I was sitting here yesterday minding my own business and doing what I have to do….  And the power went.

Puff.  Just like that.

I heard some commotion out in the lane, so I went out.  There was a cheerful bloke with a yellow hard hat on standing beside an ESB lorry.

“Howya,” says he “We just cut your power off, but it’s back on.”

“I know,” says I.

“I hope we didn’t inconvenience you.”

“No.  Not at all.  I have just lost my book I was writing, so that’s a few months work down the drain, but that’s all.”

“Do you not have copies?”

“Nah!  Backups are for sissies.   Don’t worry about it.  It wasn’t any good anyway.”

“That’s all right so.”

He then went on to explain that for reasons best known to themselves, they are going to power my house directly off the pole and not from the house next door.  I think the neighbours are getting tired of all my messing.  It suits me, because I can burn their house to the ground now without worrying about losing my power supply.

So they stuck a cherry-picker in my garden and put a new bracket on my gable and started running cables all over the place.  They connected a black cable which is to fly over to the pole, and they connected a white cable which is to run around the eaves and into my fuse box.  They buggered off then and left these cables lying all over the place.  They said they would be back today to finish the job.

Big mistake.

I worked hard.  I had some spare cable of my own that looks exactly like theirs.  So the cable they will connect today will not be the cable they thought they left here yesterday.

The upshot is that I will be getting free electricity.

And the neighbours will be metered for all the power used in all the other houses in the lane.

Never mess with an artist.