I was luxuriating in the sensuous feeling of water cascading over my body when it happened.
It was Boxing night and I was thinking about the evening ahead working at the local pub. I didn’t feel like working that night after an hectic Christmas Eve and Christmas day behind the bar.
What I would rather do was curl up in front of the fire with a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates and a good novel. No television to disturb my quiet pleasure, at least not until later on.
I remembered that my all time favourite film Psycho was on at midnight and made a mental note to record it. A pity because the conditions were ideal that night for maximum enjoyment. It was already dark and the wind was howling enough to add a perfectly creepy atmosphere to the suspense provided by the film.
Shivering, I recalled the tension as the woman was attacked in the shower. Pictured the knife being raised, piercing the shower curtain, entering her body, blood mingling with water as it swirled and flowed down the drain.
A noise startled me. I laughed aloud at seeing the blind being shifted by the wind and not Norman Bates.
As I closed the window I told myself off for thinking about Psycho while in the shower. Why couldn’t I think about my second favourite film Jaws? My vivid imagination produced a ridiculous yet fearful picture of an open sharks mouth coming up through the plughole.
I was backing away when the room plunged into darkness; water stopped falling and the comforting purr of the wall heater ended.
Total silence – complete darkness. I waited fearfully listening to nothing. My mind saw someone entering the house. A gloved hand reaching out to turn off the power …
My fear grew as I heard a door creek open downstairs, footsteps slowly mounting the steps, getting closer as I stood there passively awaiting my fate.
I was horrified to realise that I hadn’t locked the bathroom door. Hoping that it wasn’t too late I jumped out of the shower to a clatter of knocked over bottles which would surely warn the intruder of my presence.
The footsteps were getting close, would I reach the door in time? I had my hand on the bolt as I heard my daughter’s voice call out “Mum, what’s happened?”
“It must be a blown fuse”. I replied.
I’d forgotten that my daughter was visiting for Christmas and that I wasn’t on my own in the house as normal.
This happened 12 years ago. It wasn’t a blown fuse but something more major that I had to get an electrician to fix the next day. We both finished getting ready, her for a night out and myself for work at a neighbour’s house and I took the contents of the freezer to the pub to store in their big freezer.
What was really odd was that the following year on Boxing Day afternoon I was madly washing and ironing clothes to take with me on holiday to Malta the next day when the power went again. The trip switches didn’t work and there was a smell of burning around the main fuse box.
I called the Yorkshire Electricity Board emergency line and an electrician arrived at around 4.00 pm. It turned out that the YEB fuse box had burnt itself out. The electrician told me that the fuse box was around 60 years old and that he was surprised that the house hadn’t set on fire because the main wires leading into the fuse box must have been slowly burning themselves out for some time. I would have pushed the fuse box into overload with my higher than normal in a short time use of electric which probably saved the house and my life from the smoldering wires gradually setting the wooden shelves above on fire.
Isn’t it weird that the only times that I have had problems with the electricity were on Boxing Day two years running.
