Crumptales: Seeing your names in lights, OK, raspberries...

It’s my birthday today. I have had two consecutive weekends of birthday fun. So today, the day that 36 years ago I arrived in the world, I am having a fun night in with Chad. We have had a ‘Chad Special’ meal (yummy chicken with gorgonzola and Parma ham) and we are watching Desperate Housewives as I type. Heaven.

Yesterday we had gang fun at Charlotte and Brendon’s. I got to feed my godson, who is having solid food shovelled into his mouth for two weeks now. It was brilliant fun. He was spitting out the veg (carrot and broccoli) but has miraculously learnt how to swallow the sweet apple and pear option – sweet tooth (well gums) – good boy. Anyway the little angel was put to bed and the grown-ups drank bear / wine and had a lovely Thai take-out. Fun, fun, fun.

The highlight of the evening was (apart from hanging out with my best friends) my birthday cake. Charlotte made it, it was delicious, and most importantly it had my name spelt out in raspberries – how fabulous. Thanks Charlotte.

The cake itself nearly included essence of lottiedigits. Not heard of it? Well let me explain. The Lotts was making the cake and was using a tea towel over the bowl to prevent the cake mix being splashed out by the electric whisk. The towel then got caught in the whisk and pulled it into the metal blades followed by the Lott’s hand which ended up mangled in with the whisk. After a bit of screaming good old Bren ran in the kitchen and hit the eject button to release the whiskie bits, towel and fingers.

Thank goodness that the cake mix was fine – otherwise Lotts would have been most annoyed.

Tripping the light, not so, fantastic

Last Easter weekend I reported the glue incident in relation to my DIYing. There was a further incident that weekend that involved me nearly electrocuting myself!

I have one of those handy gadgets to detect if there in any electrical wires behind a wall. I spent six hours last Saturday putting up this nifty metal sheeting on the kitchen wall. It was a real fiddle but I managed it (although during the last half an hour the fiddle factor went through the roof – as did my blood pressure). Before commencing this I ran this gadget (not sure what the proper name for it is) over the wall where I was working to check for metal and wires. There was a wire so I avoided drilling there. Simple hey!

Anyway I was packing up my tool boxes feeling very pleased with myself and then we decided to put up this magnetic knife strip on the wall. I totally forgot to do the gadget check. Chad was holding the hoover as I drilled through the tiles. Hole one no issue, hole two was a whole other story. As the drill went in there was a MASSIVE flash of light from the hole and all the lights at the back of the house went out. Chad and I just stared at each other for a few seconds in total shock. I had drilled straight through a wire. I was SO depressed for hours after this incident – I hate it when I am a muppet.

Anyway we spent most of this week walking around in the dark, but our electrician, Nico, came yesterday and fixed it all. He told us that the new consumer electrical unit that we had put in a month or so ago (as part of doing up the bathroom and kitchen) had saved my life!!! The old 1960’s one that we had in before wouldn’t have tripped so quickly and your truly might have been a gonna. How scary is that.

I live to tell the tale – result. Anyone need some DIY doing!!!