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I once got a £50 tip for fixing a fault (hilariously, caused by a lettuced faulty lamp the owner had bought from an antiques shop that very day, but neglected to tell me until I'd unplugged half the house!) 5 minutes or so before a dinner party started. That night we all had a 'dinner party'...

Yep I run a voip phone system (£30 raspberry pi and freepbx) so the only number anyone ever gets is my voip 'landline'. During the day, screened calls get forwarded to the mobile, at night only warranty (alarm) or customers who've been pre alerted to our callout charges can get through.

My mate rolled a Cortina 1600e, in the early 90s so guess they were not considered valuable then, I know he scrapped it without second thought. He used to have really bad taste in music (still does) and recalled how some 80s power ballads were blasting out the stereo as plod arrived with him...

Apparently out of all 200 or something Opel / Vauxhall dealers that there used to be in the UK, until 1989 when the Opel versions stopped being imported in RHD, ten of them, of which the one actually nearest us was one, were always 'Vauxhall only' for whatever reason. Hintons our nearest were...

I have mixed guilty / scary memories of doing very, very silly speeds (not me driving mind) in an Astra GTE 16v down the M5 about 20 years ago... I believe a classic example as no MkIII Astra was ever as fast 0-60 as the Mk 2 GTE 16V?

Yes, I think the problem at the time was that you could still easily buy them in the free ads for about £300 with 6 months MOT and this attracted 'a few barrys'. Nowadays you would have to be going out of your way to buy one and I imagine you'd be looking at £1-2k?? I had an 1800 (carb, not...

At my parents place the new block management co. elf and safety checklist people have just insisted on a lock being fitted to the metering cupboard (which also has communal CU)

It's funny, when I used to have an Opel Manta (waits for laughter to settle down) I used to get my parts from a really nice family owned Vauxhall garage, the staff in there were mostly old boys on the verge of retirement and more than happy to go through acres of microfiche and make enquiries...

Took us ages to find it, owner was on holiday with a full remit for us to do 'whatevers needed'. Unfortunately this meant removing the fitted TV cabinet to get to the sockets behind, which in turn revealed a rather interesting video collection :)

It didn't sound right in Arfs case, whatever it was.

The best 'borrowed neutral' I ever found was on an EICR prior to new DB. It was literally a 15m length of 1.5mm singles run from a socket to a loft light or something idiotic like that.

He went off in a bit off a huff, funny enough over a '4mm T+E for a cooker' argument or something similar IIRC, such that people kept making '4mm' jokes, never posted again, and 6 months later we were told by a collegue of his that he'd died :(

On a very quick glance that doesn't seem to be a bad way of doing it, IF you're already a fluent 16th edition bod. But, there are lots of other firms and colleges offering the same as Andy says.

That's almost as good as coming back for the annual service to find a 1980s vintage 100mA RCD to fix the 'occasional' tripping on the 4 year old 30mA one! (Alarm customer of mine, I was aware of the power fails as it's monitored)

Yes, there are a few. Apropos of nothing, did you know that Arf had died?

Oh don't worry, they couldn't reset it, hence the 4.59PM panicked phone call asking for the engineer code -LOL!  :) :) :)  

Always satisfying when you catch out lying ******s though. Last month I had plumbers working in the loft when 'the alarm just went off all by itself'. Denied all responsibility, but 'happy' to pay repair bill. Enjoyed putting photo of choc block they'd tried to hide the cable they'd cut...

If it was me, I wouldn't be raising any concens given the appearance of the fitting, and given location, I have to say.

Can confirm this discount is still available - I asked by email and was given a code - I won't share it as it wasn't clear if I should or not, but you only need to email Tysoft, ti seems :)

We get it a lot on the security forums, in that public come for 'advice' - and when it isn't what they want to hear, i.e. that their broken 1980s alarm with more than half the circuits spared out is giving them a false sense of security, they often kick off. As we often say, it's a...