Of Broomsticks And Inspiration

As you know, these days have found me with a lot less internet time than I would have hoped for. To call this hindrance really annoying would be like calling a bullet to the heart simply an inconvenience.

Hey, not all of us are Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In any case, the opportunist that I am, you would expect me to use this occasion to begin writing again. Lazy or not, the pure boredom would probably get me to back to my stories like nothing else ever could.

Probably might have worked, really. Except for one simple thing. Or, well, to be more accurate, a lack of it.

Electricity.

The power cuts took care of whatever hope I had. From eight am to six pm, workers would be busy down the road meddling with all those cables, shifting them from old post to new. Obviously, it would seem that they were averse to electrocution, but still, you’d think that their payment covers… Never mind.

Bottom line, no electricity during the day. My laptop battery doesn’t last half a minute if it gets unplugged from the main while the lap is still on.

Ergo, not only did I no longer have access to the wonderful World Wide Web, as of now I also did not have access to my Dear Delightful Dell during daylight hours. And by the time night finally rolled around, I was in no mood to start writing. All I have the energy to do is plop on my headphones and play a movie.

Did I just hear you say, “Excuses, excuses,”? Well, excuuuuuse me.

How Dehydration Spawns Tantrums

Ah, April.

The first thing that pops into your mind when you think of April:  Poissen d'Avril, in other words, April Fool’s Day. That one passed right by me this year; I had more pressing problems at hand.

Someone up in the government had decided that the road that led to our home was far too narrow, and since it was a borderline main road of sorts, it needed some widening.

Good news, definitely. Transform a single lane into a double lane, and I’d personally find the chances of a head on collision reduced by probably fifty percent when I get behind the wheel. (I’m not a math guy, that’s a rough, uncalculated estimate).

In any case, I should have been overjoyed.

I was, of course. Until I came home and tried turning the laptop on. That was when I realized there was no electricity. And of course, my laptop’s battery was pretty much expired; all it could afford to give me was thirty seconds if the power cut out while I was using it. Just enough time to hit hibernate and start thinking (yet again) about saving up for a new battery.

Why no electricity? Simple. They were widening the road, and all the streetlights and light posts needed to be shifted to make room for the asphalt. Alrighty then, no electricity during the day, and since we were promised lights once it began to get dark, I didn’t mind it that much. One day without my laptop, maybe I could finally get a bit of reading done after a long while.

Then, I was washing up after lunch when the water started to slow to a trickle before stopping completely. Believe it or not, some bozo had broken the water mains leading to our section of road. Now, we and our neighbors had no electricity, nor water.

Still not that bad. Livable, surely.

Then the final blow fell. As I passed her on the way down to my room, Mum commented that the phone lines were down, too. I said, “Bummer,” and continued on. No phone lines, not the worst that could happen. We had mobile phones, after all.