Power to the People

..er...yes....

Yesterday evening Giles cut halfway through the mains cable to the house. It was all a misunderstanding and, fortunately, he was not hurt at all. Although there was a small flash and the end of his little saw was destroyed and the blade blackened, he felt no power go through his body and was perfectly OK.

EDF came out, as it was an emergency, to make sure everything was OK and Giles had to talk to a doctor who questioned him on the phone to ascertain that he was not suffering from any results of electric current going through the body, such as burns on the fingers or feet, headache, or any other sort of malaise...

It was pretty scarey, as you may imagine, and I was worried that Giles might just wake up dead this morning, but he was OK - PHEW!!!! You see, I had asked him to remove a plastic cover that I thought was over nothing at all, and needed removing as we were about to paint the house. I was round the corner doing something else, so didn't know he had revealed a thick black cable. He thought that, since I had said the plastic cover was old and no good, then the cable was obviously defunct. It wasn't. We both feel pretty silly now, but it's easy to see how accidents happen...

So we were left with a cable half sawn through and open to the elements. We covered it with mastic to protect it from any damp but the EDF man said we should not even have done this - too dangerous! He came at about 10pm last night and checked everything, phoned the doctor etc. He came back this morning, with another man and put in a new cable so we now have power again. Oddly enough we never lost the electricity completely but the man told us to use no power appliances (washer, dishwasher, hot water heater, kettle etc) as there was a danger of fire if the cable overheated. He said, if anything happened, we were to ring him even if it was 4am! (Actually we were both fast asleep at 4am, as we were so stressed out over the whole incident we were exhausted.)

Anyway, they rang this morning to say they would arrive this afternoon, so we got stuck into painting part of the front of the house. Here's how it looks:

Pretty good, we think!

The new mains cable looks, er, just like the old one...

(...it's under that grey plastic trunking)...

...except. of course, that there is a little matter of a few hundred euro to change hands.... fortunately the insurance will cover most of it!

This evening Giles had another look at my pump - bought to pump up water from the well to water the garden...
...but he still can't get it to work properly.

The other part of this project is the cement rendering of the back of the house, where I had the level lowered to make a terrace. This exposed the 'foundations' of the house (which are non-existent - just hardened earth) and therefore had to be covered up again. We have borrowed a cement mixer and bought sand, cement and lime and Giles is mortaring over the exposed earth. It is drying out but seems to be taking a long time, despite the fact that the weather has been very hot and sunny...