Power Cuts

Power Cuts

Back in November, when Arlen was here, we started having electricity cuts. We’d be in the middle of living our normal lives and all of a sudden the electricity would go off. Most of the houses on our street were in the same situation. It would last anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours. One night it went off, and back on, and back off, and back on again several times which was even more frustrating. This culminated in one evening where the power stayed off all night and came back on early in the morning. Most of the time the power would cut off relatively late in the evening and we’d all end up going to bed a bit early. This happened about 6 times throughout the following months and hasn’t happened for a while.

Wednesday night the TV cable cut off. No television. Instead we sat around watching a couple of episodes of Cheers from my DVD. I realised that I was the only one who found it funny. Another case of American humour, especially from the early 80s, which just didn’t travel well. However I do recall the show being extremely popular when I first arrived in England in 1983. Anyway the cable must have been repaired in the night as it was working fine again in the morning. Then, last night, it cut off again. This time we put on another one of my Christmas presents: Only Fools and Horses: Season One. Although this is from the same period as Cheers, Desney and Jessica seemed to find this funnier. However right in the middle of the second episode the electricity cut. At 22:30 there was no electricity in the house.

This was quite frustrating, as usual, and eventually everyone went to bed. Unfortunately the electricity wasn’t working again in the morning and I assume everyone blindly went around getting ready. No hot water must not have made things any easier either. I personally slept in. At around 10:30, just about exactly 12 hours after it went off, the electricity came back on.

With the TV cutting off and the electricity cutting off I’m starting to feel like I’m living in some tiny village in remote Scotland with an infrastructure from the 19th century!