Last night after work I head straight over to LouLouBelle’s to spend some time with my favourite little person (my other favourite little person was fast asleep by this point after a hard day of crying and eating). We danced to a bit of Maroon 5, had an interesting chat about the thought process behind some of her finger paintings, and discussed her birthday wish list (her top wish is a “doll that poos in its potty”. Right. I think I’d prefer gift vouchers) before she had her milk and went to bed. I forget the little princess will only be turning four next month; she’s such a wise little owl. Before she went to bed I read her a story, and then she read it back to me, word for word. She can’t actually read, but she has such a good memory that she has learnt the book and knows at what stage to turn the pages. (GIVE THE GIRL A MEDAL; SHE’S GOING TO BE AN ASTRONAUT!!) She also does the cutest face when she gets to the bit about some animals sleeping with their eyes open.
Anyway, after a while I got a text message from Em to tell me that the electric had gone off in the flat and she had gone to her mums. Upon further enquiry it transpired that there was a ‘big bang’ from the oven, and then the whole flat went out.
I got home and the electricity was still out. By this time I was panicking. After all, my routine is that at the start of the month when there is money in my account I buy food, cook it and freeze it. Just like my mum, I stock up the freezer! I had visions of everything defrosting and having to eat pot noodles until payday (shudder. This is my idea of actual hell. Kevin Bacon feeding me pot noodles for the rest of eternity). The rest of the flat block and the communal lights were all on, so I knew it had to be something to do with the fuses, and after the last time we had an electric related problem, I knew where the fuse cupboard was. Result!
I looked and couldn’t see anything (of course I couldn’t, I totally didn’t know what I was looking for). I was also busting for the loo so I had to find the bathroom in the dark (I don’t have anything as useful as a torch. Or a screwdriver for that matter) so it took me about half an hour to have a wee before comedy tripping over the hoover and going back to the problem. I was out of my depth. I called the landlord; it went straight to answerphone. I called my friend Stu who is an electrician, he didn’t answer. I called my Daddy, who said he didn’t know anything about electrics. My friend Kevin (who is fairly helpful in man situation) is on holiday, and by this time my iPhone (horrible thing!!) was about to die, despite it only being charged about an hour ago.
I began fiddling. I managed to turn off all the electrics in the communal area (apologies to anyone who lives in the block and experienced problems with their electrics last night, it was me flicking switches!) and was happy to find that those switches actually did something. I flicked another one.
There was an almighty bang and a blue flash. Turns out there is something wrong with that one! But then all the lights went back on. Terrified that I might kill myself (and my sister and dad who had arrived with torches) I quickly shut the cupboard and went back in the flat. I got the WiFi to work again (utmost importance!!) and then started cleaning the kitchen. As I got round to the over, merrily scrubbing away at the worksurfaces and singing along to Usher (usher, usher) a massive blue spark came out of the socket and a huge bang was heard.
The long and short of it is although I managed to fix it, I stayed in the flat last night by myself with a torch by my bed in case of further bangs and shortages. Nothing happened again, so I have decided that there is a genie living in the cooker, and he wasn’t hapy about the state of the kitchen. Surfaces cleaned, genie appeased.
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