep pattern.
Anyway after various conversations with owner Colin back in the UK and Paul the agent in Cape Town a temporary fix was found and an appointment made with the man from ADT to rectify what is a minor problem in the next couple of days.
By this afternoon and having caught up on much of our sleep on a sunbed under the shade of a lovely tree, we both felt much less jaded and able to take in the beauty of our home for five weeks and its surroundings. Stunning is the only appropriate description.
As I write tonight's blog, I am accompanied by a most delicious glass of South African Sauvignon Blanc which cost a grand total of £2.35. Life isn't too bad you know.
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