I didn’t really sleep very well last night; fretting about
having the windows done today. I got up at seven o’clock and cleared the area
round the bedroom window in readiness, then made brekkie.
I sparked up the lap-top and had a look on-line. Yesterday
I joined a Facebook aquarium group and there are as many pedants ranting about
measuring chemicals on there as there ever are in the Facebook pond groups.
Facebook groups can be pedantic, picky and nasty, but none so much as those
related to fish; either in a tank or in a pond.
There weren’t any emails in my in-box. I munzed and Wordled…
and then the window replacing people arrived about an hour earlier than
expected, so I wolfed the last of brekkie down and as they cracked on upstairs
so we shifted stuff round the living room ready for that window’s turn later
later.
There’s no denying I had been expecting the worst. I had
visions of the entire front of the house falling out, and the crashing and
bashing from upstairs did worry me.
Before long there was another knock at the door. The chap
who’d replaced our bathroom tap a few weeks ago had brought his mate round to give
us a quote for sorting the electrical problem. And if we thought the house was
in uproar with the windows being done, that was just peanuts to what followed.
As lumps of old double glazing got bashed out and lumps of new double glazing
got carried in, so Gary was in the fuse box and behind the fridge and
disassembling this that and the other.
The chap who’d replaced our bathroom tap had to go to
Eastbourne, so declining the offer of a cuppa he left the merry throng.
Mid-day came and passed. The bashing from the windows
continued, and the power continued going off and on. Eventually Gary announced
that the problem was that we didn’t have any neutral in the downstairs ring
main, and to prove a point he borrowed some from the upstairs one. However he
was at a loss to work out where it had gone. So he systematically disassembled
every downstairs socket. I must admit I thought he was wasting his time when he
took apart the one I use every day to power the lap-top on which I write this
diary, but with most of the house’s electricals in pieces I didn’t dare say
anything that might have upset him. Pausing only briefly to allow a huge window
pane to be carried in, he got busy with his screwdriver and then gave a loud “Ah-ha”.
I’m no expert but it looked to me as though there were far
too many wires hanging out of the socket, Not all were actually attached to
anything, and Gary said that the inside of the socket looked iffy.
As the nice window man stared clouting the new window frame
with a glass hammer, I drove Gary over to The Electrical Counter. I had no
idea this place existed; it is *the* go-to place for anything electrical
from now on. They’ve got pretty much everything you might ever need, and the
helpful staff will order in anything they don’t have.
We got some new sockets, cable, cable fixings, strange
mysterious things, and a myriad of light bulbs.
We came home, and as the nice window men were getting jiggy
with the mastic, Gary replaced the poggered socket, removed the cable that was
borrowing neutral from upstairs, and announced all was done.
He then went round the house replacing pretty much all the
light bulbs. I had no idea just how inefficient our lighting was. We replaced
no end of fifty-watt light bulbs with five watt ones and they are every bit as
bright, if not brighter.
I then ran Gary home just as it was getting dark. It was
only as I thanked him profusely that I realized that he’d only come to give us
a quote and had actually fixed the issue for us. But to be fair he couldn’t
really give a quote until he’d identified the problem, and fixing the problem
only took about a quarter of the time identifying it had taken.
I came home to find the nice window men had gone. Having
been worrying about getting the windows done, that part of today passed off
amazingly without worry. Having said that I shall now be watching the windows
like a pork (to coin a phrase) just in case.
And shall also be waiting for the electricity to pop as
well…
“er indoors TM” sorted dinner
then went bowling. I settled on the sofa underneath a pile of dogs watching an
episode of “Poldark” in which Ross was being a very silly boy. As I
watched I listened to the washing machine having a go at my undercrackers. It
is doing so without the use of an extension cable for the first time in three
weeks. If it manages I shall try the tumble-dry setting as an encore.
I’m hoping for the best.
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