Outage

In the “good old days”, we were quite content, for the most part, getting information of daily events from the radio or newspapers and news magazines.

(My father was not really ever satisfied, forever complaining about late deliveries and moaning: “the Russians are jamming the airwaves again!”)

Communication was by post. If it was urgent you employed the telephone and in dire circumstances, you sent a telegram, sometimes called a cable. Mostly those announced births or deaths.

Telephone calls back then were expensive. One did not chat! Not everyone even had a ‘phone.

Somehow, we managed quite well without all the essentials of modern life.

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These past two days, I’ve had occasion to remember those internet-free days.

Rain had been forecast for Thursday (I refuse to say forecasted), but I was somewhat surprised that morning to receive an alert warning of possible tornadoes.

We have a basement and our plan, should the situation arise, is to retreat down there since there isn’t really any other option. The biggest concern would be rounding up the cats, but loud noise and upsettment usually sends them downstairs anyway.

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So we carried on with what we were doing, glancing periodically out a window to ensure no ominous funnels were in view. It grew very dark and the wind chimes got into a frenzy, causing us to rescue them from the porch.

Finally, at about 1430, the rain arrived in a significant, but not lengthy torrent.

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In late afternoon, bedraggled creatures emerged from their various shelters expecting normal meal service to be resumed.

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Skunks have very individual coat patterns, making them easily identifiable but these two are identical, so we assume they are “twins”. The only way to tell them apart is that one is gimpy, unable to put weight on its front left foot. It therefore has a distinctive sway to its gait.

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The storm retreated.

A pole crashing down out on the state route caused a couple of short power outages, but our connection was soon restored and we were not obliged to improvise a cold supper. In fact it would not need to be cold, as we have a gas stove, but we rely heavily on the microwave and air-fryer, two more inventions that soon became central to so many of us!

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It promised to be a very pleasant evening. I was happily going through messages and listening to music on my computer when a voice came from downstairs:

“Have you got internet connection?”

Informed that indeed I did, Grant came huffing upstairs to glare at the modem/router which was pulsing red. This ought to indicate an outage, yet we could plainly hear sound coming from my desktop.

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After a power cut, we often have to reset the modem and router, though it seemed odd that my computer was able to function. We went through the routine several times, to the taunt of music from YouTube.

Then came a message from our neighbour who, like Grant, had lost their connection.

At which point, so did I.

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There was nothing for it but to read a book and enjoy the apres-storm.

It was very lovely and I have many pictures which I may share at a later time. Our internet connection was out for 36 hours, so if I have missed any messages or posts, I beg forgiveness and now I am catching up.

It is very fortunate that this week’s excursion with our neighbours was the day before the storm, which would certainly have put a damper on a very enjoyable outing.

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It will take a couple of posts to share details of that. Starting tomorrow.

Internet permitting.

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