So in my haste to clean up after my rewiring became 99% done (just a couple of gadget-type things to get fitted now), I was hoovering my flat. Unfortunately, I hoovered over my phone cable into my living room. A tiny little, almost invisble phone cable, which instantly snapped and wrapped itself around the innards of my hoover. Result: no ADSL. No phone either, for that matter.

Luckily I managed to get things working wirelessly with a bit of moving stuff around. Still, I feel like a bit of a complete moron, frankly. I do have a couple of handy phone adapters now, but the cable is completely destroyed as, strangely enough, the power of the hoover snapped it in two.

I am a moron.

That is all.

As promised, a pic of the tenement collapse. You can probably make out the furniture still inside. Sorry for the fairly poorish quality; it's from my mobile.

I felt I should mention the state of the media industry in the UK today very briefly. Namely, those "mid-market" rags, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.

The Mail, first off. Today, it reportedly features four pages of its coverage from when Princess Di, erm, died, 10 years ago in a coupla days' time. It's a tribute apparently, and meant to show the reaction at the time. Fair enough. But at the same time, and without a hint of irony, the same paper is running a poll on its website: "Are the tenth anniversary commemorations for Diana over the top?"

These papers tend not to understand irony so much.

The Express, meanwhile, is simply leading on Madeleine McCann. It has, in fact, led on this story every day since August 3 - weekdays and Sundays - despite there being basically nothing new to say. It does replace Diana (I believe that, according to the Express, there was something suspicious about her death) but is getting a tad ridiculous now. According to today's non-story, there is a "New setback over crucial DNA evidence". This is a slight improvement over the week when their lead heading was simply

MADELEINE

...but only a slight improvement.

Oh, and I'm glad to see that EVIL Camilla makes it on to its front page too.

It's worth checking out MailWatch for more of this kind of stuff.

I've moved second living room for a bit today. I need to be out of the flat almost all day owing to the mess of rewiring (incidentally, yesterday electrician discovered that a previous "rewiring" consisted of someone simply sticking six inches of new wire on the end of all the old ones and pretending it was done) so I'm in Offshore, having already been to Beanscene. It's a great place, very laid back and all of that - but their wireless net is flippin' slow. Still, it's also free so I shouldn't complain too vehemently.

In between, I wandered up to Wilton Street, which is apparently in Maryhill (heh, the estate agents aren't gonna like that... North Kelvinside has vanished) and where a tenement wall collapsed last night. I have some pics; I will post them later, I have no cable with me to allow me to do that.

Pretty much all of the things that came up when I Googled wiring nightmares just now are about networking and suchlike. I felt, therefore, I should share the details of what my friendly electrician has so far found in my flat, since he started working on the rewiring on Thursday.

Here are the highlights:

• Fuse box from the time of the ark, which obviously had problems with blowing. Therefore, at some point someone just put in two fuse wires into the fuses. Et voila: double the amps; also, serious fire risk. The fuses were actually black at the top where the wires had got way too hot.
  
• Three random cables running out from behind the electricity meter. They weren't actually connected to anything, they just made a mess of the wall. They've now been cut properly. He thinks they may have been used for old storage heaters or something.
  
• An earth wire that, erm, wasn't actually earthed.
  
• A cable which may have been used for some wall lights in the living room running off one of the sockets and up through the wall. Luckily, it wasn't live.
  
• A socket in the living room which had almost everything (TV, recorder, hi-fi, surround sound etc) plugged into it and which was so badly connected that, when it was taken off the wall, it started sparking and knocking the power out.
  
• A cooker which is running off a regular plug, as opposed to the big beast 30-amp cable that cookers pretty much need if they're to work properly.
  
• A boiler which is simply plugged in, rather than having a proper fused spur for it.
  
• A double socket UNDERNEATH THE SINK.
  
• A socket half way up the wall behind the kitchen door, with such a small cable running to it that plugging in anything more than a clock radio would possibly set fire to the wall. I almost used it for my iron this morning.
  
• Another double socket, run off that single one. Somehow. He hasn't quite figured out how that works yet.
  
• And, the best one: a double socket in the newly fitted kitchen which was obviously going to be a pain to connect to the main sockets line; so it's hooked into the lighting one instead. Therefore, if you have more than one light on and turn on, say, the kettle, all the power goes out. That's now, with a new fuse box. Before, it would probably just have gone on fire.

It's impressive stuff.

This is on top of the earlier discovery by my gas engineer that the fire is so badly fitted that every time it's used, fumes leak into the living room.

At least some of this stuff has now been made safe. Hopefully all the wiring will be sane by the end of the week, and then I can get started on other, more interesting, jobs. The electrician does say that this is possibly the worst botch of wiring at every stage that he has ever seen. I am impressed that my flat wins that prize.

On the plus side: I now have broadband!

As I type this, an electrician is in my flat, punching holes in my wall. This isn't using his fist, I should add; drills and such are involved, as he's kicking off the rewiring of the entire place. The wiring currently there dates to 1950-ish, and new bits have been added over time, badly (including installing a double socket right underneath the sink - water + electricity = bzzt - and running the cooker off a tiny regular plug, which is just insane).

So far, I have a new fuse box and three holes in my bedroom wall. I'm sitting in living room 2 as there wasn't much I could really do around the place while this went on. Unfortunately, the work is forcing me to eat out for a couple of nights - a real trial, of course.

My new phone line seems to still be working, and my broadband (described the company supplying it as "ludicrously fast") should come tomorrow. I got their crazy router doofer yesterday, it does all sorts of mad stuff, including letting you plug a phone through it for internet phone calls, which is quite cool, but would require me to ever actually phone people. Oh well.

I got my first spam call today (I forget the proper name). Apparently it was a service announcement. It went on to ask me in a computerised voice if I needed help managing my debts. I hung up.

I have lots of "before" photos of my flat, which are now sitting on my laptop and which I should be able to upload some time soon. They're not exactly estate-agent quality (it's amazing what a wide-angle lens will do) but they should be of use to show what's changing as it happens. In fairness, not much will be visible after this stage, it's the stuff still to happen which will actually make much of a difference - wooden floors and a much-needed new bathroom, mainly.

Right, best go for now. The task for this lunchtime is to choose a new hob for the kitchen, and I've singularly failed to do that so far. I've got it down to two, but now I'm stuck. So I'll go and consider that some more and think about how long I can stay in Beanscene not drinking or eating anything before I get kicked out. The girl at the next table has so far made a bottle of Diet Coke last about 50mins, so I should be OK for a while yet.