Is it Monday already.....?

It's a dreary, damp November day here on England's south coast.  Small Dog has disdained the offer of a run round the garden and is doing the only sensible thing on a morning like this..... curling up in her warm, comfortable bed with her blanky wrapped snugly around her.

Sadly I have no such option as I have to get down to some serious work involving a mini drill, soldering iron and teeny tiny electric sockets.

I've been called out by Albert Lowther, proprietor of the vintage toy shop, to see to his electrics, which have developed an intermittent fault.

I just hate intermittent faults.  They're a real bugger to deal with. Having failed to track down the source of the problem last week, I botched up a stop-gap solution.  Needless to say, Albert wasn't happy.

I don't blame him.

He not only still had an intermittent lighting fault, but his erstwhile 'electrical engineer' had engineered a temporary solution of  such mind-boggling stupidity that even Heath Robinson would have disowned it.

So today I have to do a complete and thorough inspection and testing of every single tape run and electrical socket in the entire shop. Which, if you remember is a very lot of testing.

Exhibit A - post from September 2007 demonstrating the scale of the problem.  It's my own fault for deciding to electrify every bay of every display unit, leading to a spaghetti tangle of wires and plugs on every floor.  Looking for an intermittent fault in that lot makes finding a needle in a haystack a piece of cake.

However, I have to sympathise with Mr Lowther.  Ever eager to embrace new technology, he was at the cutting edge when he had his ancient gas lamps replaced with new-fangled electric light bulbs and when fully lit his shop is a sight to behold.

Don't say anything to him but I strongly suspect that his pet rat Archimedes is not blameless.  He has a penchant for chewing through just about everything and if I find any evidence of ratty teethmarks on the wiring his fur will be on a slack nail. *

So here's hoping I don't electrocute myself, get second degree burns from the soldering iron, or set the shop on fire. 


I may be gone for some time.....

* Scottish expression -  yer jake-ett's ona slack nail  (your jacket is on a slack nail)

 English translation - You're about to get fired. (This means the hook your jacket is on is loose and your  jacket is about to fall to the floor. The phrase is just a metaphor...
Note: sometimes the word "shooglie" is used instead of slack.