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Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Five weeks ago today, the council's building contractors informed us in broken English of their intention to install new dry riser mains in our block of flats. Well, the work took place yesterday, and I'm pleased to report that English isn't the only thing they can mangle. They've also broken our lift. And our internal lighting.

I arrived home from work yesterday to find two workmen in the entrance hall downstairs (or 'the lobby' as Lisa likes to call it in a vain attempt to make the place sound classy), who told me that they'd accidentally shorted the power to both the lift and the lights in the stairwells and communal hallways, but that they hoped to have it back on within half an hour.

That was 5pm yesterday. It's now 8:30pm on Wednesday, and it's still out. They've put an emergency lighting pole on each floor, and stripy hazard tape all over the place. Taking the rubbish down to the communal bin area makes you feel like Sigourney Weaver at the end of Alien. It's all dark corridors, flickering lights, trailing wires and warning signs. If it wasn't for Santa's sleigh next door, we wouldn't be able to see a thing.

The amusing thing though is that Lisa hasn't realised. She and Amelie have been snowed in for two days, and haven't stepped foot outside the front door. She has no idea that I've been creeping through a sci-fi movie every time I go out. I'm only writing this blog post because I can't be bothered to tell her.

But that aside, after two days of coming home (up the stairs) and asking Amelie what she's been doing, I decided to change tack today, and ask her instead why half the Christmas tree baubles appear to be lying on the floor. I managed to capture the moment when the full implications of my question suddenly dawned on her...


Although she didn't let it bother her.

7 comments:

Phil's Mum said...

How does she know about being in 'big trouble'?

Phil's Mum said...

Have just realised - its a quote from Stuart Little 2!!!

Phil said...

She's such a film buff. I should show her my old video of King Lear and get her quoting a bit of Shakespeare.

Dave said...

Do you have CCTV in your flat?  You seem to capture almost everything that's going on.

Lisa said...

She knows about it because she's always in it.

BS6 said...

Love that Alien reference

Anonymous said...

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