THE DAY I REALISED WHY I CAN BE A BRIGHT SPARK!

This kitchen is drawing a lot on my time at the moment. I knew it would because it was some three decades old and, as I have said before, built to withstand a nuclear detonation (but not my sledge hammer, he he). The main reason is that I am trying to save as much money as I can by carrying out as much of the work myself as is possible. I don't do plumbing, it's not my thing, so I had to get a plumber to do all of that stuff but whilst I got an electrician to deal with the cooker and extending some light wiring I have done most of the rest of the electrical work myself. Well I say myself but actually I had a hidden helper, someone that actually enabled me to do the work even though he was some 150 miles away. You see the fact is electricity is nasty stuff, it hurts, oh boy does it hurt as I can speak from personal experience. The first time that electricity and I got 'personal' was some 30 years ago and it could have been the last time too. I was working in a Fine Fare Supermarket and the warehouse was invariably one story up, over the shop as it were, which meant that all the goods that had to be stored away needed to be sent upstairs. To assist with this massive task many of the branches had a conveyor belt. One person down stairs loading and pushing the 'up' button and another person upstairs unloading (an automatic cut off arm switched the belt off when goods got to the top). As long as both people worked as a team it was a reasonably straight forward task. If however you had to do it by yourself it was seriously hard work, filling the belt, running upstairs then off loading then running back down and so it went on. It was on one of these occasions that I was caught out. I had put some stock on the belt and started to press the 'up' button when KAZZZAMMMMMMmmmmm!
     I felt the lightening bolt of Zeus. Wait I have to stop here and just share something with you. Now I am constantly using the net to check spellings, meanings of words and facts as my memory can be a little 'confused' sometimes and my spelling poor all the times. Now whilst I felt comfortable with my Zeus analogy I felt I should just check that Zeus actually did have a bit of a reputation for throwing bolts of lightening around willy nilly, so I went on the Googley thingy to check. Google re-assured me [About 10,500 results (0.18 seconds)] and just as I was about to return to my blah, blah, blog my eye was caught by the lone advertised 'link' on the far top right of the page;

Ads

1. Zeus Lightning Bolt

   Find Great Deals to Save Up To 50%
   On Zeus Lightning Bolt Here!
   
   zeus-lightning-bolt.best-price.com

 Wow! Now that HAS GOT TO BE A PRODUCT WORTH BUYING! I didn't even know you could buy those and yet here is a company offering it at a best-price, like they have a competitor somewhere else selling the same Zeus Lightning Bolt but for a lot more. Who knew? Then it dawned on me, the severity of the situation, suppose this WMD got into the wrong hands, after all it is surely easy for them to purchase being 50% off and all. Suppose it got into the hands of,   well the...... I mean, well you know, I don't like to say his name as it may be 'picked up' but I think we all now who I am talking about, the person that could be the biggest trouble maker of them all, ok I'll say just come out with it and be damned.  Suppose it gets into the hands of Just William, disaster, mayhem and utter chaos will surely ensue! So naturally I clicked on the link and............   find out for yourselves.

I felt the lightening bolt of Zeus powering and throbbing in 6" waves up my arm and smacking me in the right should like the recoil of a high velocity rifle. I found my body flying backwards as if I had been punched by Muhammad Ali and the only reason I came to an abrupt halt was because I had met the large concertina metal goods in door which I slammed into and slumped to the floor. I was the only person in the back area of the store and was totally zonked sitting there for some minutes in a daze. Later I established that the plastic button had been knocked off and I touched the full three phase power source with the tip of my finger. So I respect electricity with all of my being.
However working on the electric sockets and light switches at home I have a reasonable amount of confidence as my invisible assistant has been my Dad whom has 'assisted', which means he fixed something and I watched, many times and as I peeled off a bit of insulation, or fed a wire into a plastic casing or tested for live current I realised that this 'knowledge' comes from not any one training session or by genes, no it is a lesson in life over several decades. Then I looked back at those moments that he helped me, forever talking through what he was doing, explaining, showing, not just fixing the problem but teaching too.

So thanks Dad, very, very much.

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