The carer telephoned us in the late afternoon. The aged FIL has no electricity again. We drove over to investigate.
Using my multimeter to trace the fault, it appeared that during his attempts to restore power to the aged FIL’s premises after the recent fire-and-power-failure, the electrician had dislodged a piece of trunking leading to a plug in the kitchen (the one which powers two electric heaters – don’t even comment), and the cloth-wrapped wiring had shorted out. I replaced the fuse wire in the ceramic fuse, using the very last piece of fuse wire, and put a piece of duct tape over the plug socket to prevent it being used. The heaters were transferred to the washing machine plug socket, which is the only other electrical outlet in the kitchen. (I’m not counting the other two plug sockets bodged into the 10-Amp lighting circuit).
Today’s post included a receipt, indicating that HSBC had received the recorded letter requesting the closure of my bank account.