Sleepless in Crapchester

The exploitation film reviews have been rather dominating things around here of late, I know. This isn't a sign that I'm planning to turn this into a blog entirely devoted to such things. It is just that with all the crap which has been going on in my life of late, I've found it easier to write about movies than real life. However, things have moved on: the council have removed part of the ivy which was blocking my guttering and causing the damp disaster in my spare room. Whilst the issue isn't completely resolved yet, it has already improved the situation - when it rains, water is no longer pouring down onto my front door, so it and the door frame are no longer being warped by damp, making the door easier to open and close. It has also ensured that the damp problem in the hall way has been resolved. There have also been developments on the BT front, with my phone connection having apparently returned to normal. The problem is that this has happened before, only for the problems to reoccur within a couple of weeks. So, I'm taking some precautions to protect my broadband router, by installing an in-line surge protector (the problems have been caused by a defective line card at the exchange sending too powerful an electric pulse down the line to ring the phone - this was also knocking the router off line and, eventually, would have damaged it).

Mind you, whilst some problems are, apparently, on the way to being solved, others have manifested themselves: namely the power outages this terrace of houses have previously suffered have started reoccurring. To digress slightly, I often have trouble sleeping and even when I do sleep I suffer from disrupted sleep patterns, usually waking up two or three times in the course of the night. Which is why I found myself working on a story for The Sleaze at two thirty in the morning, when the power suddenly went, plunging me into darkness and cutting off by internet access. Now, my immediate reaction was simply to go to bed and try to sleep. But it occurred to me that I was probably the only person on the terrace awake at that hour and if I didn't report the outage, then nobody would until the morning, meaning that we'd all wake up to no power. So, I dutifully stumbled around, found the number for the electricity suppliers and rang them to report the outage, with the intention of then heading for my bed. However, I tarried in the living room, having decided to drink some water before turning in. At which point the phone rang. Puzzled, I tentatively answered it to find the electricity people on the line telling me that the engineer would be at the sub-station within the next half hour. Great, I thought, but why are you telling me? Because, it transpired, they wanted me to stay up and confirm to the engineer when my power was restored! I tried pointing out that he'd know if the power was back on because the local street lights would come back on. But no, despite my protestations that I had to go to bed and get some sleep, as I was the only one to report the outage, they apparently had to ensure my power was back on before the engineer could leave the area!

In the end I gave them my mobile number and told them to call me on that, promising that I would keep it by my bed so that its ringing would wake me! In the event, I only dozed until they called me at about four thirty - the bedside clock was back on, so I confirmed the power had been restored (it had been on for about half an hour by then) and finally got to sleep. Consequently, following my night of next to no sleep, I've spent today stumbling around like a zombie. Right now, I feel exhausted. But I know that when I finally get to bed, I'll be wide awake again. Anyway, the moral of all this is that it really doesn't pay to be neighbourly and try to do everyone else a favour; it will only inconvenience you. Hopefully, something like normal service will be resumed here tomorrow.