"Owain" wrote in message
t...

My eye was caught by "How to make an extension lead" in the electrical
aisle, which showed a 13A plug wired to a 2-pin "lawnmower" plug, and the
matching lawnmower socket wired to a bit of flex.

The company I used to work for put me in a slightly dodgy hotel in Leeds a
few yrs ago. The bedside lamp wasn't working but I could see the filament
in the (clear) bulb was intact. I then noticed that the flex into the lamp
was different to the flex into the socket, so figured that whatever joined
it together had come apart.
The flex ran between the bed and the wall, so I stuck my arm down the side
of the bed and (here's the bit I did wrong) working from the socket end
traced flex towards the lamp - I discovered the problem fairly quickly when
I got to the exposed prongs of the connector plug! Nice burn on my finger
where I'd shorted the 2 prongs.
The hotel owner had fitted it (and many others in other rooms) himself.