Okay, so I was having a bit of a chuckle yesterday!

You lambaste me with comments telling me to be careful with electricity and you are absolutely right. I was a wee bit careless with my power but I should maybe give a little background.

My first experience of electricity happened when I was a wee kid and thought it would be interesting to stick a piece of bare wire into a power socket. That didn’t work out too well but it gave me a healthy respect for the stuff.

Many moons later I joined the ranks of The Worker and my second job [the first lasted less than two weeks] involved working on television sets. Actually it was more a case of working in them – powered on and the back of the set removed so I could poke around in the circuitry. Sets in those days were valve powered and there was a lot of very high voltages involved [tens of thousands of volts] so not only had I to avoid touching anything but there were parts of the set where is was dangerous to go near as the voltage was high enough to arc. Safety consisted of my standing on a rubber mat and that was about it. Remarkably I got very few shocks though others in the factory seemed to make a habit of it. Remarkably, no one died.

My next job was completely different. I went from working on televisions to providing signals for them – the good old cable television [The Pipe as it was colloquially called]. Part of my job involved outdoor work, up ladders and working on amplifiers. These were run on 50 Volts so that would just give a tingle – more of a surprise than a shock. However I frequently had to work on the transformers which were directly connected to the overhead power lines via an MCB. Those overhead lines were a curse as they were frequently only inches away from me and the insulation was very suspect.

All of this taught me some interesting lessons. Never touch anything remotely or possibly live with anything other than an insulated tool. Alway hold a wire by its insulation. Assume everything is live. If in doubt, tap a wire against something earthed to check for sparks.

I maybe played up my experience with the outdoor light the other day. I did make one elementary mistake however. Years ago I took a photo of the fuse panel [all circuit breakers and no fuses], printed it off and carefully marked down which breaker fired which circuit. I keep that page in the fuse box. My mistake was a simple case of a Senior Moment. I tripped the power circuit to the affected area where I should have tripped the lighting circuit. It was a simple mistake but as I was applying all my other usual precautions, it wasn’t really dangerous. It was a Woops moment rather than a Fucking Hell moment.

When I left the cable business to go into computers I “accidentally” forgot to return all my equipment. I still have all the screwdrivers but lost the various phase testers and volt-meters. I do still have the ladder though!

I must get around to returning it sometime?