An old TV aerial post on our chimney stack was moving quite a bit in the recent high winds. As the stack passes through our bedroom, it was noisy enough to keep my wife awake, and disturb me a fair bit. It was one of those things that I had been aware of for a while - but it got worse over last weekend.
On Monday I looked up local aerial companies and chose one who said he could come that day and fix it. His price seemed reasonable, so I booked him in. He arrived about two hours later and proceeded to take the aerial post down. All well and good. As I went to see how he was doing as he packed up he said that his hat had blown off in the wind (it was windy, and cold - trying to snow), and was on next doors roof. We had a look, and could see the hat.
I said that I had a long pole in the garage and would fetch it. Going to the garage I spotted the pole behind some furniture that we have stored there (another story), and reached for it - as I did this, I dislodged a spade which had been hanging on a nail in the wall. The spade fell heavily, and I moved it out of the way to reach the pole. We managed to get the hat, I paid the guy, all was well.
Today (Thursday) I was in the garage looking for something else when I noticed that a battery charger which I had charging a battery had no lights. I followed the extension lead into which it was plugged back to the wall socket. What I found was that the lead had been neatly chopped in two by the spade as it fell a few days before. Turning off the socket I removed the plug and rescued the lead - it came completely apart in may hand.
I worked out that if I fitted a new plug, the lead would still be long enough to serve the purpose for which I had been using it. Long story short - it took me another 20 minutes to find a plug and fit it, test the lead and refit it into it's place in the garage. The old plug was really old - so much so that it wasn't a safety plug and still had solid metal live and neutral pins - so I didn't want to use it again. As nearly all new appliances have moulded plugs I ended up cannibalising another, shorter, extension lead.
The battery charger doesn't seem to work any more now. I can only assume that something else blew - but that bears further investigation. The RCD for the garage didn't blow in the main fusebox when the lead got chopped - which is a good thing because our freezer wouldn't like it much if it did.
If I hadn't tried to help the guy get his hat back.............
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