I used to live in a little cottage in the Highlands with no neighbours between me and the horizon. I had some 6ft tall speakers with 12″ drivers that I’d built as sculptures for an exhibition years earlier but had never actually been wired up to anything before I moved there. Although made with functioning components they’d never actually been made to be used but when I did eventually fire them up they actually sounded pretty good. The cabs were open-bottomed and used the floorboards as part of the base reflex, meaning the whole subfloor void was effectively part of the speaker.
I lived there alone and used to have a little friday night wig out after work well aware that I couldn’t disturb anyone. One night – mid wig out – I went to the loo, a bit tipsy I opened the living room door and was confronted with a hallway full of strobing light. Went to the front door and there were the police – backlit by blue flashing lights but front-lit by a slower pounding white flashing light that was coming from behind me. The turned off their lights and the white light kept flashing and I was really confused by it all and they kept asking me if I was OK.
What had happened was the strip light in my kitchen was on the fritz. I thought it wasn’t working at all and must have left the switch in the on position – so while I was partying in the living room my kitchen light had sort of revived itself, zombie like, and was frantically flashing on and off. Passing traffic on the bypass a mile or so away presumed I was trying to summon help and called the police. Even with the light switched off over the next couple of hours I kept getting concerned strangers turning up at the door as the word was out on the highlands grapevine.