March 9th

Woken up by a pheasant in the garden this morning. He's a nice fat one.... make a lovely casserole.... :-)

Don't think I mentioned the fun and games of a couple weekends ago.
In the evening the lights were flickering a little, but I didn't think a lot of it. Next morning I went into my study and there was a peculiar smell of scorching plastic and a fizzing noise coming from the electric meter/fuse box.....

Not Good!

I shouted for Ron, grabbed the stool so I could reach the electrics, and turned everything off.
Smell and fizzing was definitely coming from the electric wiring!

Thank goodness the previous owners had written down a list of emergency numbers: I called the electric company who said they would be with us in a couple of hours. Which surprised me as, being a Sunday I thought we would be without electric until Monday at least.

What was annoying, figuring that as this is an old house we didn't want the surprise (or cost) of having to re-wire soon after moving in, I paid to have an electrician check the wiring. He gave it all a thumbs up. So why was the wiring fizzing and obviously scorching something - on the verge of causing a fire?
I was, to say the least, disgruntled.

The emergency electricians arrived after about an hour and found the problem straight away.
The wiring inside the meter hadn't been connected properly and had therefore worked loose (probably because of all the thumping of removal men shifting furniture up and down the stairs).
And of course, as this fault was inside the inaccessible sealed meter the electrician I'd paid to check the wiring would not have been able to access this.

It does make me wonder what would have happened had I not come into my study that morning - on the other hand, I don't want to wonder, because the answer is something along the line of a serious fire!

So our Guardian House Angel was looking after us that morning.
Thank you Ma'am or Sir.