Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

The temperature is hovering just above freezing today, and keeping warm is becoming a major problem.

Hopefully, this cold spell won’t last too long, as I am trying not to think of the cost of keeping this old house bearable. So, when Anita blew several fuses this morning, changing a light bulb (literally) I had visions of us freezing to death.

Luckily, it was just the lighting circuit, so we wouldn’t lose the heat, just stumble around with a torch…

We changed the light bulb, but nothing happened. I checked the fuse box, and sure enough, the lighting circuit switches were in the off position. I switched them all back on and hoped for the best. This house is very old, and the wiring is erratic at best, so I knew I probably needed a little more than hope.

The lights still weren’t working, so I knew that growing feeling of dread had come to the right house.

I rang the landlord and tried to sound like a sensible human being, but I know he thought I was just another helpless female. He arrived within the hour and spent quite a lot of time touching everything with his magic screwdriver thingy. Then he approached the fuse box, pressed a few buttons and hey presto, the lights came back on.

All the usual questions were trying to decide which one to be first, like what did you do, that I didn’t?

and what was the problem? Swiftly followed by, Will it do it again?

Like I said, this is a very old house and whoever wired it up must have had his head on backwards, for over the years we have had some strange occurrences. Like when the hall light switch would always turn the bedroom light on. There are switches in odd places that we still don’t know what they’re for, and written instructions in the hall cupboard to find some of the others.

Life did get better a few years ago when they changed the antiquated fuse box for a posh new one, but it would seem that some of it’s old habits are still alive and kicking…

For now?