smoking electrician monkeys

huzzah! my house has heat!

The electrician who usually subcontracts for my Plumber (see, I'm getting all proprietorial* about them, which means they must be doin' good) has vanished into the electrician ether... Plumber In Chief is miffed about this but managed to scare up two replacements for this evening. So at 7ish they all three arrived, Plumber In Chief and his two un-tested new sidekicks... sidekicks stopped outside for a smoke, and returned there for nicotine top-ups at regular intervals over the evening... much to everyone else's mild irritation since none of the other four people in the house smokes and all of us wanted the job done with asap.

Hey ho, they did (it seems) get the job done, albeit in a slightly haphazard way - Hamish, Anita and I retreated downstairs to start putting furniture back together in Anita's room (which has seen the most upheaval of the three bedrooms in order to accommodate a radiator, and needed some re-thinking) "give us a shout when the power's going off" says I as we depart, "yeah, of course" replies Plumber In Chief... an hour or so later we're all plunged into darkness: electrician monkeys seem to have been either unsure or just uncommunicative about exactly when they'd turn the power off and upstairs is in confused darkness too - nobody's torches seem to work except mine so I distribute them and wait patiently for power to return... in between fag breaks *sigh*

but now all is well - the system works, there are some loose ends to be tidied up tomorrow but my house is warm throughout for the first time in the three years I've lived here - that's really something! Anita's scheming to christen the shower too - technically we shouldn't because one of the 'loose ends' is installing a thermostaticly regulated mixer so that we can shower under a safely temperature controlled niagra, but Hamish and I have both promised not to turn on taps while she's in there so she'll be fine...

yay for the new heating system! and yay for my Plumbers! they did good.

*It's all totally appropriate and platonic, anyone who's having tradesman fantasies on my behalf can just quit it - lovely though they all three are, none of them is lovely that way OK? they're just very good at their job