Storm Malik
As I type, I’m sitting in bed with a hot water bottle with the gentle flickering of a few clutches of candles. Storm Malik blew in overnight, knocking out the electricity in the area and a roof panel from one of the outbuildings.
Weirdly, I had spent yesterday stocking up and reorganising our pantry. I had a vague sense I was preparing for something. Snow or ice maybe, but no. Turns out it was a power outage.
I’ve been following the lunar calendar for a while now in my exploration of following nature’s rhythms more closely and today’s message was “Allow yourself to rest”. Given we were due to have a number of visitors today, I had interpreted that as “Allow yourself to recharge with some good company” but as the storm had meant I’d had to cancel, I reckoned the universe had not been pleased with my interpretation and had stepped in. So I was looking forward to a quiet day reading instead. Fat chance as it turned out.
Instead my day looked like this. At breakfast I had the foresight to take the essentials out the fridge — butter, marmalade, milk — to give it a better chance of staying cool rather than us repeatedly opening and shutting the door. Get me, all survivalist-like. But… how do I start the day without my usual toast?! Why, dry fry it in the pan, my mum suggested. Worked a treat.
This was a good reminder to me in terms of the importance of diversification. In our old house, all our appliances were electric. Here, the stove is propane gas-fired. I had plans, when we renovate, to go back to full electric but this has reminded me to build in some contingency. Having a fireplace in the house also meant we had an alternative source of heating as our oil-fired boiler needs electricity to start.
After spending some time talking together, and catching up on the local wind-related news with a few delivery drivers that had made it through the debris, we discovered a tree from a neighbouring property had fallen across the road and into our field. What do you do when such things happen?, we asked ourselves. Who’s responsibility is it? Do we have any idea how to use a chainsaw safely?! Within an hour, a neighbour appeared to say he had cleared it and did we need a hand cutting up the rest of the tree? Procrastination and lack of skill saved us a lot of hard work in the end.
I’ll get to my reading soon, I told myself. But by then it was time to think about lunch — tinned soup, not as bad as I had feared — followed by a cautious look around our wood with the kids. The worst of the winds was over and we wanted to see if any trees had been damaged. They seem to have made it unscathed, thankfully. It was inspiring to walk among them as the tops of the trees bent and flexed with the wind while the base of the trunks were calm and peaceful. If you’re well grounded, you can better survive what life throws at you, I told myself wisely.
Well the power cut had obviously untethered us somewhat as Jude decided, for some unknown reason, that he wanted to climb a tree and, god knows where he gets his bloody-mindedness from, but he wouldn’t be pursued otherwise. However, our trees are not the best for climbing we found out — too smooth with high branches — so he was in a foul mood and this, together with him refusing to pick up the dog’s poo, turned into both of us having a bit of a tantrum.
Back to the house and I decided we had better prepare for it getting dark within the hour.
“Right kids, let’s find all the candles and torches!”
Cue, flopping around the sofa, “But whhhhhhhhyyyyyyy???? It’s soooooooooooo boring!”
“So we can see what the hell we’re doing and don’t have to pee in the dark!”
I realised they had no concept that the power might not be back on until tomorrow. It was so far out of their experience that they were just treading water until normal service resumed.
After finding all the candles and even a box of matches, I decided it was best for all of us if I retreated with my book. But I found it hard to concentrate properly. I had always had mist-eyed visions that if there was a power cut, we would play games around a candle-lit table and laugh and tell stories. This power cut was not living up to my expectations.
Before I knew it, it was dinner time. For the love of god, who knew how much of the day revolved around what you’re going to eat, and in this case, how we were going to cook it?! Luckily/weirdly, we had already scheduled a “picnic dinner” for tonight and so we ate tapas-type food and I decided to treat myself to a cheeky wee glass of cava. But couldn’t get the cork out so ended up with non-alcoholic prosecco instead. Bloody typical, and perhaps a god-send.
And then the lights came on. Hurrah, we all shouted! And a wee while later: THE INTERNET CAME BACK ON! Double hurrah! But my mum and I both confessed a slight disappointment. Perhaps we might have got our lovely, candle-lit evening had the power cut lasted a bit longer; a taste of a different way of life that is likely to become more common as the climate and societal crises continue. Perhaps this was a good test. One marked “Could do better” under it.
So after watching a bit of TV together, I left Mischa to her own programme and Jude to his computer games and I decided to extend the power cut a little longer. I lit the candles I had carefully prepared in my bedroom. I filled my hot water bottle and I climbed into bed to write the story of our day.
