One Fuse to Rule Them All.

This isn’t the first time my ranting radar has identified incoming targets from the nation state of Electricity-Ville. It’s a bit of a rogue state, firing salvo after salvo of incompetence missiles, and threatening to overwhelm a defence system entirely based on writing angry letters.

Powerless seems the right word to use here. We foolishly switched on a few of the storage heaters on Saturday evening, only to be endarkened from around midnight. A call to EDF didn’t achieve much other than for them to tell us there wasn’t a problem. I issued a stiff verbal rebuttal based on some local, on the ground and in the dark information.

It’s cold and dark I said. Not here it isn’t they smugly replied. Further pleading eventually harvested an engineer who grumbled his way through a fuse change. “You need an 80 amp in there mate” he told us after removing the charred remains of the previous incumbent of our fuse box.

The lights came back on but the heating did not. The reason for this became apparent this morning after the discovery of a hidden fuse. This seems a little extravagent as we already have two fuseboxes bursting with the little buggers. Half of these protect the standard domestic circuits, and the other half stop the storage heaters catching fire.

Or at least they would if their puny 13amp wires were not gazumped by a second 80amper sat in line, ready to take the strain. Now I’m no electrician – and it’s a constant source of amazement that electricity doesn’t leak out of the socket when the plug is removed – but how can a widdle of mini fuses remain unbothered while the big burtha explodes at the first flick of a switch?

Apparently this never used to be an issue when our house was part of a commercial building, because the entire place was hooked up to some monster three phase circuit. This information has not in any way assuaged my worry that – come midnight – the electrical ummph from activating storage heaters isn’t going to create the kind of problem the phrase “blast radius” was created for.

But, short of shovelling another child onto the open fire, it seems we must risk crisping ourselves and the surrounding countryside before ice forms on the inside of the kettle. Suddenly our priority for which project to undertake first has undergone a bit of a policy rewrite, and it’ll all be plumbers and the like saved from financial destitution.

Still could be worse, I could be an incompetant and greedy banker (steady!) who has just had his bonus guarenteed. That’s even better that the dog’s job role – spend an eon being an arrogant fuck up and still get paid a whopping chunk of cash at the end of it. All funded by Mr and Mrs shafted taxpayer.

They’re on the list. I too am “thinking big and bold“. Ready Belgium for a country sized scorpion pit!