A Quiet Evening

A couple of weeks ago during a very windy afternoon, our power went out, just as it was getting dark. Unlike a total outage, it flickered on and off first, giving John the impression that something big had fallen on the lines but the connection had not been completely severed. So, after a few seconds of waiting everything electric just stopped. The house was bathed in silence, except for the gale force winds outside, which we could still hear inside. John figured that our neighbor's towering eucalyptus trees directly opposite our frontage that spanned several paddocks, had probably lost a large bit of bark that was caught on the line. Thus, the intermittent power signal initially made sense. That left me to locate the candles pretty quickly while John did some other important tasks that I can’t remember right now. Perhaps it was finding the torch and pacing and then finding the number of the power company to inform them of the catastrophe. In time I found candles and replaced what he’d found and put on our dining table that were dripping wax all over the wood. But whether it was with his fix or mine, it was certainly pretty makeshift although a certain peace came over me as I realized we were cut off from the baloney media and the stresses of finding out what terrible things occurred that day.
Everything was still except for nature. The chickens had gone to sleep. The house and gardens surrounding it were silent except for the relentless wind. What a change from our normal end of day.
After a few minutes of my suggesting he should ring the local authorities to inform them of the fault, John finally gave in and rang them. The person he spoke to admitted that no one else had called and said that if we wanted a crew to come out immediately then that would be a $200 charge for them to do that. Since that seemed a tad excessive and we believed that there would be others who lost their power but hadn’t reported it, John decided to do a reconnaissance loop on our block and he located the sucker hanging onto the line within a few minutes. He also noted that our nearest neighbor had no lights showing in their windows but he knew they were home. By this time a good hour had passed in quiet stillness, except for our conversations every now and then and that blasted wind. There’s something about candlelight that quenches the desire to discuss very much. As it flickered and melted and gave off the most minimal illumination except for the immediate area where the candles were, I began to stop worrying about when the man would arrive to fix the problem. As soon as I thought about that John heard his truck and went out again to chat with him. The poor guy had to drive from pretty far away, after just getting home. So, his major task was to find the obstacle that cut the power on the lines and also check other spots on the lines in case there was more than one critical break.
Within another hour we had power restored. By then I was very relaxed and rather calm. This fault was quite minor compared to previous incidents of power lapses that weren’t turned back on after half a day or more, when we had to use a generator so we wouldn’t lose our frozen food. So, this conclusion was pretty quick in comparison and it just gave us a chance to talk quietly instead of doing our usual routine around those hours. Not all bad when I think about it. The break gave us a break in our habitual schedules. Not all bad at all.