Cold and in the dark...

My central heating / hot water died yesterday morning - nothing I can do about it, it's a job for a service engineer who can't get here until Monday. So far warm clothing and the heat from computers and cooking are just about keeping things tolerable.

So I went out to post some packages and get some shopping this morning, found the weather awful, and came home generally fuming about the crapness of life, sat down, and decided to get some writing done. Before I could even get Word open there was a loud bang and all of the lights went out.

This turned out to be the big (120cm) fluorescent light in my work room dying - not just the tube, the transformer had burned out. Fortunately the breaker worked as it should. Unfortunately I was then reminded that I really had been intending to buy a ladder but never actually got round to it...

To cut a long story short, I spent most of the afternoon getting the damned thing down, dashed out in the rain to buy another, put it up (this time with a plug and socket on the lead so it will be a LOT easier to take down if this happens again), and now have light. This is possible largely because the light fixture was on chains and hangs at least 2ft below the (9ft 6") ceiling - I'm really not good at working on ladders, and suspect that I would not have been able to get it done if it was fixed to the ceiling.

Now wondering when the third shoe will drop!