Comfort and Joy

On switching on the computer yesterday – nothing.  Tried a lamp on the same socket outlet – nothing.  Uh-oh.  Went down and opened the fridge – dark.  Climbed up to get to the circuit breaker - it had tripped.  This is the circuit that was extended to the North Wing, so I switched everything off, and reset the circuit breaker.  On turning on one of the convector heaters in the sitootery, the circuit tripped out again.  Cutting a long story short, our cleaner put us on to a local sparky who plays snooker with her husband, and he has been round today to confirm, as we thought, that the heater is ever so slightly defunct (I believe that’s how I heard a broken-down vehicle described once by an infantryman).  It is now ever so slightly scrap metal along at the tip.  Four years old.  But then, since the conservatory people installed it with poor grace, I imagine they will have installed the cheapest possible model.  Checking with the timer on the Christmas tree lights, the power seems to have gone off around 3:00 am – no doubt when the frost protection thermostat kicked in.  Well, I found the problem at 7:00, so I think the freezer will have maintained a safe temperature – no gooey messes on the floor, anyway.  But if you hear we’ve gone down with botulism, kindly advise the appropriate authorities of the foregoing.

Needless to say, there is no longer any trace of the particular model on the internet, so our hopes of unclipping the old and clipping on the new (see under shower head some months ago) were quickly dispelled.  We’ve bought a replacement that seems a bit more robust – and blagged 5% off the price by saying our sparky had sent us, and would be back to fit it in a day or two.  It would have been a shame if we’d been unable to heat the sitootery sufficiently for the entertaining that attends the festive hostilities, seein’ as ‘ow we’ve coughed up for new covers for the sofas.  (My next thesis will be on Christmas, manifest and latent costs of.) 

I see that a local UKIP candidate has made national headlines by calling for an NHS review to look at compulsory abortion of foetuses with Down's syndrome or spina bifida, and that, somewhat belatedly, he has been suspended.  He also called for such a review to address legalisation of euthanasia, and free advice for the over-80s on how to do it.  As to his comments on ‘immigrant riff-raff’ and statutory suppression of parts of the Qur’an, I’ll leave you to do your own googling  I’d hesitate to endorse any utterance of our current Prime Minister, but I wouldn’t stir from my elderly armchair to attack his description of UKIP as a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.  Not that I could possibly express a view myself, of course.