WHY is it that the geyser always leaks on a Saturday afternoon, that the driveway gate sticks on a Sunday morning, that the alarm jams in the middle of the night?
It’s certainly not coincidence, because it always happens – it’s one of Murphy’s immutable laws.*
Thus it was on a recent Saturday morning, having come through an earlier Eskom breakdown and outage, that the power went out again at coffee time.
We didn’t worry, because it was almost certainly an Eskom surge or something, but it persisted.
We phoned friends and neighbours, and sadly it seemed to be us, just us, alone.
I fiddled with the mains box, I sought telephonic advice from more knowledgeable people, I fiddled some more, but no power, it just kept tripping.
So, I phoned a friend who is an electrician (when everything else fails, consult the manual or a professional, another of Murphy’s laws).
He arrived, bless him, with his wife as his assistant (it was nearly lunchtime on a Saturday), and climbed into the corner where the mains box lurks.
Gratifyingly for me he tried everything, but the power kept tripping, so off came the cover to the mains board, which he passed back to his assistant, then he gave a great yell. “Ah-ha!” he exclaimed, and we, the audience and sub-assistants, waited with bated breath.
Out of the corner came an arm and a hand, dangling a deceased gecko. “There’s your problem…” he said, and indeed, all the lights came on and power was restored.
But this is not the first time. We’ve had our security company come in because the alarm would keep shocking us into wakefulness in the middle of the night, and it would be a gecko in the power box (the same company, and we have every faith in them, put mothballs on all the sensors in the house because that apparently discourages geckos from ambling over them), we’ve had the drive gate people in because the gate would jam at some silly hour, and it would be a gecko in the works, in fact you name the works, and we’ve had geckos in ‘em.
I’m on record as having said that watching the geckos ganging up on a moth on the wall behind the television set in the evening is usually far more entertaining than the SABC’s offering, but one must ponder, which is costing us more?
And for the record again, it’s the Moreau’s tropical house gecko, to give it its official title, and what a pity it is that we can’t export them to Chinese zoos. I’ll leave with that thought. Cheers!
*Named after Captain Edward A. Murphy at the Edwards Air Force Base in the United States in 1949, who, when confronted by a really stupid mistake by a technician declared, “If there’s any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it”, over time translated to “If anything can go wrong, it will”. The Internet.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
For news straight to your phone, add us on BBM 58F3D7A7 or WhatsApp 082 421 6033
