POWER MADNESS

So, the village church it is then. The vicar said that he felt privileged to have been asked to hold the service and spent a good session with us helping to plan things. We are preparing to give OG a really good send off. Last year I went to the funeral of a very good friend and her family had prepared a booklet of the whole service including the prayers, bible readings, eulogy, family memories, poems, hymns and songs. It worked so well because even when emotion overtook the speaker the congregation followed the words being said. We decided that is something we would like to do.

On the black humour side of things everytime OG went away, as sure as God made little green apples, we would have a power cut. He knew how scared I would get and became obsessed with us having more torches to add to our multitude of torches in case of cuts this winter. He sent Kimberley on a mission to buy more. She came back with a couple but he said that wasn't enough. Off she went again and, to satisfy his compulsion, bought more torches plus three massive halogen torches. Tanya also bought two boxes of candles and some matches. Now we have a torch for every occasion in every room of the house.

So far power cuts have not been the problem but the electricity and appliances have been acting up big time. To start with the gas fire smelt fumey, we had it checked out but it's fine, then the 'fridge stopped working. It needed a new sensor. The lights were the next thing to play up, they tripped out, then the underfloor heating contactor melted. We were told that these contactors are virtaully indistructable. Wrong. Then the electronic garage door wouldn't shut, the hot water pump hiccuped, stopped and started again a few hours later, and finally lights that John was working on in the new bedroom wouldn't turn on although they were wired up and lights that weren't wired up turned on ! That totally freaked him out.

BUT, on the upside a laptop keyboard that we ordered months ago and were told was unavailable suddenly turned up unannounced!

Oh! and add to that list - the vacuum cleaner just broke!