What a day!
Not the best way to start a week.
Today was my first day back from annual leave and I was getting ready to go to work. It was about 8 am and I was making breakfast when suddenly there was a loud pop, sparks, the toaster went bang and my toast bounced off the ceiling. The circuit breakers did their job, and all the lights and mains electricity went out.
I went out to the circuit breakers and reset the lights circuit, but when I went to reset the mains electricity circuit, it was jammed and I couldn't move it. I fiddled and faffed or a couple of minutes but no joy. I phoned Mr D, and he couldn't figure out a reason why it wasn't resetting either.
So I had no mains electricity. That meant no kettle, no fridge, no broadband, no phone charger...
Awesome!
So I called British Gas, the company that I have a homecare contract with and they said they'd send out an engineer before 1 pm.
I called work and told them that I'd have to work from home this morning, then sat down to wait for the engineer.
By mid day, my phone, my work phone and my work laptop were all down to minimal battery with no way to recharge them.. I was having to use the mobile hotspot on my phone so that was tearing through my battery and my data like no tomorrow.
Then at about 12.15 pm I got a phone call from British Gas. The numpty who had put the booking in hadn't marked it as an emergency, so they couldn't actually get an engineer out until 4pm - 6pm.
Bloody hell!!!
But I decided to make the best of a rubbish situation. If the engineer wasn't due until after 4pm, I could go down to the local coffee shop, get a hot drink and a sandwich, plug all my devices in to get them charging and do a bit of work at the same time.
And that's exactly what I did. I got a good constructive couple of hours in.
Until at 2.45 pm, I got a text from the engineer while I was sitting in the coffee shop. 'I'm sorry I missed you, please call British Gas to reschedule.'
AAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHH!!!!!
One frantic phonecall to British Gas, and a meltdown later, and I had arranged for the engineer to come back at the end of his shift between 6pm and 7pm.
At least I had some decent charge on my devices so could get a bit more work done now.
In the end, the engineer got to me about 5.30 pm. He explained that somehow, a little test button on the mains circuit breaker got pressed (I may even have inadvertantly done it when I was trying to reset them). This means that the system wouldn't have been able to reset the breaker until the 'test' button was released.
It took him all of ten seconds to fix it.
Think I might start having cereal instead of toast in the mornings from now on ...
Today was my first day back from annual leave and I was getting ready to go to work. It was about 8 am and I was making breakfast when suddenly there was a loud pop, sparks, the toaster went bang and my toast bounced off the ceiling. The circuit breakers did their job, and all the lights and mains electricity went out.
I went out to the circuit breakers and reset the lights circuit, but when I went to reset the mains electricity circuit, it was jammed and I couldn't move it. I fiddled and faffed or a couple of minutes but no joy. I phoned Mr D, and he couldn't figure out a reason why it wasn't resetting either.
So I had no mains electricity. That meant no kettle, no fridge, no broadband, no phone charger...
Awesome!
So I called British Gas, the company that I have a homecare contract with and they said they'd send out an engineer before 1 pm.
I called work and told them that I'd have to work from home this morning, then sat down to wait for the engineer.
By mid day, my phone, my work phone and my work laptop were all down to minimal battery with no way to recharge them.. I was having to use the mobile hotspot on my phone so that was tearing through my battery and my data like no tomorrow.
Then at about 12.15 pm I got a phone call from British Gas. The numpty who had put the booking in hadn't marked it as an emergency, so they couldn't actually get an engineer out until 4pm - 6pm.
Bloody hell!!!
But I decided to make the best of a rubbish situation. If the engineer wasn't due until after 4pm, I could go down to the local coffee shop, get a hot drink and a sandwich, plug all my devices in to get them charging and do a bit of work at the same time.
And that's exactly what I did. I got a good constructive couple of hours in.
Until at 2.45 pm, I got a text from the engineer while I was sitting in the coffee shop. 'I'm sorry I missed you, please call British Gas to reschedule.'
AAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHH!!!!!
One frantic phonecall to British Gas, and a meltdown later, and I had arranged for the engineer to come back at the end of his shift between 6pm and 7pm.
At least I had some decent charge on my devices so could get a bit more work done now.
In the end, the engineer got to me about 5.30 pm. He explained that somehow, a little test button on the mains circuit breaker got pressed (I may even have inadvertantly done it when I was trying to reset them). This means that the system wouldn't have been able to reset the breaker until the 'test' button was released.
It took him all of ten seconds to fix it.
Think I might start having cereal instead of toast in the mornings from now on ...