Inside our confuse box. The bombs in ‘Spooks’ are more straightforward.
On the weekend, three of our power points – all quite close to each other – stopped working. One was in the bathroom, one just outside the bathroom, and one on H’s side of our bed. The one in the bathroom was important, because it was the only one in the bathroom and thus the power source for the washing machine and dryer.
In spectacularly-unlike-us fashion, we didn’t just work around this problem for years, we actually called an electrician in to fix it. I know. Like grown-ups.
I called the guy we have always used, but he was too busy to help. I asked him to recommend someone and he said the guy he recommends was helping him and was therefore also too busy to help.
H moved on to the local paper at that point, and called up a guy we’ll call Aaaaron, because he was first in the listings. Aaaaron came this morning, only half an hour after the appointed time.
I had a friend and her son over to play, and by play I mean I plied them with hot beverages and cinnamon buns while May Blossom behaved like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, and also a bit like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and, well, really most of his films, because that is what she is like when she has a disgusting snotty cold.
Aaaaron showed up and spent the first hour doing the obligatory head-shaking disbelieving critique of All The Electricians Who Have Come Before Him, Ever, which is pretty much par for the course with tradesmen, in my experience.
Knowing less than nothing about electrical matters, I had carefully tidied the areas around the three problematic power points. Aaaaron spent all of six seconds testing them before he moved onto checking every single other power point in the house, most of which we have obscured behind the biggest pieces of furniture we own, each backed up by a land-mine-field-like scattering of toys or parts of toys. All this took place while two bickering toddlers rampaged around his feet. At one point he decided to go under the house (possibly just for some peace and quiet), but he returned a few minutes later declaring that only an ‘elf boy’ could fit through the access hatch.
Three hours later, Aaaaron declared he had located the source of the trouble (a power point in the living room that was very black and explody-looking on the inside), removed it, and puttied-up the hole. Excellent, I thought. Job well done. He wrote the bill and left.
H dropped in for lunch a few minutes ago and tested the three defective power points. He reported back: ‘They’re all fine except still none of them work.’ Aaaaron is on his way back. I wonder if he’ll tut-tut at his own workmanship this time.
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