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?