Feb 27th, 2024

Author: donich_admin

Blame it on the Beanie

My Mum has done well on present choosing of late. As well as the brilliant rice/slow cooker she gave me for my birthday, she also gave R a great beanie for Christmas (note to the elderly this is an American term for a bobble hat).

You may wonder why I am enthusiastic about the hat and how I nearly unjustifiably accused it of attempted murder. It was given to R, and the point of it is that it has Bluetooth headphones built in. So I can connect it to my phone and wander about the house doing my tasks without needing to have a cable dangling around. The Bluetooth on it works much better than any of the devices I have had in the past, in that the range is good, the hat is not as easy to loose as standalone headphones, and it is easy to connect and disconnect from the phone.

So today I was cooking in the kitchen and listening to “The Revival” Stephen King audiobook through the Beanie. Suddenly there was a crackle so loud it made me jump. I put it down to a glitch in the headphones and carried on. Then there was a much louder crack, a flash and a smell of burning. I tore Beanie off and threw it on the floor – I honestly thought for a few minutes that the Beanie had caused the issue and tried to electrocute me. Then I talked it over with R, and we realized that there was no way such small batteries could cause this. I also noticed that the cooker had switched itself off.

More investigation proved that the switch on the RCU had tripped. We turned it back on, switched the cooker back on and “bang” the same thing happened again. So my poor Beanie was acquitted with no stain on his character.

So now we have no cooker and as it was not under warranty, it is not going to be easy to get repaired. Our local electrician is coming to look at it next week, but until then we will have to use a combo of the air fryer, the slow cooker and the microwave. #firstworldproblem.