Mammoth Proportions

Well I had an eventful day yesterday.

My Sister and her Hubby moved house the day before and I heard from my Step Mum that my Sis was incredibly stressed. There's only one thing worse than moving hose, and that's moving house in the snow. There's only one thing worse than that and that's doing it all yourself because your Hubby's in work (I am familiar with that task). There's only one thing worse than that and that's doing it 3 weeks before Christmas. And just when it can't get any worse, doing it with a curious 4 year old just takes the biscuit.

So, with it being my day off yesterday, I asked if I could help, and my Sis asked me to look after "the big C" for a couple of hours to give her chance to make some headway in the new house. Not being used to little ones, I was a little daunted, but I've been looking forward to being able to have her so, of course I jumped at the chance.

I enrolled the Hubby and off we went for a walk with the hounds in the snow, followed by a bit of scran in the cafe. It was lush, so very enjoyable, and we were so pleased she felt comfortable to nod off in the car on the way home. Exactly HOW CUTE IS SHE?!?!

So, after that loveliness, I enjoyed my evening sat on my sofa making my dried orange and cinnamon stick Christmas decorations. I really like them a lot, very rustic and a lovely process also, if slightly irritating now that most people don't have airing cupboards. Even the "s" setting on the oven is too hot and the oranges burn in their own juice. A lot of trial and error. My Spaniels and Labrador really enjoy eating the dried oranges, though so I'll have to keep an eye on them!

And then I went on to the Marmalade. Oh the joy of Marmalade!

Having decided on the recipe to use, I decided that it would be a good idea to bang out the first bit of the process last night so I could do the second bit today. This involved simmering my fruit in several pints of water for three hours, so I put it on, and nodded off under a blanket on the sofa.

I awoke, bizarrely, 2 minutes before the timer on the cooker went off, so when it did, a lot higher and louder than usual, I shot down the kitchen stairs to turn it off. The dogs were going bonkers as it was that high pitched that you couldn't really tell if it was deafening or not. Could I turn it off?! Could I heck as like.

So I wrestled with the panel, in the near dark as it's such an easy thing to turn off (under normal circumstances) while the thing screamed for attention at the top of it's voice - at this point it's 02:50, and I'm starting to flap! It wouldn't go off!

As I cannot reach the plug for the cooker easily, I couldn't just knock it off, so I contemplated knocking the mains off to re set it and hopefully not wake the street any further, so imagine my horror when the bloomin' thing starts sparking and smoking, electrical circuits bursting into little flames so I'm thinking what the hell do I do?! Watch it to see if it gets any worse, run up and knock the power off, get the fire extinguisher or shout for my Hubby and then the smoke starts pouring out so I'm faced with the reality of setting off the smoke alarms at 3am on top of the still screaming cooker timer ....so I ran off and knocked the power off.

Slightly relieved, I waited a few seconds then knocked it back on, hoping it'd have re set the bloomin' thing, it had not, so I observed the last few circuits burning out. Slighlty shaky, I don't mind telling you.

So I knocked the light on in the kitchen to inspect the damage and get my breath back, and the bloomin' halogen bulb exploded nearly shooting me out of my fleece leopard print dressing gown, and blew all the lights in the house. You couldn't make it up!

So I went off to bed and was trying to calm myself down and contemplate the best thing to do when my previously oblivious hubby woke up. I told him what had happened and that we might freeze to death overnight because without the power we have no heating, and he kindly got up and located the cooker plug. We could then put the power back on, but the teenager had to have a shower in the dark this morning - just the light from a small lamp! She was thrilled!

.....oh, I can laugh now!