The day the lights went out

Towards the end of a brutal summer, I was vividly reminded of how cosseted we city dwellers are.

We were watching the news when it happened – an odd, crunching kind of bang followed by the television going black and the fan coming to a standstill.

Power outage. We poured into the street, along with our neighbours, including many we’d never met. Everyone was in a state of high excitement, craning our necks up to see if any of our power poles were down, exchanging theories on what might have happened.

Soon the firerys joined the circus, with their giant red truck, protective gear and – were they oxygen tanks strapped on their backs? They looked like deep-sea divers as they sauntered coolly down our street in their big boots, stopping traffic and checking out the power lines.

We’d rung our provider as soon as it happened, and they were efficiency itself, sending text messages to all the householders with a map showing the extensive area affected and hoping it would be fixed by 9pm.

Some of our neighbours went searching for answers, which they found in the street parallel to ours – a branch fallen over the power lines. We wandered back to our place and picked up our books, marvelling at the quality of the silence which surprises me anew every time the power goes out. No fan, no dishwasher, no fridge juddering off and on as the engine kicks in, no roar of garden tools from next door.

I put a saucepan of water on the gas to make a cup of tea, after which I put a bigger pot on so I could have a ‘’bucket bath” – which is what I grew up with – a bucket of warm water, soap and an aluminium ‘dipper’ – all a person needs to wash the day away.

But I never got around to it. At 8pm, an hour earlier than promised, a mere 50 minutes after the lights went out, they came flickering back on, as did the fridge, and the television, and everything else in our suburb.

Where I went to boarding school, high in the mountains in south India, the power went off most nights, and there was no knowing when or even if it would come back on. Our compatriots in areas affected by bush fires have had to spend a lot of time, this summer, waiting for power to be restored. We city folk are a very sheltered, privileged mob.

This was published in The Melbourne Age on 2 March 2020

Comments

[Rosemary]

I look forward to Clare’s article in The Melbourne Anglican each month. Today I have just read the April 2020 one, and how true it is that there is immense satisfaction in simply registering delight in our simple pleasures (so often overlooked). Thank you for helping us slow down for even a short period!