A Spark in the Dark

This blog has a very self deprecating title. As it happens I really do enjoy living where I do especially when things go wrong like they did tonight…

The cooker did not exactly go bang, plink, or fizz but the lights were definitely not on and the chicken (organic and expensive) was not cooking. Incidentally, is it a Romanian trick or do other people poke a half filled wine bottle up the arse of a chicken before standing it upright in the oven to cook it?

So Goddard, full of masculine bravado and absolutely no idea what he was doing began to make repairs. Now this is an ongoing saga the details of which I’ll certainly not bore you with or I will definitely deserve the banal and pointless tag on this blog, suffice it to say that the wall socket needed to be replaced after it melted the last fuse placed in it.

So off I toodle to Homebase and come back with a new socket and one of those posh screwdrivers that will light up if you touch a live wire or something I dunno. I switch off the correct circuit on the fuse board and begin, gingerly at first, to change the socket. Once I’ve convinced myself that the wires are not live I begin to work with more confidence until suddenly, POW, the whole house is plunged into darkness, N & S extremely upset as they were just getting to the good part in Monsters Inc.

So I retrace my steps and work out where I went wrong only to do it again. Bugger.

Never mind I thought. Shame about the chicken but we can live without an oven until tomorrow when we’ll call in a sparks who’ll know more than me about domestic electricity circuits, (though quite frankly knowing more than Goddard about electric circuits is hardly grounds for calling oneself an electrician. On that basis they could set themselves up as a horse whisperer, assassin or any other profession going apart from teacher perhaps). But then we find that the fridge and freezer have blown as well and we are really screwed. Bugger.

A gets home and hits the crisis button and we are on the phone to neighbours asking if they have any freezer space handy. And that’s when my neighbourhood shook itself down, took a deep breath and came into it’s own.

Now I don’t claim to live in the best neighbourhood in the world nor am I suggesting that no other neighbourhood could ever come up with the goods as mine did tonight, I’m just saying that when M came round at the drop of a hat and spent a good couple of hours helping me to sort things out, I felt proud and happy to live where I do and have neighbours like that.

So thanks M for popping round. We’ll still need an electrician to get to the bottom of all this but at least we have a working cooker and fridge, for now.

And the chicken? Well he has been part cooked and is standing there on the kitchen work surface looking rather forlorn what with a wine bottle up his arse. We can’t really carry on cooking him.

Actually I think he’s smiling at me. I think he got the last laugh after all. Bugger.