Cruelty to babysitters

We went out the other evening while Mel came over to babysit.

When we came back it was dark. I mean everything was dark. The sky was dark but so was our house.

I was confused because I knew I'd left a couple of lights on before we left the house and I had expected, as it became darker, that Mel would have turned more lights on.

As we drew closer to the house we saw a glow from the living room, a telltale sign that the TV was on.

We crept into the house worried about waking Mel, and then I thought we might scare her unless we did make some noise, so we became excessively noisy.

Mel explained.

All of a sudden, during the evening, all the downstairs lights had gone off. Mel hadn't known how to fix this, even after a call to her hubby.

We're not unused to this phenomenon. It happens when any one bulb downstairs blows. The fuse trips and all lights on the downstairs lighting circuit are immediately without power.

So the next time we leave a babysitter in our house, we think we need to provide a torch and directions to the fuse box. Leaving someone who's doing you a favour sat in the dark, when they brought a book to wile away the hours, is just plain cruel.