I felt a little groggy this morning although I didn't go mad with the wine last night, but I was awake at 7am which was maybe a bit too early for my liking seeing as we didn't get to bed until 1am last night!
We had the first of the power cuts at about 8am and although it was only off for a couple of seconds, it was long enough to knock all the clocks off and for the television to have to be initialised again. I was upstairs when it went off for a second time and on this occasion it tripped one of the switches so we had no power to the clocks again or the TV but the main lights still worked. Our alarm beeped but I reset it as normal and then Keith and I went to take Sophie to work.
She was in at 9.30am this morning and on the way home Mike called to say that there'd been another power cut and the alarm couldn't be turned off at all. We hurried home as fast as we could to discover the alarm bells ringing really loudly both outside and inside!
All attempts to stop the noise failed but we did manage to silence the outside alarm. The constant loud beeping in the house was intolerable! Keith and I rushed around - he trying to fix the problem while I searched in vain for the manual. I eventually found that but it didn't give us any help on how to stop the incessant wailing. By now it was ringing outside as well as inside the house and there was no way of stopping it. I looked up our alarm system on the internet and the main problem seemed to be the battery which we had never replaced in the 15 years of living here!
In the end I called out an alarm service company and the man I spoke to sounded very calm and wise. He said he had a battery and would be with us within the hour. I dread to think what would have happened if he hadn't been able to come out and fix the problem! We would have had to have sat up all night as it periodically rang loudly outside until we'd isolated the power, but then it would start up again five minutes later!
Thankfully by lunchtime it was all sorted and Keith and I were £110 poorer, but it was worth every penny! At least we now have a new battery which shouldn't play up if we have a power cut!
The plan had been to clean the conservatory roof today, and all the windows, and despite our stressful start to the day we decided to go ahead and do some cleaning as the glass was badly stained with a greenish mould. It was hard work especially as we seemed to spread the leaves and debris over the roof as we cleaned! In the end we just used our normal garden hose to rinse it all off and when we finished it looked so much better! I gave all the windows and windowsills a good scrub so by 4pm we were both shattered!
I had a bath and then prepared the dinner before taking Heather home (she'd been with us since 11am this morning) and picking up Sophie from work. Both Keith and I cooked dinner - the Cheat's Chicken Kiev that the children love - and I was very thankful when it was time to sit down and relax!
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