Power failure

Nowadays we are very reliant on electricity. I don’t feel the need for vast quantities of it, but just a small reliable supply would be nice.

Electricity pole

Unfortunately the reliable is not available, we get no choice of how the electricity is supplied, and the monopoly network supplier is not under any pressure to make the supply reliable.

This morning was a good example. Power went off at around 06:00. Not a big deal you might think, everyone is still asleep then. Well I was asleep until neighbour (A)’s alarm sounded.

Alarm

They have an alarm which sounds when the power fails, which is handy for some I guess. It is nice to know that the battery is working fine and can keep the alarm sounding for an hour or so.

It was not long of course before the power was restored for a short while. This is quickly identified to all in the street because neighbour (B)’s alarm which does not have a battery sounds when power is restored. I am sure that this is a jolly hand feature too. It was not long of course before the power failed again and you guessed it, we were back to the slightly different wail of neighbour (A) again until the battery went flat.

The blackbirds seem to find all this very amusing, because they took the opportunity to adjust their dawn chorus to include both alarms.

Blackbird

It must be really handy for neighbour (A) to know that should the battery go flat the alarm can still be heard for another hour or so until the blackbirds clear off to find some breakfast.

So, apart from being woken up at the crack of dawn with no access to normal methods of entertainment (telly, radio etc.) and no communication methods (telephone, internet) life takes on a rather surreal turn.

I start off by reading the rest of the Radio Times – there is not much on this coming week that anyone needs to worry about. This is followed by reading ‘The Garden’ – not too much to do in the garden in July fortunately, but good news that the worlds smallest water lilly has now been successfully propagated. Fancy having to simulate an African hot spring to make it flower!

Now that is really everything exhausted. Looks like the rain has stopped now, so Mrs. Suzie agreed that we should go out for a walk. That gets rid of a couple of  hours and can be ticked off the exercise budget. I love walking but it is so time consuming for the small return. Swimming can be done a lot quicker!

Out in the road we meet Team EDF in their pick-up trucks.

“It is the trees, they are touching the wires and the rain has made the trees wet and shorted out the power”.

So no rain for a couple of months has made the trees nice and insulated, and allowed them to grow through the wires. In a normal world there would be some pressure on EDF to do preventative maintenance with a chain saw and perhaps get them to realise that if they replaced their aerial knitting with something neat and tidy underground we would not have the spectacle of flaming telegraph poles (which is what happened last time it snowed after a dry spell, creosote makes them burn really well when they get going!), dead birds (they sit on a lower wire and bang their heads on an upper one at a different potential) and general unreliability.

So we went for a walk. it is nice to see the flora on the beach. You would think that nothing grows there, but there is sea holly, sea kale, horned poppys,

Horned poppy

and three different coloured Valerian as well as some hollyhocks that have escaped from a nearby garden. All nice things we should be able to have in the garden but have not got. Not only do they not need soil – they grow in just sand, but they don’t need any watering either and we live in the driest place in the UK.

Walk over with but still no electricity. A cup of tea is now seriously overdue, so time to move in to the caravan. It is quite a novelty to be boiling the water in a gas kettle, lighting the gas fridge, and then listening to analogue radio while we drink our tea.

Eventually the power is restored and life returns to normal. E-mail, telephone, television and an electric kettle. Strange to just slip seamlessly back into normal life. The postman has been, and my subscription copy of Model Rail is now on the mat, what wonderful timing.

Suzie x

Tags: beach, blackbird, Power cut, surreal, walk