Goodness, it has been a Day.
I worked late last night, and was soundly asleep when the telephone rang, so much so that I could not work out why somebody was going on about coming to see us later on.
It was the television engineer, who had to explain himself several times. He asked about parking but that turned out to be beyond my sleep-addled brain, and I had to call him back later.
He said that he would come at around twelve, and so I had to leap out of bed to do the dog-emptying thing before he did. It takes about an hour and a half to get over the fells and down, and I did not want to miss him.
We will not forget Clean Sheets Day, either.
Once that was accomplished, we dashed off up the fell, and arrived back to find both Lucy and Oliver milling about the kitchen. Oliver was getting ready for work. He had got a shift at the local cocktail bar, whose owner is one of my favourite taxi customers, and who had kindly agreed to give him a try.
I like the idea of having a son who is an expert cocktail-maker. I think a happy old age will probably rest on having such magnificently-educated children.
I told Lucy about the imminent television engineer, and then it occurred to me, in one of those heart-sink moments, that the lights in the living room did not work.
The light switch, much appreciated by Ritalin Boy in his very early youth, is the dimming sort, and had stopped working.
We had purchased a replacement during Mark’s last visit home but never got round to installing it.
It was very dark in the living room, which, you might remember, is under the ground.
I explained this to Lucy and we instantly set about frantically installing the new light switch. For those of an anxious disposition, yes, we did remember to turn the circuit off at the box first, which is how it has come about that I am still here to write a diary this evening, and am not fried and stuck to the ceiling.
It was complicated. It was a dimmer switch with three buttons, one of which could be switched on and off upstairs and again upstairs above that.
We decided to apply the simple method of taking the wires out of the old switch one at a time, and adding them into the new.
We did this but despite our most careful, painstaking efforts, in the dark with a mobile telephone torch and an inadequate screwdriver, it did not work.
We could not understand this at all, and whilst we were flapping about with the light switch hanging off the wall, the television engineer arrived.
We rushed around finding lamps that could be lit to illuminate his labours, but it turned out that he had a torch in his pocket anyway.
He agreed that the television did not work and said it was because it wasn’t getting any power.
It is always worth calling in an expert.
He knew how to take televisions off the wall, so we did that. Then he took a photograph of the serial number, told us that he would order a part, drank a cup of coffee and departed, asking doubtfully if we had remembered to turn the circuit off before we disconnected the light switch.
In the meantime Lucy had worked it out. The new light switch had everything in different places from the old one. We scowled and stuck our tongues out, but eventually worked out that the wires that had been in L1 were now in L2, and so we swapped everything over, and discovered that it worked.
I will not bother explaining that. It is one of those technical things, to be understood only by technically-aware people. If there are any of those among you, doubtless you will understand already. The rest of you need not trouble yourselves.
We screwed everything back together and Lucy said that since we were on a roll, she would carry on and change the one on the bathroom, which also needed replacing.
She did that whilst I faffed about. I had discovered at the very eleventh hour that not only did I have to submit my dissertation, I also had to download and sign a form that said I had submitted a dissertation.
It was a good job somebody else had discovered this and announced it on the telephone chat group, because otherwise I would have been formless and cast out into the void.
I hastily filled it in and dispatched it.
Then Lucy and I wrestled with the bathroom light switch, and once it was done, decided we would go around the house and replace all extinguished lightbulbs.
Oliver had to help with the ones in his bedroom when he came home, because of his height advantage.
We were very pleased with ourselves when we had finished.
There is light everywhere at the merest flick of a switch.
I have got clean sheets and very soon the television will work again.
What a splendid day.
