Totally unexpected! An X file right here in my Old Queenslander... the great loo paper mystery!

So when I left you, @mumofmany's partner had magically persuaded all the lights to come back on by simply waving his hand in the general direction of a light switch (please insert theme music from the Twilight Zone here)...

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Occupied with feeding the natives (6 kids under 12) who had become more than a little restless, and trying to seat 9 people at a table intended for 6 was holding the attention of the adults, as was attempting to keep 8 glasses of drink (Miss 1 gets a bottle) in the vertical position on my grandmothers antique table (even with a protective cover it's quite a mission!) Frankly to my surprise the ratio of liquid to antiques and carpet was on this occasion relatively acceptable...

Finally everyone has pizza and a beverage, some garlic bread and a seat at the table, (didn't say it was a comfy seat!) the volume of noise has leveled out nicely so that we can almost hear ourselves think and that's when the buzzing, spluttering and fizzing started and the lights went out... Again... Seriously!

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Fortunately I had been too busy assisting feeding the natives to turn off the array of bed and table lamps I set up earlier and turned on all over the house. So while it did get a little darker, it was more like mood lighting than a plunge into total darkness, which might have freaked some of the kidlets out. (Thank heavens for that...) So no one's chewing, swallowing or slurping was unduly interrupted! (Also good news for my grandmother's antiques...)

Pizza was consumed and @mumofmany decided she would take a run at the fuse box in case her partner and I had missed something, (in all fairness she has the better technical skills so no animosity, well not from me anyway). However, she also returned defeated by the round thingy not moving and the fuse thingy's appearing to be in order as well. So no good news there... Bugger!

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So with the lights still out @mumofmany and partner made a swift if not subtle retreat for the evening with 2 babies, leaving the remaining 4 with me. These kids are usually in bed by 7:00 pm so they were pretty tired, (yes! mission accomplished...) of course they still resisted the idea of going to sleep. So when Master 5 passed out on the sofa (he may only be 5, but damn he is heavy) I had to leave him there with chairs packed around him so he wouldn't fall off!

The next 2 boys Master 6 and 9 were watching the iPad in Great Grandpa's bed and they fell asleep while I was posting on Steemit, all I had to do was find the iPad in among the blankies... And Miss 12 was all snuggled up in another bedroom with her laptop, which I removed so it didn't end up on the floor, albeit that her neck was at a very odd angle to her body.

The lights did not come back on and the power to the outlets remained on the whole night, no further buzzing or crackling was heard...

The next morning @mumofmany arrived with her partner (and 2 babies) about 7:30 am as we had rented a ute to do a major yard clean up while her partner had some time off work and could provide the muscle, while I could watch all 6 kids. So the rest of the day was spent repeatedly loading the ute, wrangling the 6 kids and then returning the ute... Talk about knackered!

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By the time they all left at the end of the day, I just had one small box to carry inside and was looking forward to collapsing into my nice big comfy chair, alone in the peace, quiet and solitude of my big empty house (albeit in the semi darkness) because the lights were still out, but the power was still going to the outlets. (Weird but hey, I had lamps!) Because of the major clean up I still hadn't had time to call an electrician and it wasn't really urgent...

So after waving goodbye to the kidlets from the veranda of my old Queenslander, I carried that small box inside, it was however much heavier than I had anticipated, so when I put it down on the kitchen counter I did kinda' drop it down with quite a thud... And to my absolute amazement as it made contact with the kitchen counter there was that buzzing and spattering sound again, and with that all the lights came back on again!!!

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Well that's just bizarre! As if 6 kids running around the house all day, hyped up on alarming amounts of sugar wouldn't have shaken the house more than me dropping one small box on the kitchen counter?!

While I'm walking around turning off the bed and table lamps, and shaking my head in amazement, at the fact that they are on at all. I thought who knows what will happen next. So I was deciding to wait a bit to write this post to see if anything else strange would happen. And it did!

Even though I turned all the lamps, I apparently missed (well at least I think I missed) the bed lamp)) I had placed in the main bathroom because there it was beaming away. Now to turn it off I had to go all the way into the bathroom because the power plug (which was still working when the lights failed, was adjacent to the loo). So when I went all the way in to reach behind that lamp to turn it off, had there been anything at all laying on the floor (besides a big fluffy bath mat) I would have seen it! (Actually I would have stepped on it.) There is nothing in this bathroom obscuring my view...

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So the next morning when I walked past that main bathroom, imagine my surprise when I saw that the spare roll of toilet paper (I always put a spare roll out when the tribe visit, 8 extra bottoms and all!) that had been resting comfortably on the vanity the night before, was now in the middle of the bathroom floor and was partially unrolled across the floor?! (WTF!) (I did a double take, picked up the loo paper rolled it back on the roll and put it back on the vanity...

This was odd for 2 reasons. First, how did it get from the vanity to the floor during the night since I turned out the lamp? I'm the only one in the house and unless I missed it there was no minor earth tremor overnight that would have shaken the loo paper from its central location on the vanity to the floor. Interesting?

Second, it was a new roll, so it had the end stuck down (you know how a new roll is always sort of stuck down at the beginning of the roll) now it wasn't stuck down) it was quite vigorously unraveled for about a meter. It just looked as though someone (or something!) pulled the end unstuck and then tossed it on the floor where it had rolled for about a meter?! (Que that Twilight Zone theme music again!)

That loo paper looked innocuous enough. There were no signs of any other disturbance in the bathroom...very strange! Reaching for the light switch I checked...yep the lights were still working...interesting! Checked the bed lamp too, yep that's still working as well. Hmmmm!

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Now I do have a family of possums living in the roof (actually if you heard them you would think they were a family of elephants) they are so loud. The thing is I'm 99.99% sure they can't get inside the house! And if they could make entry I can only identify one possible entry point...through the exhaust ducting to the range hood over the stove (I currently have the filters out of the hood for cleaning). Damn those things get nasty!

Even so these possums have got some size to them, I doubt they'd fit through the filter holes in the range hood. However, let's assume they would fit...would they waddle their fat little butts right past a great big bowl of fruit to stroll all the way to the bathroom just to knock over a toilet roll. I think not...

These possums aren't Mensa members but they aren't stupid either! Why would they pass up fruit at 1 meter from the range hood to waddle 10 meters to the bathroom to play silly buggers with the loo paper? And leave all that fruit untouched... Nah...I'm not buyin' it! Also there was a complete lack of possum evidence (ie: poo!) between range hood and bathroom! Nah... definitely not buyin' it...

So I've waited a couple of days and the lights have continued to work and the loo paper has remained stationery. But tonight the kidlets return for another sleepover, so it will be interesting to see if there is any weird electrical or loo paper activity that takes place during or after their visit!

Maybe its just a 100 year old house's way of saying "No, not the kids!" I'm too old for this shit!

UPDATE: As I was putting the images in this post the lights went out again... do do do do do do (OK that was my failed attempt at humming the Twilight Zone theme!)