Electric Stress

The other day Jane woke up in the middle and the night and noticed the electricity was off. She had the presence of mind to set her mobile phone alarm before getting back into bed.

The first I knew about it was when I was woken by the shrill sound of the phone instead of dulcet tones of the 5 Live radio presenter telling us it was 6 o’clock and time for the daily news and sport.

I used the torch on Jane’s phone to find my way to the fuse box under the stairs while she searched for the camping lantern. I thought I was going to have to move the shoe rack but it turned out I could see the fuse boxes without. The earth leakage had tripped.

It wouldn’t come back on, so I turned off the two fuse boxes (the house and the shed) and tried to get the supply back on before turning each fuse box back on. However, it still wouldn’t come back on.

I then had the bright idea that turning off the fuse boxes only isolated the live wire, leaving the earths connected, so if we had an earth leak it could still leak. I pulled out nearly every plug in the house to overcome this but still no joy.

In hindsight this sounds stupid, if you don’t put water into a pipe then it won’t leak even if all the drains are connected to each other.

There was nothing for it but to ring British Gas and arrange for an emergency electrician to come out. But their idea of an emergency is between 8am and 12 – it was still 6:30.

The parting comment of the nice man on the phone was to warn us to be careful in the dark. I told him we had the camping lantern and he was impressed. He said he wouldn’t be able to find his, especially in the dark. I told him that my wife was here so there was no problem. It reminds me that Jack’s friend has a saying “If your mum can’t find it then it’s really lost”.

Waiting for the electrician was when the stress kicked in. I can’t help stressing over things that I have no control over. Like when the Internet has gone off, the car isn’t working or a visitor hasn’t arrived on time.

I had to give a presentation at work so we decided that Jane would stay at home and wait for the electrician and I would go to work early to take my mind off the wait. We briefly considered getting Jane’s laptop from work first but realised that without Wi-Fi it wouldn’t be of much use.

I did my best to take my mind off of things at work and hoped that nobody noticed that I hadn’t had a shave – didn’t relish the idea of doing it in the dark.

It was 11:30 when the electrician finally came. Jane was starting to get cold before then but was at least able to boil some water on the gas stove for a hot cup of tea.

The first thing the electrician did was move the shoe rack to discover that there was a third fuse box. He turned off all three and the electric supply came back on. Only when he turned the third fuse box back on did it trip again. That third fuse box was for the shed – still no idea what one of the other two is for.

In the shed there are three fuses and he discovered that if he removed one of those then the electric would stay on. Interestingly the ring main and the lighting main in the shed are working, so we all wondered what the third fuse was isolating. When Jack came home from work he guessed it was the shaver point.

At work the following day a few people said “who still has a shaver point” but what they should have been asking was “who has a shaver point in their shed!”

The following morning when I got up I couldn’t help thinking about how much electric I use before going to work:

The central heating comes on at 5am so that it’s nice and warm when we get up at 6 when the radio alarm clock comes on.

I turn on the light over the mirror in the bathroom to avoid the noisy extractor fan coming on with the main light when I’m still half asleep.

Our on-suite is on the 2^nd floor where there is no water pressure so we need an electric pump to run the hot water.

When I return into the bedroom my night vision has gone so I turn the bedroom light on to see to get dressed.

Next is the upstairs landing light. When I get to the downstairs landing I don’t need to put that light on, I can see enough if I put the hall light on downstairs instead.

Then I need the dining room light to see to get to the kitchen and then the kitchen light.

Once there I can make a drink using the electric kettle and fill the bread machine. Before going into the living room where I put the living room light on to see to read my book for an hour before going to work when my electric clock tells me it is 8am.

That’s a grand total of 13 items just before going to work. I’m trying to avoid itemising what I use when I get home.

There is a silver lining to this story. Before the electric went off the clock on the microwave was missing some LCD cells on the left which meant when the timer was on you couldn’t tell if it was saying 13 or 3 minutes. Now it seems to be working perfectly. 

Trusting your life to another driver

Long Way Round has finally made it to the top of my reading list and as Ewan and Charley climb into the back of a strangers BMW for a lift to who knows where in Ukraine, it got me wondering about been driven by other people. Their driver drove like there was no tomorrow and Ewan was convinced the man was from the notorious local mafia and was driving them to an early grave. In actual fact he was driving them to his house for a night of eating, drinking and playing with guns!

Like most people my first experience of been driven by somebody else was by my parents. I can’t say that I ever gave the quality of their driving much thought, although my Dad’s lack of direction finding was memorable. So much so that every time I hear John Denver singing ‘then my daddy read a sign and took us the wrong direction’ I think of my Dad.

My grandparents would have been the next or more accurately my granddads, this was back in the day when most women didn’t drive. My Granddad Frank drove extremely sedately with a fag in his mouth and was content that we would get there eventually. It probably came from the days when he drove a pop wagon for a living and would get paid however long it took as long as he sold some pop on the way. The best trips were with my brother and cousins sat in the boot of his Ford Escort Estate playing games and making up stories about what it would be like if we were poor and had to live in the car.

Granddad Norman on the other hand drove like his life depended upon arriving as quickly as possible and having been a taxi driver for many years it probably did – that next fare could be the difference between chicken and beef for Sunday roast. My Gram Gram never sat in the front and when they came to visit it always looked like my granddad was chauffeuring her around.

After getting married I had a father-in-law who drove us sometimes. He drove a huge Audi Quattro as if he owned the road. We felt safe with him until we hit country roads where he would stray across the white line to straighten corners without any concern for cars coming in the other direct.

My brother-in-law was no better, he drove us around the houses in North London near where he lived and I distinctly remember saying to my wife ‘we will be okay unless he meets himself coming the other way.’

But it was on holidays abroad that things got really interesting. When we went to stay with a friend in Ghana we were happy to discover that she had asked a family friend to drive us around for the duration of our stay. But it was a bit of a shock on the first morning when she informed us she was going to work and the driver would arrive soon. When we heard a commotion in the walled garden outside we braved the horse sized dogs to investigate and met a tall dark stranger who said he would take us anywhere we wanted.

Fortunately Genevieve had suggested some places and the four of us climbed into his tiny Rav4 and set off. His driving was fine even though he wasn’t paying attention most of the time as he conducted his business on his mobile phone for the next half an hour. Eventually he apologised and introduced himself as Prince.

He took us everywhere we wanted to go and a few places besides, like to show off his building site and to show us off to his mum and sisters – most odd.

It was only when we got stuck in traffic that it became surreal. He drove along the pavement and pedestrians jumped out of the way without complaining and then when we came across the police directing traffic they stopped both lanes in all four directions to let us through. Turned out he had bought his car from a diplomat and hadn’t changed the number plates as he should have – we felt like royalty.

Our most recent excursion was with my Dad’s cousin Malcom, who’s 77 going on 50. He drove us to the North West of Cyprus where the tarmac roads run out and the bondu starts. Being off-road there wasn’t a problem it was being off-road when we weren’t supposed to be that shocked us.

He drove us into a dead-end (it must be a generation thing) and on seeing the road we wanted to be on across a field he uttered the words ‘we can go anywhere in a Mitsubishi,’ selected four wheel drive and tipped us over the edge of the pavement down a steep hill into the sandy field.

 Now what’s that URL for Uber?

Logistics of Toast

I can’t help applying logistics to my everyday life. When I travel to London I walk along the platform at Epsom until I get to the different coloured platform stone which is where one of the train doors will stop allowing me to get on near the end of the train so that when I arrive at Vauxhall, I get off next to the stairs.

I then walk into the underground and turn left into the tunnel and walk along the platform until I get to the white painted square. This is the ideal location for getting out beside the stairs at Warren Street.

A colleague of mine once said ‘What’s the point? You have to do the same amount of walking wherever you get on the train and tube.’ But he was missing the point (and should have known better as our role at work was designing journey planning algorithms).

My approach doesn’t optimise distance, it optimises time. It’s not that I’m in a rush to get to the office, it just feels like the right thing to do.

I’m the same in the kitchen, although it is distance that I optimise in there. When I’m working at home the daily routine starts by filling the bread machine and making a cup of coffee.

The kettle, bread machine, measuring jug and spoon, coffee and sugar are at one end of the kitchen (point A) and the weighing scales, flour, yeast, salt and margarine are at the other (point B). The sink is in the middle (point C). So without consciously thinking about it over the past few years I’ve optimised my routine as follows:

1.       Start at A. Pick up kettle.

2.       Walk to C. Fill kettle.

3.       Walt to A. Return kettle and turn it on. Take the bowl out of the bread machine and pick up measuring jug and spoon.

4.       Walk to B. Take weighing scales out of cupboard. Add yeast, flour and salt.

5.       Walk to A. Take sugar out of cupboard.

6.       Walk to B. Add sugar and margarine.

7.       Walk to A. Return sugar and while cupboard door is open, retrieve cup and add coffee.

8.       Walk to C. Fill measuring jug with water.

9.       Walk to B. Add water. Pick up bowl, measuring jug and spoon.

10.    Walk to A. Put bowl in bread machine and turn it on. Return measuring jug and spoon to their home. Pour boiling water on coffee. Pick up coffee.

11.    Walk to B. Put weighing scales back in cupboard.

As well as optimising my distance travelled I’ve also optimised some of my time because I don’t have to wait for the kettle to boil because I’m busy filling the bread machine.

Note: In the summer the distance travelled is slightly further because the margarine is kept in the fridge.

If I draw the above as a diagram you can see that it isn’t the most optimal distance:

If the distance from A to B and then B to C is 1 then the total distance is 16. Steps 4 to 7 involve two trips between points A and B which could be reduced to one, decreasing the distance to 14. However, I can’t carry the bread machine bowl, measuring jug, measuring spoon and the sugar all at once.

If this exercise was like an old text adventure game on a computer where you could carry as much as you liked in your inventory then I could reduce the distance to 6 by collecting things from A, carrying them to B and collecting everything else, walking to C to get water, walking to A to make the coffee, fill the bread machine and put half the things away before walking to B to put everything else away. However, I might end up waiting for the kettle to boil if it takes longer than it does to fill the bread machine and put half the things away.

Despite what you might think after reading the above, I don’t optimise every activity in the kitchen. If I was toasting three slices of toast under the two slice capacity grill I think I’d do it in four goes instead of the optimum three.

I’m sure I’m not the only person to add logistics to my life without realising it. When my train arrives at Vauxhall the majority of the people in my carriage get off and when I’ve ridden in the front carriage (the ideal place for getting off at Waterloo) I’ve observed very few people get off at Vauxhall, so I’m clearly not alone.