Living in the Dark Ages

Okay, so a slight exaggeration. I'm not living in a time where there is knights in shinning armour fighting to the death or a time where women are dying through burning alive on the stake but it feels pretty close!

I am starting to think that 2016 is a very unlucky year for me, it is either that or one of you lot has cursed me! Come on own up, who was it?

This time my flat has decided to cause me problems.

The sockets in the kitchen have always been a little dodgy. The switches, for all but 2 of my sockets, had fallen into the socket so it was impossible to actually use them. Luckily, the housing association sent their maintenance man round to replace all of the sockets so I was quite chuffed that it was done fairly quickly.

However, this is when all of the problems started to happen.

Every time I used my toaster the power would cut out in the flat!

I would head over to my switchboard, flick what needed to be done and then get back on. After figuring out that it was the toaster doing it I unplugged it and started using my grill; just seemed a lot easier.

That was until Monday afternoon.

The boys and I were in the kitchen cooking and I thought I would take a few photos and load it up as one of our Little Chef recipes. With my battery being low I grabbed my charger and plugged it in; disaster struck and everything instantly turned off but this time I couldn’t get anything working again.

After an hour of unplugging everything in the flat I was lucky to manage to get all but the ring circuit and sockets back. Yet, this has left me and the boys in a technology free house!

It is amazing how much you use technology.

I didn’t really think that we use that much but when it gets taken away you start to realise.

I am now making my tea and coffee from boiling water on the hob and running my freezer from an extension lead that is plugged into a master socket.

Despite these two aspects there is very little to do apart from wait for the associations’ electrician to come out.

I am extremely lucky to have to battery packs for my phone that holds several charges so I can at least charge my phone up every night; however tonight is its last charge.

My laptop had enough battery to write and schedule enough blog posts so that was handy otherwise my blog would have gone quiet too.

It is okay through the day as most of our home school activities are hands on and away from technology but it is the evenings that have made the difference.

I am not using my phone as much, not writing, not watching TV and not listening to the radio. When did it get to the point that this was standard behaviour? I never realised I was so dependent on it.

Although we rarely use anything this has shocked me to see how much we do use everyday.

There are elements to it that I am enjoying though:

I am forced into finding other ways to entertain myself so I am finally getting some time to do some reading and drawing. It is also helping me feel a little more organised around the house.

Despite my enjoyment and reconnection to hobbies I enjoy I would like it to be resolved.

Today the plan is to go back to the housing association and chase up for the electrician and hopefully it can be sorted quickly; hopefully before I take up knitting and cross-stitch to keep me entertained ;) 

So in the meantime can someone lift that curse for me?