... well, apart from USA and its bizarre election run up, Putin and Kim cosying up, Israel proving that they are a bunch of bastards who've forgotten their own history and all the other geopolitical, racial inequality, social injustice, gender hatred, poverty gap and religious intolerance shit - you know, all the stuff.
I mean (well it is all about me), today at about midday we had a power cut. OK, we've had those before and they usually last minutes or, at most, an hour. After a couple of hours I remarked to The Old Girl that this was the biggest outage we've had for a while. "Since Cyclone Gabrielle last year" she said - always having facts to hand. "OK" I replied.
We went through the afternoon, pre-preparing dinner (fortunately we have a gas cooker on the top of our oven), reading (she couldn't work because internet was down as well as power) and planning for the evening. Our phones didn't work even using 'data' which was surprising and I can only assume that this was because the 'repeater' stations or whatever the telecommunication companies use were all down.
At 4PM I turned the radio on (battery powered) for the news and we learned that the whole of Northland was out of power due to some major transformer disruption. and 180,000 people were affected. Hell's bells (sorry Robert) and that this was going to be a problem until at least midday tomorrow. WTF! We redoubled our preparations - checking for torches, candles (where the alcohol is) and resigned ourselves for a longer than usual night.
Fortunately I'd lit the fire in the lounge in the morning so we had a cosy blaze going and warming the house. I brought in some extra wood, just in case and settled down to reading - not on my non-working iPad - but a book from the bookcase. This was the chronological history of the Second World War (a big book) triggered by the fact that I'm in the middle of reading 'Operation Mincemeat' which is a documentary novel of the misinformation plan by the Brits in 1943 to mislead the Germans about the Allies planned invasion of Sicily. Good stuff but, in 2024 needing power and internet to read on an IPad.
We joked about how teenagers would be faring without internet and television and I noticed a lot of people walking along the road - something we hadn't seen since 2020 (Covid lockdown days). It was obvious that they were families (parents and children) going for walks after school-time and before dinner because with the power off there was no social media catch-up and TV to watch.
We also noticed many cars leaving the bay (before 5PM) which is unusual and surmised that they were all off to town in hunt of takeaways for dinner. We imagined harassed mothers planning an evening and night for the family with cold meals or something on the BBQ followed by candlelit entertainment of board games, charades and other non electronic activity - camping fun for all and then .... the power came on.
Wow! It was both a relief and a disappointment. Relief at being able to charge up our phones and iPads and to check mail and get internet but ... that cosy, snuggly camping experience had gone.
Oh well.
3 comments:
That's what happens when you live miles from civilization. I bet they don't have those problems in Heaven or Moera.
Aren't those two the same place?
i haven't read of the homosexual episode between the British agent and the official - I think that is just a fabrication in the film although there is mention in the book that the agent was a cross-dresser. I guess that is also a sin in your books.
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