So when I last posted I said about how I had pretty much mapped out how I was going to spend the rest of my short "stay at home and relax" vacation..... It mostly went to plan... I mean I got to read a whole book on Friday... a good one it was too.... but sadly the reason for reading the book was far from choice and driven more by boredom... oh.... and the huge power surge that knocked out electricity in the whole of the street.

Yup... when I woke up on Friday morning I did what I usually do... I came downstairs.... put the pc on whilst walking to the kitchen.... put the kettle on... and then spent about an hour thinking to myself... whilst enjoying a lovely cup of tea... whilst reading the BBC news website.... why the hell does my phone (landline) kept making noises and ringing intermittently.

I was... once I had woken up enough to realise that the pc just wasn't quite right.... sensible enough to shut it down... and... after having the tv switch itself off what must have been more than 20 times... turn the tv off properly as well... not just leave it in standby mode.  The phone still kept prattling on and somehow... that long forgotten common sense gene I try so desperately to hide... reared it's ugly head... and I figured there was something wrong with the leccy (the electricity for all the non Brits) and I though to turn off the leccy at the mains.  Good thing I did too.

From what I can gather... that was my undoing.  Because if I had left the power on... and along with it the tv.. the pc.. the playstation... and every other electrical item in my house.... I might have been the happy recipient of a whole set of new appliances.  As it is.. the sensible part of my brain that is awake at that time of the morning thought it might be a good idea to turn the power off at the mains.... which I did.

We have..... between the whole of the street... had everything from a whole house need re-wiring (my brother) to a house with almost every electrical appliance blown to a house with minimal damage (oh yes... that would be... the safe one who shut her electricity off). What is the minimal damage my house received.  The bloody burglar alarm has blown... and that little gem didn't raise its ugly head until about 4am on Saturday morning... after what was a pretty traumatic day for the whole street.  Just what they needed.... my alram howling in the night to wake them all.  Saying that.... the only person who did actually come to check everything was ok was my brother.  One neighbour thought it was a car alarm and ignored it... a few others didn't hear a thing... and one heard it... knew it was my house... figured the alarm had been affacted by the electricity outage and turn edher bathroom extractor fan on to drown out the noise and went back to bed.  Cheers then.... glad I wasn't being attacked in my home and had set off the intruder alarm to summon help. 

As it turns out... the ONLY... and I cannot emphasise how pissed I am about this... the ONLY damage for my house is the alarm system... which is.. apparently.. to be completely replaced tomorrow whilst I am at work. 

I mut say... and I am sure ya'll know I'm joking.... kinda... when I say I'm pretty pissed nothing else was damaged... yanno... a nice new tv would have been nice... or a laptop for me... or... yanno... anything really.  As it is... I shoud be.. and am... very thankful that I'm not going through the chaos that some of my neighbours are.  One house...as I said... has had all sorts of electrical appliances blow up... from the tv... to the Wii... X-boxes (two teenage boys live in the house) the the kettle... washing machine... phones... straightening irons... shower... all kinds of things.  It must be so incredibly difficult to cope.  My thought is that the family shouldn't even be expected to stay in the house until everything is put right... but from what I can gather from conversations in the street... nobody has been offered accomodation away from their home.  My brother is a prime example.  If it wasn't for the fact that we live across the street from each other... why hasn't he been shipped out to a hotel all expenses paid because he has NO ELECTRICITY whatsoever????  We have a number of houses who have had the electrical controls on their boilers blow up... including the house that is standing empty... and which the new owners came to see today because they are moving in tomorrow.  How devastated must they feel that they can't move into their new house because it currently has no electricity and the boiler almost blew up.

A friend has a paper that has to be submitted by Wednesday for part of her nursing course and her pc went up in smoke... quite literally.... and the repairs guys didn't come to remove the pc until late this afternoon.  She's hoping they can get all her data off the pc so that she can crack on with it.   Luckily enough I think most of the paper is completed.  One house has an elderly couple... the husband being very poorly at the moment.. and has now had to be taken away to stay with his daughter so that he can be cared for properly until everything is back to normal.

The leccy returned around 8pm.. but not until each and every socket and light fitting and appliance had been checked by an electrician.  Whilst I was VERY lucky... and had everything restored there are still families in the street without appliances and only with lights. 

Anyway... pretty much each day since Friday evening has been spent turning electrics on gently hoping that they don't go "BANG!!!" when the switch is thrown.  The rude awakening at 4am on Saturday morning was a gentle reminder that we (as in myself and the two extremely cute but very young electricians) had forgotten all about checking the power to the alarm and the back-up battery had worn out as well. 

So here I sit... struggling on with my old pc... watching my old tv... thanking the Lord that nobody was injured and that the scorch marks I have seen on walls by boilers and tvs and power sockets... didn't result in anything more serious than blown fuses and buggered up electrics for a few days....

Meh... on a lighter note... back to work tomorrow... buggering hell and all arse....