SHOCK REVELATION ABOUT MY DOMESTIC GODDESS

Electricity, eh? Weird stuff. If you understand it, you are either a trained electrician or you have a very strange mind.

Yesterday afternoon our kettle went kaput and caused a power failure in one half of the house, including my office. My computer made a sort of terminal ping that brought images of help desks, Indian call centres, and repair bills to mind.

I said a rude word or two and then went looking for Mrs N, who is my Domestic Goddess. I found her swearing in front of the box thingy where the electricity meter and all its little switches and buttons reside. The main switch and one other had tripped, apparently. Careless of them. Anyway, it was enough to switch off half the house, including the kitchen and my office.

My Domestic Goddess un-tripped the switches and quickly tracked down the source of the problem to the kettle (something to do with a buggered element). I believed her implicitly. Everything was back to normal, except we couldn’t have a cup of tea. But my computer was working and it had even retrieved the Word document I had been creating. Good old DG.

Two hours later, as evening crept in, we realised the heating was off. No light on the boiler, no numbers on the water/heating control panel thingy. It must be the fuse in the boiler switch wotsit at the back of the cupboard next to the boiler, thought DG. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Except the sticky-out bit, allegedly containing the fuse, wouldn’t pull out, and I couldn’t get at one of the screws to pull off the entire front of it.

Bugger.

DG had already started cooking the evening meal, so she instructed me to ring up our friendly neighbourhood electrician, who just happens to be a member of our extended family. Even so, it was mighty embarrassing trying to explain the predicament to him, when I don’t really know the difference between the boiler and the immersion doodah.

Was it this, was it that, was the oojah light on, had the you-know switch tripped? he asked.

Possibly.

He sighed and said he’d call round. What a hero. He pointed his sonic screwdriver, or whatever, at the boiler switch wotsit, watched it flash, stood up, and studied the water/heating control panel thingy. He moved a couple of the little Time Set lever doofers and suddenly the boiler fired into life. Our hero turned round and smiled, trying hard not to laugh but not really succeeding.

Apparently the first power cut had knocked out the heating/water timer. And it needed resetting. How embarrassing.

Sad too – discovering that my Domestic Goddess is a mere mortal.