Ze Flashing Lights!

Those of more mature years will remember the wonderful spoof TV comedy series "Allo! Allo!" from thirty odd years ago - I'm sure it's still shown on some Freeview channel somewhere (or else BBC will show it when they finish "Dad's Army" again).  It was all silliness about a cafe owner who was reluctantly involved with the French Resistance in WW2, in case you're wondering.  One of their running jokes was how the knobs on the elderly mother's bed flashed when "London" was calling "Night'awk"on the radio.

Why am I telling you this? Well, we have experienced the same sort of flashing lights over some period of time. The problem was usually associated with high winds (in my trees) and so it seemed to me to be something to do with the above ground cables which supply the mains electricity to all the houses here. The supply to our house is via a cable hung from the terraced house on one side, through the trees to the corner at the front left; there it splits and our feed goes left around the fascia while the feed for next door routes to the right along our fascia (old photo right; the cable is not visible but goes from the top left corner of the picture to a point above my head, level with the gutter).  I was misled by the same symptom happening to other people locally which caused me to believe that it was affecting a good number of houses.  When we moved in I had some interesting times with the electricity supply (which I mentioned in this entry) as the old cable was perished and totally covered by the ivy.  Although it took a fair few phone calls, the job did get done properly and so I thought it was unlikely that the flashing issue was with my end of the cable.

However, I got fed up with the flashing in the high winds a couple of weeks ago - it wasn't just the flashing, but the fact that it tripped our answerphone which then reset itself saying "Answer on; calls will be answered in five rings".  When the power dip is repetitive, you hear "Answer on - Answer on - Ans - Answer -Ans" etc which is really annoying when you know you are alone in the house.  Curiously the power issue only seemed to affect the phone.  No digital clocks reset themselves and there was no other symptom, until the day when (unusually) I had the digital radio on and it all went garbled for some time; it only came good when I switched it off and on.  Then later the same day it went off entirely for over a minute and I decided this was too much so called the electricity supplier.  Of course, I got cut off once making that call by the answerphone resetting itself!  Aaaaagh!

Anyway, at last the problem was reported and they promptly came with the emergency team.  To my surprise they reckoned there was indeed a problem with the new connection - it had overheated (WHY?) and melted the plastic sheathing.  Worryingly, they said that it did happen sometimes even with new bits (but I'm a Chartered Engineer and I like to know WHY!). It's been replaced now and the problem has not recurred, so tranquility rules again.