The Noise

One fine summers day at about 11.30 in the morning I was with a colleague in his “Panda Car” making up our notebooks having just attended an incident, when he received a call to visit an elderly couple who had an unusual noise in their house. (It is amazing the variety of calls that are made to the Police. We used to say that when the public had tried everyone else or could not think of who to ring – they rang the Police).

We arrived at the house to find a very distraught couple who were both in their eighties standing outside waiting for us to arrive. They explained to us that they had been hearing what they described as a clicking noise inside their house since the previous evening. The poor souls had not been to bed because they were so worried by the noise and could not make out what it was. Seemingly it was audible throughout most of the ground floor of the house. Leaving the couple outside we entered the house and sure enough we could hear clicking noise. My colleague went into the back room and very soon emerged clutching a small black box which he had recovered from the sideboard. The noise was coming from the box. We emerged triumphant from the house and announced that we had found the source of the noise and the box was duly produced. “Oh my God!” exclaimed the elderly gentleman, ” It is my Hearing Aid Box.” If you have ever heard a badly oscilating hearing aid you will know precisely the noise that they had heard!!!!

We left them contemplating catching up on some of their lost sleep, now that their minds were at peace.