The silence of electrickery
I had a grand lie-in this morning.
After I got up and did my usual round of chores I made the obligatory mugs of tea and then sat down to continue the process of waking up.
I noticed Herself’s Kindle on my table. She complained last night about a screen which kept popping up telling her that her battery was flat [her Kindle’s battery, not hers] and I had promised to charge it. I did a little search around and found the right power lead and plugged it in. Bang! The power went. It wasn’t just the local wiring, it was a fair portion of Wicklow. Obviously the Kindle needed a hell of a lot of electickery to suck half a county dry?
It’s amazing how much noise electrickery makes in a quiet house. There is of course the fridge/freezer and the central heating but of course Herself’s radio went quiet too. The silence was profound and beautiful, broken only by the tweet of an odd bird in the garden. Not that the bird was odd, just that there were several at different times.
They finally replaced the fuse in Skobieville or wherever the fuse was for this part of the county. I had left the Kindle plugged into the dead socket and this time it didn’t blow the fuse. There was of course a bit of a racket as the fridge/freezer and the central heating tried to catch up with things. And of course all the fucking clocks on the oven and microwave have to be reset.
There was a yell from Herself. The radio wasn’t working. I checked it and it was fine, though of course I had to reset the date and time on that. By the time I had finished the radio came on. For some reason the Interweb router takes a hell of a lot of time to settle down and reconnect to the world Out There. I didn’t pass on that little nugget and let her think I had just fixed it.
She thinks I am a genius.
Of course, as always, she’s right.
We have outages up here on the hill a couple of times a year. Generally, it comes down to a transformer that goes out or some fool that stays at the bar a tad longer than he should and takes out a pole on the way home. I have stayed a tad longer than I should have myself a time or two, but the lady of the house comes down to get me.
At any rate, we have never been without power more than a few hours. The part that I’m not really fond of is that our small cluster of houses is on a water system that relies on a well. We live in the house closest to the well, so I generally end up going to the pump house and closing this valve and opening that valve to get the pump primed again.
We used to have very regular power cuts here. Christmas Day was guaranteed to be in the dark, every year. They finally rerouted the high tension cables [or something] and now we are down to just a few cuts. That’s why we have gas heaters, oil lamps, candles and a camping stove on standby.
We used to be on our own little community water system and the water was crystal clear and a pleasure to drink. Then the connected us to the system that supplies South Dublin and the water now tastes and smells foul – too much fluoride or chlorine or something. Frequently after running the taps the kitchen stinks like a swimming pool.
Long past are the days of transistor radios with Ever Ready baetteries and twiddling the knobs to try to listen to voices that would come and go.
We do have a battery radio but the problem is that the batteries are always flat so we very rarely even try to use it.
You are a genius. That is why herself married you.
Did you think it was because of your looks and charm?
All of the above and more…..
Well, it wasn’t for your money, apparently!
Doesn’t stop her trying to spend it.
Your genius is staggering. 🙂
Sadly not the only thing that’s staggering!