Well, I expected to have to deal with some sort of homeowner's crisis at some point during my ownership of this house, but I hadn't really expected it to be quite this prompt.

It appears that all the electrical sockets downstairs stopped working yesterday evening, while I was out at a party. It further appears that this has nothing to do with the fusebox – none of the switches had tripped, and taking out the fuse for the defunct circuit and experimentally using it to power a working circuit proves that the fuse itself is fine.

Helpfully, the power came back on around the time I got home, and then went off again shortly afterwards, which caused a number of strange beeping noises as things started up again. I assumed this was the aftermath of a brief power cut and that everything would sort itself out by morning, and went to bed. But this morning it appears I was overoptimistic.

By means of long chains of my absurd surplus of mains splitters, I've managed to emergency-reactivate the fridge, freezer and network infrastructure using an upstairs power socket, but this is clearly untenable in even the medium term. So it looks as if I need an electrician, and ideally an emergency one who can come out today. Any readers of this got a recommendation?