I've got this week off as I finish up my holiday entitlement from PeopleCube before starting at ThoughtWorks on Monday. Mostly I've been reading up on Agile Development and Extreme Programming, visiting friends and their kids and generally taking it easy. Yesterday I went back to Oxford to see dad and get started on his tax return. But when I walked through the door I found water pouring through the kitchen ceiling and my aunt frantically deploying buckets, jars and casserole dishes!

It turns out that Bea, our fabulous carer, had been running a bath when her boyfriend called. She got distracted and the rest is soggy history! It had just started to come through the ceiling when I arrived so the problem had been spotted and the bath stopped before it became a complete disaster. We turned off the lights, punched holes in the ceiling to help drainage, ripped up the carpet in the bathroom and waited for the water to stop comming. Soon it did and by then my uncle had arrived. He had brought his tools and we levered up a floorboard in the bathroom to see what we could see. Not a lot it turned out but it was clear that what wiring we could see was away from where the water had lain so we felt confident that once the fittings had dried out (and I gave them a quick go-over with the hair dryer) everything would be fine. I unscrewed all the light fightings in the kitchen and left them to dry and sure enough by that afternoon, we turned the lights on at the mains and all the switches were fine. Normality had returned.

All in all it was quite exciting! And as I reassured Bea, it was great to get rid of the disgusting carpet in the bathroom - who has carpet in the bathroom these days. A sign from God I called it.