O Me Misererum

Reliance on electricity

Before I really get going I should note here that this being written on one of those white rectangles of white stuff called "paper" I believe - and using a pen. I thought that a pen was something you stuck in a USB port to enable transfer of documents - or whatever. This one has "ink" in it, that flows onto the "paper" and leaves a trail.

Getting back to the point here...you don't realise how reliant you are on electricity till it is not available. There is a scheduled power-outage [for safety reasons], the trees in the area that are interfering with the power lines are being pruned and so the electricity is off from 10:00 till 15:00. Can hear the chainsaws nearby as the work is being done.

You really do not know how reliant you are on the stuff till you have to do without. As you probably know, my wake/sleep cycle is shifted round in the day - I get to bed around 03:30 [give or take anything up to an hour] and wake around 10:30 so the power was already off when I emerged.

First sign that things were different was, not being able to shave, I don't use a wet razor - haven't done since I was a kid and I am not certain my skin can take it now.

The inside of the 'fridge stayed dark.

Coffee could have been a problem but Lovely Wife was wonderful and had prepared a large vacuum flask with hot water. So I am able to slurp the caffeine solution while writing this.

I had intended to use the laptop for my usual things but there are two main obstacles to this. The battery life is stunningly poor, I can get maybe 30 minutes of work before getting a "low battery warning, change battery or connect to the mains in order to continue working" message. The second obstacle is that, even if battery life wasn't an issue, the broadband router is mains powered so I couldn't communicate via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook...

I suppose I could use semaphore...but it doesn't have the range.

*puts pen down, looks at clock, sighs, twiddles thumbs*

The sound of chainsaws is really irritating...

Not that anyone I know, knows semaphore - including me.

The power came back on a half-hour late, I then had to go around resetting various timers to make sure that everything would work as it should.



[Something a little different today - hope you find it interesting and entertaining. If not, we apologise - normal service will be resumed shortly...in the meantime please chat amongst yourselves.]