12th January 2007

This sounded really GOOD NEWS!!!!!! ELECTRICITY AT LAST !!!!!

The charming lady at EDF said that the wayleaves Department had now cleared my application and it had been passed to OPERATIONS.!!!!!!

'Fantastic' I said, 'Can you give me their number and I'll give them a call to see when I'll get electricity'

I should have sensed that note of sadness or sympathy in her voice as she said goodbye and wished me luck with the scheduling of the work.

However onwards with the OPERATIONS DEPARTMENT of EDF. Energy.......With that title it really sounds as if they get on with things here!!!!!

' Are you still there Mr Salmon???? Mr Salmon are you there????' The girl from operations who I rang sounded anxious about my health....had Mr Salmon had a heart attack???? Why had I gone quiet???

The reason for this long silence was after she had explained that there would be a further 8 week delay before the works could start. I was just speechless...........

Ok, so middle of March eh???? First request in October and start work middle of March.???

Here is a bit of advice for anybody thinking of building anything, ......as soon as the project is a twinkle in your eye, if the electricity supplier's name has got an E or a D or a F in it.... get that application for electricity in. What I should have done in hindsight was to cover the roof in voltaic cells and go into competetion with EDF. They're just crap.

Just to reiterate and make the point.....in the time its taken EDF Energy to push a few bits of paper around and tell me its 8 weeks hence...we've dug the foundations, laid the groundslab, built the basement, put a house on top, tiled the roof, wired it inside, boilers in and working, floors down and screeded and next week we'll have pictures hanging on the wall.!!!!

Meanwhile the house is gently heating up with the central heating on (the German Plumber came silently in the week and got it all going) he tells me next week he'll turn it up to 40 degrees to blast every last bit of moisture out of the house.

The Germans return Monday to finish the basement and install the bathrooms, then they get their paint brushes out to paint everything top to bottom.