no more blackouts - john earl
You know that bloke who's always on his knees, in the pitch dark with his head stuck in a tiny cupboard looking for a scrap of fusewire?
Yeah?
You know the guy - he's had a few drinks because he was at a party about ten seconds ago but now he's got some serious, serious work to do.
Sound familiar?
That bloke, you've seen him, with his worried girlfriend and three best mates bunched behind waving little hot matches around his ears?
Got him now? Yeah? Well, that bloke was me.
My fusebox was so old it was almost an antique. It was like one of those classic french bread tins you see in the right type of second-hand shop in the North Laines. It was a collector's item. A real gem. It should have been in some engineering museum between a bust of Alexander Graham Bell and the original Van der Graaf generator. That's where it should have been - and not in my house in 2006 pretending to be a fusebox.
But seriously, for some crazy reason we just put up with it, don't we? Once you've changed the fuse, you just shut the cupboard, put it out of your mind and carry on with the party - admittedly with the oven off and with the stereo tweaked down a bit.
Anyway, my girlfriend's now my wife and we've got a baby girl on the way and although we won't be cranking up the stereo for a while we will need the oven, shower and the washing machine for the foreseeable. All of which got me thinking about my little collector's item, humming and buzzing away in the hallway cupboard ...
Wouldn't be quite such a funny story the next time we blackout.
I'd be on my knees again in the never-ending search for fusewire. My wife would be close behind but now you can swap out the giggling friends for a screaming infant. This time instead of being drunk we'd all be sleep deprived, and suddenly the whole episode would have a distinct tinge of sadness and failure about it ... needless to say, a sobering thought. Needless to say, a dad-to-be has to do what a dad-to-be has to do. Needless to say, I rang fuseboxheroes.
Yeah - let's be honest - a new fusebox is something I'd rather not spend my money on. Like a new roof or new brake pads. I'd rather these things fixed themselves or were other people's responsibilities but they're not - they're mine. And if I'm going to have to have a new fusebox, or new roof, or new brake pads, then I want it done sooner rather than later, I want it done affordably, but most of all I want it done properly.
I'm not going to sing the praises of fuseboxheroes. They're a good bunch and have doubtless got people who'll do that. All I'll say is that they did what they said they would do, on the day they said they would do it, and the invoice amount was the same as the estimate. I'd happily recommend them and I'd also use them again but, as the electrician said when he handed over the certificates, he shouldn't need to come back until my daughter's nearly ten.
John Earl - Marine Parade