Power Cut

We had a power cut this morning. My daughter was watching a cartoon. I was blogging. My wife was in bed. I carried on blogging on battery power. My daughter was most concerned and went to tell my wife about the event. It sends you back thirty years, a power cut. Not to the days of labour unrest necessarily, but just Sundays when the shops didn’t open and there was nothing on television anyway and you had to play games with counters and dice.

I got to thinking, what if all this running out of oil baloney is a government ploy to stop teenagers playing on their Playstations? It would be a sensible move. Strategic power cuts; a few library forms distributed through the post. And a side benefit would be to rid the world of reality TV (don’t get me wrong, if it’s on I watch it) and TV chat shows featuring people from other TV shows … and Jordan. But what would I do of an evening without all this ‘entertainment?’ I wonder for a second and then realize I could re-read Cider with Rosie.

We enact the modern equivalent of singing around the piano for a while in the silence. I can hear the children next door. Ramblers crunching past on the road outside. Wood Pigeons whooping in the garden. My wife starts reading a book to our daughter.

Suddenly the television bursts back in a blaring of colour and voices and the modern world is arcing in on us with appliances whirring and lights flashing. The book gets put to one side. Even I am watching the cartoon in fascination. I remember I’ve left my copy of Cider with Rosie at home anyway.