Two thousand and eight
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Cottage tales | 11 comments
Two thousand and eight. These words had a softness. Good rounded syllables.
“I hope that this is a good year.”
I hovered with a mug of coffee beside Danny’s computer in the Rat Room this morning.
Danny leant back in his chair. “All years have their good points.”
Not what I expected.
I love New Years Eve. At midnight a fresh year arrives like a new puppy, excited and tremulous. As Big Ben chimes my heart lifts.
Danny is different. He mourns the passing year.
“365 days elapsed and not a lot achieved.”
So New Years Day morning always welcomes two very different expectations.
I lifted the curtain. It was a grey, damp day. A challenge for 2008, just hours old. I volunteered to make breakfast hoping the sun would splutter through. Clearly exhausted from last night’s revelling, it slept all day.
We then had a series of challenging power cuts starting late afternoon, with just enough time in between each one to happily appreciate the wonder of electricity. The cottage is so old that it’s really dark without lights on in the day. Danny carried on with the aid of candles and I drifted into the garden and cleaned out the hen house and dragged the pond. The aerating pond weed had got a grip and had formed a nifty landing stage for the heron who is tormenting George (our ancient and wily Old English carp) and has eaten most of our smaller fish.
I tussled with seemingly insurmountable rafts of the stuff. Dragging the weed towards me I wrenched out clumps the size of rugby balls and tossed them onto the pond side using a claw shaped weeding tool inherited from my aunt. A slow, heavy but satisfying process. I left the hills of weed beside the pond to enable small creatures living in the pond weed to creep back to safety. After a week or so I’ll ferry the discarded weed down to the compost heaps in the wheelbarrow.
Eventually the trill of enlivened burglar alarms alerted me to the fact that electricity service had been resumed and I tottered in for a cup of tea. I had planned a cooking day, my first full day off for weeks. Butter. Pints of white sauce for the freezer. Loads of stuff.
This evening I was confidently cooking Emma’s superb vegetarian moussaka. Electricity had been pumping for hours. I opened the oven door to pop the casserole in for the final 40 minutes and there was a flickering, fluttering Phut. We were plunged into darkness for the nth time. I wrote this post on the laptop (battery mode) with the reindeer decoration lighting my way. Danny politely waited for a ham sandwich in the room next door. When he eventually received his supper the bread was stale and was cast upon the log fire.
I always have sworn that my blog will never be a space where I rant.
Somewhere, out of earshot, a small plump person finally lost it.
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Hi Fiona,
Greetings and Happy belated New Year from Monroe, Oregon.
I came across your blog while I was in search for a recipe for mincemeat, so thank you for the help with that chore.
Isn’t it funny how I too shared the same weather as you for my New Years Day (dreary and drippy), but I think the key is who you share that day with that makes the year start bright.
Well, good company and a great brunch, definately!
Here is to a speedy winter and a wonderful spring…
Michelle
Hi Magic Cochin
Four days without power! That would be hard.
January 2 was a much better day. Sunny and crisp.
There used to be power cuts all the time, when I first moved here 15 years ago. We still have loads of candles and a camping gas ring which came into their own on Tuesday. I’ve never considered a generator…
Hi Joanna,
11 days without power – followed by five! I would have problems coping with that…
The dogs found it hard – all are a bit short sighted and with less light them were bumping into things and couldn’t understand why we had turned off all the lights.
Hi Mildred,
As we worked on and off over Christmas, there was no going back to work per se!! But I know what you mean and you are so lucky that you get on so well.
I do hope that 2008 is a good year for us all.
Hi Amanda,
I am always amazed how much the power cuts effect us. I don’t mind no radio and TV but the telephone cuts out too!
Hope that you are feeling a bit better (back wise).
Hi Sam,
A takeaway would have been the answer! What a brilliant idea. Thanks for the tip!
Hi Rosemary
Happy New Year to you and your family!
The TV being on all the time can be a bit testing especially as now, with digtal TV it can go on all day. The telly is on all day at so many of the houses where I work with the children goggling away.
Hi Jane,
The cuts are over! As you say they always happen at the most awkward moment! We had planned to watch the telly – the first part of Sense and Sensibility. We’ll watch it on the laptop using the view again facility!
How clever of Zaz to twig that there was something wrong with the power lines!
Great idea for clearing the pond weed. Sounds like a useful tool to have around the house anyway!
Happy New Year to you all.
Happy New Year to you both – hopefully I can say this safely now it’s 2nd January and the powercuts are – maybe? – over???
I do sympathise, having been plunged into blackness several times a day all during the second half of November. There is nothing like stumbling your way downstairs in the pitch black at 4am in the morning to reset the main fuseboard because you’ve woken up and your alarm clock isn’t working and you’ve to be up at 7am; then resetting the whole thing and lying down to sleep, only to hear a clunk as the whole lot goes off again… second, in fact, only to being in the middle of the detective drama on tv where they say “and I can reveal that the murderer is…” and the whole lot dies and you only get it back on as the closing credits are rolling and the voiceover is telling you that Noel Edmonds will be presenting Are You Smarter Than A Ten-Year-Old on Sunday. Or whatever. Anyway, luckily Zaz argued with the electricity board until they sent a man up a pole outside our house and finally agreed that, yes, it might have something to do with the fact that the crimp on the supply pole had become a dry joint. No, I don’t know what that means either, but Zaz did, and we now have (touch wood) electricity! Yippee! So, as I say, Happy New Year!
Oh, and another thing (not that I’m gassing on as usual in ANY way) – your pond weed – we had great success with a thing like a broom handle into the end of which Zaz had nailed…nails. About fifteen or twenty, all sticking out, all round the end of the broom handle. You stick this into the pond weed and twirl between your hands and the pond weed sticks to it and comes up as easy as pond weed sticking to a broom handle with nails in the end. Just a thought.
Janexx
aw . . . . Amanda, January 2nd is such a difficult day for us 🙁
I hope that you have found some relief from your back pain, I was reading your blog . . . it sounds very painful.
Best wishes for 2008.
January 1st was certainly a miserable day here in Norfolk,it was dark by 3.15pm ! WE made up for it by shopping for bargains at a local discount store and cooking the gammon joint that was not needed over Christmas.I love it when the electricity goes off(we have a woodburner in one living room and a log fire in the other) and no children’s TV, which is on all the time in the school holidays.A Very Happy new Year to you and your’s.
hi fiona,
you are right, 2008 does have a ring about it. 2007…too sharp on the tongue, too many syllables! it wasn’t a great year for us and most of the people i know found it a real challenge to keep smiling. i, like most people are hoping for a better year.
our cottage is between 150 and 200 years old (we’ve been told) and suffers with old age. we always need a constant supply of candles to hand although the local backup genny is only a few miles away, they tend to take their time. saying this, we have never experienced more than a 16 hour blackout, and most of that was at night, so can’t really grumble.
tempers do get frayed at the best of times and i have found that this is the best time for a takeaway curry. nick has to go and collect which gives us time to cool down and by the time he gets back we are too ravenous to care what it was about!!!
happy new year to you all, may it better than the last!
Poor you, what a day to lose power. Everybody should rant once in a while and sharing it on your blog is a positive thing I think. Especially when it rarely, if ever happens.
We lost power last year and the boys were really scared at first. Thankfully the stove is gas and we have a log fire so it wasn’t so bad. It was only off for about 12 hours and then a few hours on and off over the following days. I loved the silence most. Amazing how all our appliances make such a noise.
and Mildred, I cried too when my hubby went back to work this morning.
I hate it when the power goes down, I rant and rave – ‘in this day and age you’d think they could manage to get electric to us’, type of things! We bought a small generator as we had so many power cuts, at least it boils a kettle and keeps the heating running; and candles are so romantic!!
The Christmas break flew. I cried today when Ian went back to work 🙁
Let’s hope, when 2008 gets into gear, it is a wonderful year for us all.
Power cuts are the worst … in one of the big storms, we were without power for 11 days, we were the last people to be restored by the East Midlands crew who had come south to help out. Three days later, another storm, the power was out again for five days. In some ways it was wonderful – and the children loved the candles and no baths … but it was a little later in the winter, when there was more daylight than there is at this time of year. And this house is heated by woodburner, so we were warm, even if we couldn’t heat the water.
But lest you think I am painting too romantic a picture, I clearly remember living on the edge for those weeks … I didn’t mind no baths, but the washing (young children) was a nightmare. Just like stale bread sandwiches.
So, yes, it’s completely understandable that you lost it. I hope your electricity is properly restored now, and that you are feeling calmer. And that you manage to get some of your cooking ahead done …
Happy New Year – it’s got to get better!
Joanna
It was a really grim dank first day of 2008! So with power cuts as well it’s understandable that you lost it! “Touch wood!” it’s been a while since we’ve lost power – but it happens often enough for us to have a gas powered lamp and 2 ring camping stove at the ready. We were without power for 4 long days one cold January “ and the fact that most of our neighbours were happily snuggled around their agas and their generators continued to power the Christmas lights were clues that power cuts might be a regular occurance!!
Hope January 2nd is a much brighter day.
Celia