‘orror des orages or storm damage (I can't get the title in the normal place....)

We are temporarily without internet in Sigogne due to a heavy storm (orage) on Saturday night, which tripped all out all the electrical supplies to the house. I still do not know if we were hit directly by the lightening or the electrical supply pylon outside got hit. The flash of light lit up the whole area as if it was day, and crack of thunder was the loudest I have ever heard, then there was a little fizz that came just after which was apparently the result of a strike. At the time I did not realise that we had lost all the power and we went back to bed oblivious to the problem. I discovered it later in the morning when I went to make a cup of tea. Luckily Christian, our electrician, had just installed a new breaker to protect the incoming power to the house and that had tripped, however not before the computers, internet modem and the washing machine had all had their fuses blown. So I sat with my tea on Sunday morning replacing fuses in plugs and then trying to get things to work again. Most things are sorted out now but it looks like we have lost our newest monitor which refuses to come back to life, the Orange modem is looking decidedly unhappy and our printer is refusing to print, but we are all OK so that’s the main thing. We have never been hit by lightening before to be honest I don’t think we will ever know if it was the house or the pylon that got hit, but apparently its not that uncommon here, so I will be rushing out to buy some power filters for the computer equipment before anything else gets zapped!

Work wise I finished off installing the shower this weekend which took a lot longer than I thought, and I have learned a thing or two (as this is the first time I have installed a shower) along the way, which is just as well as there are 5 more to install!

I’m sure you have all been waiting to hear about this week’s store report, well it was only a flying visit to Castorama with nothing special to report except they appear to be cheaper than Leroy Merlin. I then had to wiz off to the airport to stand in the check in queue, no internet, no online check in. I also discovered that the flight time had been changed from 11:25 to 11:10, though that did not make any difference to the arrival time in the UK. I think the change of time caught quiet a few people out, but in the end it did not matter as the plane arrived late from the UK, so we took off at the normal time.