Challenge number 2 for the week

Just when we were recovering from the hospital episode, another drama hit us early this morning, quite literally.

Thunderstorms had been forecast for the area, and they arrived in the night, passing over quite close to us, and waking us all up in the early hours of the morning.  We were all sitting on our bed at about 4.30am when there was a horrendously loud bang, and we all jumped!

A power cut accompanied the sound, and the girls and I came downstairs to check that all was well, and to silence the alarm, which had gone off in symphony with several of the neighbours’.  Looking around the sitting room with torches, we could see smoke in the beams of light, and we could smell a scorched aroma, and all of us thought it was the tv.  We went back upstairs and told the FH that we thought a new tv was probably on the cards.

Getting up this morning, I noticed that the FH’s copper kettle was on its side by the fireplace, and that several of the tiles in the fireplace had broken as well as one having come off the wall. I then wondered if the lightning had struck the metal chimney outside….

Having sorted out the electricity supply and got that going again by getting the trip switches all back in the right positions, I tried to make the telephone work, and that was when we discovered what we now believe to be the reason for the enormous bang in the night!

The main socket where the phone line enters the house had been blown apart, and the phone power supply had also been blown off from the main part of its plug.  As well as the damage to the tiles, the wooden fireplace surround has also been damaged and there was some wood from the wood boxes for the fire which had rearranged itself.

It all seems consistent with a big electric shock [lightning?] coming in via the phone socket and travelling across the room from the socket across the fireplace.  The shock also seems to have damaged my BT router so I am now on a 3 dongle as a temporary measure, and our upstairs tv/dvd combo machine is as dead as a dodo.

I have had a couple of hours {I kid you not} being passed from one BT department to another and we have an engineer coming Friday morning to look at the socket, and a new Home Hub on its way as well, for free, having re-contracted for another year at a slightly better rate.  I have also been on to the insurers about the other damage and a claims company will be in touch tomorrow – replacing the tiles around the fire will be a big job because the stove will have to come out, and it is more than the FH can do with all his problems at the moment, so this could be where having insurance is worthwhile.

There is a glimmer of good news today, though, in that the EFG had her interview at the passport office and it seems to have gone well, so we are hopeful that her passport will indeed be here within the promised ten working days.  Fingers crossed!