What a day!

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Last night my lights were dimming more than usual and some of them were even flickering off for a few seconds at a time. I put it down to the fact that my kitchen light (a strip bulb) is going and needs replacing and I assumed it was affecting the other lights. When I got up this morning, there was no electric at all I flipped all the trip switches off and on again and that made it come back on, so I went about my business but then when I switched my washing machine on everything went off again so I had to ring my landlord for an out-of-hours electrician. Bearing in mind I have an 18-month-old, I really need the electricity to which I've become accustomed! The electrician found that the cable between the main circuit and the meter was burnt out and that was something he wasn't allowed to deal with, so he then spent over an hour being passed between my provider and other services on the phone trying to find someone to fix it. In the end I rang them myself while he was out at his van charging his phone and they said they'd send someone out within three hours. They turned up within half an hour, found the fault and showed me the extremely melted plastic culprit, but had to get someone else to do the job, and when this other guy turned up he told me it would be another hour and a half because they can only work in twos (for their safety) and the other guy was coming from Harrogate which is a while away. Some may remember that a while ago I wrote a very boring post - much like this one - about a weird smell caused by my tumble dryer. It turns out that wasn't my dryer, it was the smell of burning plastic coming from the electrical fault All that time I've been living with a major fire hazard and I didn’t have a clue! Thankfully Leonard was very good throughout all of this, he shouted "turbine!" and said "oh dear, oh dear" to every stranger who walked through the front door and messed about in the cupboard under the stairs, and my parents came to pick him up two hours earlier than usual so he could get out of the house and have his dinner on time Happy New Year to me