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Near miss…

We lost power in the night. We’ve had some weather (did I mention we got four inches of snow? That’s something for us) and there’s utility work going on in the neighborhood, we didn’t think much of it.

Eventually, Uncle B traced it to, um, this. That’s a normal British power socket on the left, and a melted smoking nightmare-fodder near-death experience on the right. Ke-rist, that was close.

It’s the greenhouse socket. A heater runs on a thermostat and keeps everything from dipping below freezing in the night, so it wasn’t in the house. But the whole thing is lined with bubble-wrap in Winter for insulation, so that could soooo easily have gone horribly wrong.

You’ll remember the Brits run this macho electrical system where every little lamp plug is the size of a dryer plug. Nearly all plugs have fuses built in, but somehow the fuse didn’t blow. The electrician (we have a tame electrician, thank god) said moisture got into the plug and started it all.

It’s a greenhouse. Duh.

Lucky for us, we have an RCD in the house. It’s an ultra-sensitive safety switch that knocks out power to the whole house if it senses a dip. Ours is ultra sensitive, anyhow — we lose power if a light bulb blows. Seriously.

Oh, the evenings we’ve found ourselves in a pitch-black house hissing, “sweetheart, do you have a fucking flashlight?”

Still, I suppose it saved our lives last night. Good thing I remembered to slather the lamb’s blood on the lintel.

February 7, 2012 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 45