Monday 13 October 2008

Swaying vs. Diagram

It appears that we are caught in a crossfire between two electricians.

On the one side, we have Swaying Electrician, wobbling away on Sunday night whilst evaluating the work we would need to do to restore electricity. "Just five minutes" is all we need to hack away at the steel casing surrounding the wires, apparently (and certainly not the case, unless we're doing it wrong because we're NOT electricians!) (although, how can you go wrong with sawing??)

And then tonight, there is Diagram Drawing Electrician who lives a few streets away. Diagram Drawing Electrician, who has seen our pipe dilemma for himself and can reproduce our circumstances on A4 lined paper with artistic-recall precision (almost like a human camera). He then talks animatedly about how best to tackle the steel and with what tools whilst engaging with his detailed pen-drawn illustration.

We can only assume there is a rivalry, because occasionally Swaying will make a sideways remark about Diagram Drawing whilst emphasising a point, and vice versa it seems, as we witness a few times tonight (and with neither of them actually present each time to receive their respective insults and thus recoil appropriately). We're just nodding along with both of them. USgal feels she is being talked at, with each one at either ear, her head nothing more than a tunnel for them to shout in.

All we'd like is for the electricity to be sorted out. How frustrating already (candlelight, romantic as it is to read by, can't charge cellphones, for example), and then frustrating some more when experts in the field aren't helping.

If it only takes an electrician five minutes to cut through thick steel pipes, then why not show us, instead of taking five minutes to explain what we have to do? If it's a money thing, perhaps we can pay Swaying with the one-off pen art of his competitor.