A Very Rude Awakening

My dream was such that I just didn’t want to be awake When an unexpected change in tone caused my good mood to break As my Buena Vista faded ‘neath a penetrating sound And forced my sleepy high to plummet swiftly to the ground Jolted violently awake from necessary beauty sleep The most annoying, intermittent, ear-piercing beep It was not the smoke detector that had opened my eyes wide But the other one – that warned of leaking carbon monoxide Still somewhat groggy, my self-preservation mode kicked in And I woke my wife, who’d managed to sleep right through the whole din In haste, we grabbed two dressing gowns – I donned hers, she took mine And stumbling down the stairs, convinced her everything was fine Now reeling from the shrill, we made our way to the front door Still trying to explain why we were up at half past four The dog was barking wildly, running rings around our feet As we sat in our odd nightwear in the middle of the street The pre-dawn chill was biting at my unprotected ears But as clarity returned I knew that I must face my fears And pulling my pink dressing gown tightly around my waist I threw my shoulders back and bravely climbed the stairs in haste I pulled the shrieking beast from its position on the wall Trying hard to see the readout, but the numbers were so small What does ‘97’ mean – and is this reading far too high? Is it well within the limits or are we about to die? My concentration shattered, headache pounding and cross-dressed I held my breath and pulled the batteries from its beating breast No time to find the handbook, but I needed now to know Just what the reading meant and could we stay or should we go? So I turned instead to Google, but the image that I found Resembled mine; though in this picture it was wrong way round As dawn arose, daylight revealed the cause of my ‘mix up’ That ‘Lb’ means ‘low battery’ when read the right way up ...