Back from the black...

Ahh, the little things we take for granted each day. Like the milk that hasn't gone sour, or the hot shower that you step into each morning. Hey, even the privilege of being able to charge your cellphone overnight, or the rechargeable batteries in your camera - they all need to be appreciated.

Yup, all that news you heard on 702, or read in your newspaper, about Bedfordview being plunged into darkness for just over 3 days...that was us. Our leafy suburb managed to capture national attention this week after some construction idiot managed to puncture the only working power feed into the whole of Bedfordview. Don't get me wrong - it was quite a novelty at first. I mean, you expect these things to be fixed during the day, so a little bit of inconvenience (like having iced tea for breakfast instead of hot tea, or showering at the gym near work) is not the end of the world. Even when you realise that "it will probably be back on in the morning", and you go to bed reading your latest book with a headlamp, its still quite novel. Its on about hour number 37 that it starts to get a little less novel, and a little more irritating. Like when you need to start thinking about dinner, and not having the facilities to cook anything yourself, you think about take-out. Oh hang on, all our local take-out joints are also out of action. So you get in your car, and drive up the N3, to the next 'lit' suburb - but seeing as you're now driving all that way, you might as well make a meal of it, and have a sit down dinner. Still not the end of the world.
So you set your cellphone alarm (on the cellphone that is rapidly dying now because it has not been charged in 2 days) to wake you up the following morning, and then have to pack two bags of clothes - one, your work clothes for the day, because you need to head to the gym for a shower, and the other, your squash kit for your practice that night. Oh, and don't forget the two towels, one for your morning shower at the gym, and the other for your evening shower after squash, because by now your geyser is no longer providing you with warm water.
And when you get home that night, its time to open the fridge and decide which items you need to start binning and which ones can last another day.
And once you've managed to find your way to bed with the headlamp that is starting to slowly fade, and have managed to successfully wade past the pile of washing that is building up in the bathroom, you finally let out a sigh of relief at having managed another day without electricity. Only to have that thought quickly erased at the prospect of doing it all again tomorrow morning.

Its been fun and games this week.