The good news and the bad

We spoke to the electrician a while ago about doing some work on the crazy electrics in the house so they are not strewn all over the floor upstairs making it dangerous (as there are no proper fuses or trip switches) to start any work upstairs.
He did a quote for doing a temporary installation which would allow us to have safe (but not necessarly pretty) electrics downstairs, while we work on getting upstairs completed with new proper electrics and then finally downstairs redone as we do the work downstairs. Not the cheapest solution, but one that lets us live in the house safely while work is done.

The good news is he started today (hurrah) and was ahead of schedule by the end of today so it will be cheaper than quoted (hurrah).

Not pretty...

...but safe

The bad news however is that he discovered a dangerous issue with the supply coming in to the house.

It is apparently the cause of the dimming and brightening of the lights when the water pump (and other appliances like fridge etc) kicks in. The electrician said it was too complicated to explain  (we didn't mention we both have degrees in electrical and electronic engineering... anyway in French might have somewhat stretched our understanding)
Some surfing Doug did suggests it is an issue with the neutral on the three phase supply that comes in to the house (most houses in UK and France are supplied with single phase but farms are often supplied with 3 phase apparently)

Electrician is speaking with EDF (the electricity supplyer) asap. We are a bit nervous to touch anything at the moment.