Alarmed

I used to love being able to hear sirens from our house when we first moved in a few years ago. It seemed so exciting, and a confirmation that we were living in the inner city. I imagined SWAT teams crashing into buildings to catch the bad guys, just like in the movies. But in recent times, with everything a bit more fraught, my free floating anxiety leads to far more sinister interpretations. Has a stir crazy overseas visitor escaped from quarantine? Has some jealous international power decided to bomb us for being so smug over our success with coronavirus? Or is it just that some poor inhabitants of the low lying suburbs have been flooded out by this endless bloody rain? Oh for a return to the carefree days of last year…