It’s been a strange couple of days. It started off well on Monday when we saw a jay about half a mile from home. That was pretty much the high point of the day. In fact, the high point of two days. We went to the Numismatic Society on Monday night, after an afternoon of packing yet more junk into the car. We then set off home . . .

Easier said than done. We arrived at Grantham in the dark and almost immediately ran into roadworks and a diversion, which promised “Diversion A1 (S)” but actually delivered a rather tedious and annoying drive through the countryside, including more roadwork, which took us to Melton Mowbray before pointing us back towards Peterborough.

To be fair, the route via Melton is a decent route, and one I used to use quite a lot, though road improvements on the A! have now made that my favoured route. However, if I were intending to travel home via Melton, I wouldn’t start by going to Grantham.

The normal route via Grantham and the A1 is about 60 miles and, realistically, takes more like and hour and a half than the slightly faster time Google calculates.

The normal route via  Melton is 55 miles and takes about ten minutes longer, though if you hit the wrong traffic and get held up behind a tractor, or forget it’s market day in Melton, it can take considerable longer. That’s why we started using the other route.

If, however, you go to Grantham first and then drive down a number of unlit country roads behind a large lorry to reach Melton and then picking up the Peterborough road, it is around 75 miles, and I don’t have a clue how long it took. Seemed like ages but might have only been about two and  a half hours. It would have been nice to have had some warning, particularly after we fell foul of a random, and badly signposted, diversion last time we went to the Numismatic Society.

When we got back, we watched as rat frolicking on the front lawn. Next morning Julia checked the back fence and it seems they are coming in under the fence again. She has blocked the holes and will be spraying the boundaries again. This is the first sighting for a while, though I realise you are never far from a rat. Time to think abbout some more serious measures.

 

Then this evening, I switched on the light in the office, and it blew. This was annoying but I went to make tea (sausage with leek and mushroom gravy, mustard mash and carrots mashed with parsnips),. This, when added to our lunchtime avocado and breakfast fruit (admittedly taken with porridge and toast and marmalade) made us feel quite virtuous. We also had a spot of simnel cake in the middle of the afternoon, now I come to think about it, so maybe not that virtuous after all.

Later, I found that the bathroom light wasn’t working, so went to switch on the hall light to give me some light in the bathroom whilst muttering about dodgy electrics. We don’t generally use the hall light as the light coming through the glass doors from the living room or kitchen usually provide enough light. The hall light didn’t work either. At that point the metaphorical lightbulb in my head came on. After 36 years with old-fashioned ceramic fuses, we now have circuit breakers and they are a lot more sensitive than fuses. 

And so it proved. But before we were able to get the lights back on, poor old Julia had to leave the shelter of the house to enter the garage in search of the breakers. No, I haven’t a clue why electricians put them in garages, but it seems quite common. It’s probably so that people, tiring of torches and trekking to the garage, will pay them large amounts of money to move the boxes somewhere more convenient.

It appears, from research I just did (I say “research”, I mean “two minutes on Google”) that this is more discreet (why?) and more convenient for electricians and emergency workers who may need quick access. Me, I’d put the convenience of the residents isn’t at the top of the list. It’s a bit like the quick release clips they now fit to batteries these days – much easier for a fireman if you are in aa serious accident, but not quite so much fun when they pop off at random and you car dies. I know this from experience.

No, not a clue why the photos won’t all line up.