Tales from the Lock-Down

[Wowbagger]

Looks on, bemused by an entire page about haircuts.

[Kim]

Looks on, bemused by an entire page about haircuts.

To be fair, there were dogs, job interviews, batteries and silicone mains leads, too.

(Also sourdough, but your page might be shorter than mine.)

[madcow]

We had a few days away last week and during the course of a short ride ,we stopped in Brampton for a coffee.
We sat outside the hotel and as the landlady brought out our drinks , a little old lady came walking past on her way to the shops.
The landlady asked how she was coping with all the virus stuff.
"I'm all right " she said, "but it got my brother". And with that she walked on.
She didn't want sympathy or anything, it just was as it was.

[TheLurker]

Looks on, bemused by an entire page about haircuts.

Noo, noo.  If you look slightly more carefully it's a page about the apparatus used to cut hair.  I.e. *gadgets*.  Would you expect anything else on a cycling forum?  After all cyclists are very nearly as bad as photographers when it comes to gadgets.

As it happens, my clippers are mains, Babyliss, about a tenner some 20 odd years ago from Sainsbury's and the lack of a mains plug in the bathroom is dealt with by the use of an extension lead.  Some minor cutting and resoldering of internal connections.

[ian]

I bodge the British mains plug into a US adaptor for the shaver socket (Euro prongs are too wobbly).

It's like 2020 or something, I'm pretty sure we can put electricity in bathrooms without immediate death.

[citoyen]

It's like 2020 or something, I'm pretty sure we can put electricity in bathrooms without immediate death.

Trouble is I've already taken up all the sockets on the extension lead for the bathroom toaster, bathroom kettle and bathroom three-bar electric heater.

[Mr Larrington]

Extension leads can be daisy-chained.  What could possibly go wrong?

[ian]

I plug my extension cable into the shaver socket and drape the cable by hooking it behind the sink tap (otherwise it risks knocking over my beer) so it can sit on the floor.

Then I can plug everything into that. I don't make toast in the bathroom though, the staff bring that up from the kitchen.

[ElyDave]

Extension leads can be daisy-chained.  What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing.....

.... So far

[grams]

Lady in the park yacking loudly into the blower about how she’d flown to Spain at the weekend and has to come straight back to self-isolate.

I had to double check the rules - no exercise outside your home, no dog walking even.

So that’s going well.

[Kim]

I bodge the British mains plug into a US adaptor for the shaver socket (Euro prongs are too wobbly).

It's like 2020 or something, I'm pretty sure we can put electricity in bathrooms without immediate death.

That's what the shaver socket's for.  It's got a fairly wimpy isolating transformer molished into it, so you won't get a shock between the appliance and ground, and it'll magnetically saturate and/or trip some sort of thermal cutout and/or catch fire if you try to power a toaster from it.  (A centre tap for dispensing feeble leftpondian anbarism is a handy bonus feature.)

I think the regs would permit a Ceeform socket or fused spur (and all the lightswitches etc you like) outside the Safe Area, if you wanted to install a washing machine in the bathroom like they do in ABROAD, where the FOREIGNS come from.

(I've sneaked a modest amount of anbarism into our bathroom using Power-over-Ethernet-under-the-lino-and-up-behind-the-bog.)

[quixoticgeek]

I think the regs would permit a Ceeform socket or fused spur (and all the lightswitches etc you like) outside the Safe Area, if you wanted to install a washing machine in the bathroom like they do in ABROAD, where the FOREIGNS come from.

Rewiring the flat here, it still confuse me that we can run mains into the bathroom, and not just mains, but 3 phase!!

J

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Brits are a bit backwards in matters relating to electricity. They figure a system that worked in Edison’s time is sufficient and anything better is excessive.

[Kim]

TBH, like most things in middle-England, our electrical standards are harking back to the post-war period when safety was new and exciting, and copper was in short supply.  Hence the abomination that is ring mains.

There's a weird paranoia about electricity in bathrooms, given that you're allowed to have sockets powering kettles and things within splash range of a kitchen sink.  Okay, you could argue a connection to ground through soggy bare feet is more likely in a bathroom, but have they never seen what drunk or caffeine-deficient people get up to in the kitchen?

Seriously, mandate an RCD and proper equipotential bonding, put it out of reach of the bath and get on with it.

[ian]

That's what I never got, there's sockets in my kitchen. I'm not going to fill up the bathroom with water (and we all know that actual wet room only main function is destroying the ceiling below). All bathrooms are leaky. They're not the sort of room that fills up with water while our victim frantically tries to stay above the water, the clock ticking on any rescue.

So I have to plug stuff into the shaver socket via a USAian adaptor and an extension. I did ask the bathroom guy about electricity when we had it done and he pulled a face and muttered something about The Regulations. As far as I could tell, it wasn't even possible to have a multiple shaver sockets.

Anyway, you can power a couple of lamps, a Sonos speaker, and Wahl hair clippers using a shaver socket.

[citoyen]

I replaced our bathroom ceiling extractor fan despite dire YOU WILL DIE warnings, and seem to have survived the experience.

[Zipperhead]

There's long hair everywhere from my gradually yetifying wife. I'd forgotten what that was like (previous ex- had long hair right down her back and a fluffy chinchilla). She really should get it tamed. The chinchilla too.

I've never heard it called a chinchilla before, but I have encountered some fluffy ones.

[citoyen]

I've never heard it called a chinchilla before, but I have encountered some fluffy ones.

You're only saying what we're all thinking.

[Kim]

I replaced our bathroom ceiling extractor fan despite dire YOU WILL DIE warnings, and seem to have survived the experience.

Like for like replacement.  That was never an issue under Part P.

[quixoticgeek]

Trying to do a grocery delivery, seems that Yeast is so out of stock they have removed it from the website, it used to just say out of stock.

Also seems that chopped tomatoes can only be bought in store...

I wonder if others are also prepping for a second wave?

J

[citoyen]

My son's girlfriend is starting a job in Eindhoven soon. He was planning to accompany her over there to help her move in to her new flat. Living in east Kent, it should be very easy to get there using the tunnel - after the crossing, it's a 3hr drive to Eindhoven.

Unfortunately, with Belgium now being on the quarantine list, that complicates matters somewhat. Driving round the outside of Belgium would turn it into an 8hr journey.

[Rod Marton]

My son's girlfriend is starting a job in Eindhoven soon. He was planning to accompany her over there to help her move in to her new flat. Living in east Kent, it should be very easy to get there using the tunnel - after the crossing, it's a 3hr drive to Eindhoven.

Unfortunately, with Belgium now being on the quarantine list, that complicates matters somewhat. Driving round the outside of Belgium would turn it into an 8hr journey.

Ferry to the Hook?

[robgul]

My son's girlfriend is starting a job in Eindhoven soon. He was planning to accompany her over there to help her move in to her new flat. Living in east Kent, it should be very easy to get there using the tunnel - after the crossing, it's a 3hr drive to Eindhoven.

Unfortunately, with Belgium now being on the quarantine list, that complicates matters somewhat. Driving round the outside of Belgium would turn it into an 8hr journey.

Ferry to the Hook?

Not much better as it's East Kent round to Harwich for the ferry - and a toll at Dartford (and I think the ferry would be more expensive than a short trip deal in the tunnel)

[citoyen]

Ferry to the Hook?

From east Kent, driving to somewhere you can get a ferry to the Hook would make the journey even longer than driving round Belgium. Plus the crossing itself is considerably longer. (ETA: and a lot more expensive, as Rob says!)

[Auntie Helen]

I understood that if you’re just driving through and don’t stop then it’s ok.

I hope so as I am currently passenger in a car on a Belgian motorway and we will pass through Luxemburg on our way to Saarland in Germany for the weekend. And next week we are travelling to the UK.