Fitting a new roof yesterday and today for a customer. There is a cable hanging out of the garage wall - "can you leave that there, I'll sort it, there will be a new light going in when you are finished".
So today he is up his ally step ladder, in the damp, with a pair of cable snips. He is cutting the cable he says, to pull it through the wall. I ask if it is live. "Well, it might be, we'll soon find out" So he cuts through the cable. Remarkably no sparks or shocks. Maybe it was dead after all.
3pm, and it starts raining and getting dark. That's funny the lights dont work in this garage. I carry on, thinking nothing of it. At 5pm, he comes out "will you have a look at my boiler, it hasnt come on".
I look - no power to it. Check the Contact breakers - two consumer units, one all on, the other had tripped the CB. So, go back to the cut wire he had left dangling in the garage, make it safe, then turn on the power. OK, lights and heating now working. Tested the dangling wire - live. So he had knowingly cut through a wire that he knew may have been live, on a set of aluminium ladders, in the damp, with a pair of snips that had insulation tape wrapped round the handles.
The bloke has nine lives.
Alan.