electricity and the tower of Babel

Had our first very funny "foreigner abroad experience". Our electricity in the cottage went beserk one evening, going on and off non stop, culminating with me panicking to death as the shutters were all down, including the only exit to the property and the electricity wouldn't stay on long enough for us to open them and the answering machine on the phone kept coming on and off and in French.... Funny if not a bit frigthening.

Eventually Alan managed to get it sorted for the time being. Next morning same thing happened. Armed with my dictionary and a few sentences written down, I marched to the lady that looks after the property, who lives across the yard. She doesn't speak English. I managed to explain and she came to see it and off she went to phone an electrician and the owner, neither of which were home. We went out for the day - brilliant day at Usse Chateau, which served as inspiration, apparently, for Sleeping Beauty. Beautiful.

On our return, she eventually tracked the electrician down and him, her, her husband came over. Electrician did our Dads' trick, i.e., bashed the panels a bit and declared it a "grand probleme". The only word common to all of us was "kaput".... Alan somehow thinks that if they don't understand English, they probably understand Portuguese, because he keeps talking to them in Portuguese, which causes even more raised eyebrows.

But, this is like one of Richard's sagas, so there is more. They went away to ring owner and electricity board as problem was outside electrician remit. Eventually they came back, explained that electricity board was useless, just across the road, but woulnd't come out because of paper work. We were pretty relaxed, but I think they felt so sorry for us, that they decided they would put an illegal connection between ours and their house and then the fun began with the electrician trying to tell me what I could, could not use and went something like this:
le frigo - oui,
la lumiere (lights) - oui,
la TV - oui.
La duche (shower) - non,
le micro ondes - non
le four ( cooker) - STOP....

Not joking, all this palaver took about 3 hours and they were really helpful. The best was that the owner contacted the electricity board and they came out within 20 minutes and took 5 seconds to get it all fixed...... oh, la, la....