Almost there

We have a strip of spotlights in the kitchen and another in the sitting room. As it's Christmas, I thought we'd replace the bulbs which had died some months ago; an easy enough job you would've thought. Well, once we'd been out and picked up some new ones. Leonie put the new spots in: the kitchen lights worked; the sitting room ones didn't. We then played a game whereby all the bulbs get swapped around between the two fittings and Jack comes downstairs (from where he has been secreted away revising) and does the man bit i.e. shouts a lot. All the bulbs now work and we sit down quietly for twenty minutes until the whole fitting in the sitting room fizzles out and we spend an evening unable to see anything. The festive candles look pretty though. The next day we go to B & Q to buy 8 lower wattage bulbs to replace all of those in the sitting room. But the light still doesn't work. Jack comes down and shouts a bit more and everything's brewing up nicely for Christmas. Another evening by candlelight accompanied by the whirr of a fan heater which has had to be brought in to accompany the blanket that's now pinned over the dining room door in an effort to keep the arctic winds at bay. The fan heater makes me sleepy; Leonie says it's because the noise it makes sounds like cicadas. Pardon? I don't care about the light which, along with the broken dishwasher and the freezer door that won't shut, adds up to the three things that might go wrong at one time.

You know how it is though. The next morning, whilst waiting for Caroline, who's coming over for a walk, Leonie and I are sitting looking at the defunct light thinking 'it's bound to be something simple'. Like a fuse. 'Maybe if you unscrew that bit where the bar goes across, there will be a fuse we can replace' I say. Leonie misunderstands and unscrews the whole fitting which, amazingly easily, falls out of the ceiling and is swaying dangerously on an electric lead. Leonie is too short to replace it on various hooks and screws and I'm not touching it so we have to get Jack. Jack comes downstairs and shouts very loudly. He manages to get the light back in the ceiling whilst Leonie shouts at him. I make the mistake of mentioning to Leonie that I can't believe she did that and Caroline arrives for our walk to be entertained by the first of the seasonal full scale rows.

When we return forty minutes later with sodden feet the row is still ongoing and Caroline takes Jack's side. Leonie has called an electrician who wants seventy quid to come and look at the dead light and I decide to phone Nigel who is the saviour of the universe. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I have to go and purchase a new light fitting which I don't really mind because I never liked those spots anyway. And what else do I possibly have better to do on 22nd December? Nigel arrives faster than the speed of sound and tells me a long story about how he's astro-turfed two Hyundai cars. He got the job via the bloke whose caravans he wall-papers. I don't understand any of this conversation although I learn that the same company that does the upholstering for the caravans has made green seats for the Hyundais and matching grass effect curtains.

It is too surreal so I try to steer Nigel in the direction of the freezer door which, apparently, is not aligned to the rest of the world. I don't understand this either but because he is a super-hero on a par with Susan Boyle, Nigel manages to fix it for the festive period before asking whether I'd like to see some pictures of the astro-turfed cars. 'I'll get Jack' I say; 'he'll be interested'. There is some grumbling but no shouting on the part of the would-be reviser as he descends again into the now blinding light of the sitting room . Unfortunately, Nigel's phone has broken and as Nigel doesn't 'do' phones or boilers (or, sadly, dishwashers) we never get to see the photos. I give Nigel his money and send him on his way with the season's greetings that I also send to you dear reader.