not diggin it at all

Friday evening , Dave's brother and his wife came for dinner. Bringing their two year old daughter with them. Heather and M are a very funny pair when they get together. At nine Heather probably shouldn't like the same toys and games as a two year old. This is however the nature of her disability and they actually play very well together. M is tiny and petite for her age but her personality is far from it which is great because H has never been the shy quiet type . They laughed and giggled and chased each other around the house for hours..M daintily skipping at speed with Heather hauling her uncooperative and quite chunky body around after her clumsily. As her mum there's always a pang of heart ache seeing a much smaller younger child moving with such ease running rings around Heather. But seeing her laugh smile and just have fun the way she was outweighs it easily. They are firm friends!
They left quite early as I was stuffed and sleepy the children were tiring and Heather really needed to sleep. A really nice evening was had by all Heather fell into bed exhausted and I wasn't going to be far behind her. The lights flickered, dimmed slightly then flickered again. A short humming sound ..Then there was a thud and the lights went out.

Power cut.

Not something to worry about at bedtime I supposed. It would be fixed by morning.

I woke up thinking *ewww that's chilly!* the gas central heating timer is computerised ... No electric means no heating... No hot water.. actually it means that in fact the entire house and most things in it are rendered completely useless! This should have fixed itself during the night surely. Apparently not.

Next door also had no power so had called for the engineers to come and fix it . Men gazed at the pavement outside .. they paced the footpath and the garden . They checked the meters in the house . They walked with giant metal detectors only to find the cables had been relaid differently to the plans they held for the area. They located the problem to the junction box between my house and next door . Then began digging .

All our plans scrapped for the day and evening . I had to cancel the babysitter and we asked to go and hide out in Dave's place til the power came back. Theres not really enough room for me and all the girls at his place but we managed .. and we didn't freeze!

3 deep holes and 24 hours later we have power .. and a very muddy garden!

Its easy to forget how much we rely on electricity !

** note to self . Buy more candles!