The sun came out today making the outdoor painting business a lot easier! There I was finishing off the intricate and imaginative colour scheme for the wooden house doors when I heard our “door bells” ring! The door bells are in fact the four legged barking creatures that reside at our neighbours opposite. Anything, and I mean anything, that dares pass by between our two houses will be treated to voracious yapping and barking. This is a bit of a pain and also rather useful when it comes to knowing that the postie or bin men has arrived. So the dogs let me know there was someone i.t.a. and I poked my head around the corner to see if it was for us or Stonky and Nada, our neighbours. Three guys were getting out of an unmarked white car stopped in the middle of the road – which to be honest is a single lane road – and looking in my direction. Being of sound mind and with a clear conscience I immediately thought “cops” 🙁 the one with the clipboard called something to me and I thought ok better find Sunni! Sunni didn’t respond to my calls so I headed away from the ‘cops” very aware that they wanted to talk to me and strangely aware that I was wearing a black and red combination coming out of a black and red painted house! Oh how the mind races without much sense when confronted by “cops”. Sunni eventually appeared and asked me who the guys were! Like I knew! She bravely approached them with a “Dobar dan” and it turned out they were from the HEP – the electricity board. 🙂 I then recalled that the Solar panel guy had warned us that we might get an inspection from HEP but it “wasn’t very likely”, ha! Clipboard guy spoke good English and introduced himself by saying “you must be Jonathan” which did make me think they might be cops in HEP disguise!
After a brief inspection we were informed that we need a new junction box accessible to the HEP at all times. The box is too big to fit next to the fuse box so there began a bit of a debate as to where it could go. To be fair “clipboard” guy was pretty friendly, mostly spoke in English and was genuinely keen to install the junction box somewhere where it would not “spoil the beautiful look of this house” – I was beginning to positively take to the guy! It was decided that the box could go on the west facing wall and I can build a wooden box around it as long as it is not locked. The idea of placing the box on our wooden electricity pylon was dropped when one of the guys leaned on it and it moved alarmingly. We will have to arrange for the box to be connected to our meter and solar system but otherwise it all seemed simple and sorted. Nice to be involved in the decision making process for a change I thought.
Later it turned out that clipboard guy had not used English during the bit where he explained we would have to pay 2000kn (about £240) for this service! Oh well at least they weren’t cops!
Back on the sofa tonight I finished sewing up my black “hamburg antifa” trousers whilst wearing my red “zagreb flea market” trousers. A colour theme is emerging!