the things we take for granted

Like making a cup of tea for instance.

We’ve been without power for the past few days.  Not in the new house - we’ve not been able to move in yet.  Although if we did, we’d find it cosy and warm.  The Train Shed, on the other hand is freezing.  Some power is now restored, but not the heating.

It starts when the RCD switch in the fuse box trips and turns off every wall socket in the house.  So no TV, phone, internet …… anything that needs plugging in.  

We phone the landlord (a property management company) to ask for some assistance.  But it’s the weekend and their out of office service, which is set up to provide assistance in the evenings and weekends is, for various reasons, unable to.

They suggest unplugging every device in the house, resetting the RCD switch and then plugging the devices back in one at a time in the hope that this will highlight the device/appliance that’s causing the problem.  It doesn’t work.  

Then the enormity of this situation dawns on us.  We have become so dependent on living online, that when the power goes off we’re stuffed.  Anniemay has been using her mobile phone to contact the landlord because the landline doesn’t work.  And then battery in her phone starts to run down, with no way of charging it.  It feels like we have no way of contacting the outside world.

I fiddle around again with the RCD switch and this time it stays on.  Hallelujah.  For about an hour.

Anniemay phones the help(less) line again.  They’re based in Bath.  They put her through to someone in Preston who passes her on to Malmsbury who pass her on to North Shields.  Not so much round the houses as round the country.

I suggest making a cup of tea.  But the kettle doesn’t work. I try to use a saucepan on the gas hob.  She comes to my rescue with a box of matches as I try in vain to light the thing with the electric ignition.  

Luckily we’re invited to a party on Saturday night so have somewhere warm to sit and eat deliciously warm food - and more importantly - recharge our phones.

The husband of a friend is an electrician and he says that most RCD faults have something to do with water.  So on Sunday I fiddle around with the fusebox again and discover that if I turn off the central heating and the hot water system and then reset the RCD switch, everything else stays on.  We’re reconnected with the outside world again.  Cold, but reconnected.

Anniemay phones again to report this development.  She is highly skilled in the art of phone calls.  She uses a mix of humour, sweet reasonableness and her teacher’s fog-horn - it is said that she could get a shirt tucked in the length of a school corridor.  

Today she plays the Cancer Card.   “I’m 68” she says “and my husband is 72 and only has one and a half lungs.  He’s vulnerable in the cold.”  This is only partly true.  I’m actually 71.

It does the trick.  As I type this we get a call from North Shields to say that someone will come out  tonight.  I assume he’s not coming from the North East of the country.  But who knows?