The lights are going out all over Britain

Well... all over the house anyway. Well, the ground floor.

Nat stepped into the hall around 9pm last night. Dusk had fallen and darkness lit the hall with a soul-sapping lack of light blacker than the black pit of the blackest black thing anyone ever went back to, when they were trying to go back to black. She turned the light on and it didn't. She did the only sensible thing.

"Dad? The lights aren't working."

The trip had tripped. I noticed in passing that it was now a blue trip, where before it had been... black. Black thoughts clouded my mind as I returned to the dark hall and tried the lights again. They did. But flicking a switch in the newly wired kitchen brought the black back. I tripped it twice more, just to prove I had the knack for a black attack in the shack.

Kitchen fitter phoned the sparky this morning. "What's the crack, Jack? We've got black, you'd better track back."

Sparky came. The problem was the blue trip. Rated at 30mA, it was no match for 5x78mA bulbs in the hall light (from cold), or six 12mA spots in the kitchen. "These RCD trips are the bane of any sparky's life."

So, rather spookily, the solution was to change the blue trip back to black.