Power is our Word of the Week

I’m going to go straight in and let you know that this week was really about power outages but as I prefer to use one word, I’ll use power. We’ve been having power cuts on and off this week and it’s brought me back to living in Jamaica where this was a regular occurrence. But Jamaica is a third world country and I remember the days when they would switch off the power in certain areas for a few hours a day as a way to save electricity.

We still don’t know what the reason was for the outages as we had no warnings or notices whatsoever! This is unusual, isn’t it? You’d think they’d drop some leaflets or something to let us know what was happening. That’s what the water company does when they are going to have to turn the water off for some reason or other

The first day we lost power to our house was about 8:45 AM on a work day. So I called my neighbour to find out if they had power as I wasn’t sure if it was just our house. We burst out laughing when she said she was just about to ring us to see if we would allow her to come over and iron her work clothes and recharge her phone! Apparently their power went off at about 7:45 the same morning.

Of course, work has been affected, as this week was mostly a work-from-home week. So what do you do when there’s no power? In Jamaica, we’d go outside under the fruit trees or on the verandah, chat, laugh, tell stories, and watch the world go by  etc. The culture is different here, so we stayed indoors and found odd jobs to do, like scouring pots that needed attention, reading (only a little), and also starting other crochet projects. Do you like my crochet cookies?

The blanket below was a joint project by both of us and we want to create some more. Such a fun project!

In Jamaica, when the power goes, the water follows soon after so we usually have to fill up pots of water for use in the kitchen and buckets of water for use in the bathroom for baths and flushing the toilets etc. Well, silly us, we did the same thing here on the first day the power left. By the first night, we realised that we didn’t need to as the water pressure was still good all day.

Oh how we missed the modern-day conveniences like scrolling through Tik Tok, watching TV, positioning a glass under the ice maker on the fridge for making a cold drink, putting the kettle on (we use an electric kettle), and even lighting the gas oven or hob! We even had a habit of switching on the light in the downstairs loo when we enter, only to find, alas, there was no power! Luckily we handy little lantern that you just need to charge up and put away safely until needed.

I felt bad about work though. To be honest, it felt strange and I even felt a bit guilty like I am supposed to be working but I am hiding. What if work doesn’t believe me? Well, I suppose they could check if they want to. I always go back to work when the power comes back on, but it’s been bad. On Thursday the power was gone for at least 4 hours or so! It made me think about war torn areas and how they cope in the cold Winters without electricity. We are blessed huh?

And how sad about the death of Liam Payne, that One Direction band singer! Such a shame and what a job to have to tell his son and extended family members about the tragedy! I haven’t heard many details but truly so much power (?) was lost for so many of his fans.

Well, we hope you had a good week and have all the power you need for the weekend and the week ahead.