Without electricity – we’re truly powerless

The one thing that works in a power cut is a house alarm – and when the street has its electricity turned off at six on a Sunday morning, the cacophony of ringing bells would be enough to rouse a hedgehog from hibernation.

And so as you lie there lamenting the fact that the one chance in the week of a lie-on is now over, you also think – shouldn’t they make all electrical items out of the same stuff as domestic alarms and we’d never be left without power?

It’s the same argument as you get for making aeroplanes out of the same stuff they use to make the black box – after all, that’s the one thing that survives any impact or accident.

The threat of a day without power was enough to show how utterly dependent we are on electricity; given that this particular power cut came with prior warning, we’d prepared like Shackleton would for an Arctic expedition.

We’d charged all electronic devices to 100 per cent of capacity and downloaded enough television movies to see us through the first couple of months on a desert island.

We’d completed the household chores like washing and ironing, all well ahead of schedule so that this particular Sunday would have the sort of imposed rest that the Lord had in mind in the first place.

The ESB warning said that the power could be out from 6.30am to 10pm and that, even if it came back for a few minutes during the day, you couldn’t depend on it not going out again.

The reason for this enforced outage was explained by two words – essential maintenance – which in reality meant it wasn’t explained at all.

But true to form, it disappeared ten minutes early – 6.20am – but not true to form, it was back before 9am and never so much as flickered for the rest of the day after that.

And yet you’re sitting there, watching the telly and waiting for the picture to disappear.

You’ll risk boiling the kettle because you’re fairly sure to get five minutes, but you wouldn’t risk the dinner because that requires a leap of faith too far – and you’d be so stressed out that you wouldn’t be able to eat in anyway.

There are books you can read of course or you could talk to each other –but that would clearly be only as a last resort.

Given the time of year there was no need for heat, and artificial light wouldn’t be necessary either because the outer limit on the power outage was 10pm when it still bright enough anyway.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.