Lights off but everyones at home!
Oh dear. The wrinklies strike again with a day of disaster and cold, despair and determination………………where to start!
Jamesy, 86, handsome, charming and bless him, completely bananas, spends his nights patroling the house to check that my Mum has locked everything and that all is well. Mum worries very much that he will hurt himself but it makes him feel better to check , so she lets him – and he checks consistently, throughout the night.
On Friday, Mum got up to a freezing cold house on a freezing cold, foggy north east day – and discovered the boiler wasn’t working. Nor did she have any electricity. Thinking that this was a major problem, she also believed it was all boiler connected…… She also discovered that the huge rubbish bin, which she;d put out the night before for the bin men who come every 2 weeks, was back in the hall and covered in snow – so she had to drag it back outside again! having rung the gas board, Mum was promised help by teatime so she and Jim got into their car and spent the day driving around in the fog, stopping for cups of tea and popping home from time to time in the hope of a miracle.
The gas man came at 5pm and was wonderful, showing mum that the boiler was actually fine but that “someone” had disconnected the switch – as well as turning off all the electricity in the house . This helpful young man turned everything back on, checked everything and showed mum what to do if this happened again. He also cheerfully suggested that Jamesy be “tethered” up at night to stop him wondering. Mum laughed a little too heartily and , thankfully, didn’t share with her knight in shining boiler suit, that she was considering putting Jamesy IN the huge rubbish bin and locking him outside the door!….
Still, we all giggled later as Mum recounted the tale from the comfort of her now warm home, and with a huge whisky in her hand. Jim? Nowhere to be seen or heard but methinks he’ll not be venturing under the stairs to fiddle with switches for a long while to come!…….It would be more than his life was worth to go near the cupboard door – Mum would have him pushed in there in a jiffy!!