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Thursday 28 June 2018

166. Things I do during a(nother) power cut

My 'oh goody, ANOTHER power cut' face.

Just as VAR is fast becoming my favourite thing about football (the drama as the ref jogs off the pitch to look at that telly!), electricity is fast becoming my least favourite thing about Bulgaria.

Today we had no power for over two hours. Yesterday it cut out just briefly, but as my laptop battery is knackered, it was enough to lose some of my work. Last week we had three afternoons without electricity.

Is it just our village, with its awkward nestled-between-mountains position? I can’t believe towns suffer this much disruption. How would anyone get anything done? How would an actual business (not a working-in-my-joggers freelancer like myself) serve its customers with this shitty infrastructure?

It’s always been unreliable, but it seems particularly bad lately. Tiny bit of rain? Power cut. One clap of thunder? Power cut. Perfectly sunny Tuesday in June? Power cut. I think about a power cut? Power cut. A butterfly flaps its wings in China? Power cut.

Perhaps we should get a generator or solar power. I don’t know. I’m so rigid with frustration and anger that I can’t think sensibly about how to solve the problem, let alone whether we could afford to. (All I can think is ‘Aaargh, not a-fucking-gain. Aaargh. Balls. Aaaaaaargh.’ And so on.)

How’s a gal to amuse herself when she can’t work, stream the radio, watch a movie, or do any gardening (to add insult to injury, it’s raining loads – England has stolen our weather)?

Here’s what I do:
  • Quickly send two emails on my phone, then hope no one replies because I probably don’t have enough battery to deal with them
  • Cook a leisurely lunch, even though it’s only 11am
  • Eat lunch, sloooowly
  • Pace around the kitchen table a bit
  • Decide I need to have a shower
  • Roast some peanuts for tonight’s match
  • Have a shower
  • Hand-write this blog post in a fuming, scrawling spider script that’s barely legible when I come to type it up hours later
  • Wish I hadn’t already spunked my one daily coffee at 8am because that would totally kill 15 minutes
  • Organise my to-do list, shopping list, any other list I can get my hands on, and my recipe folder
  • Bored lunges
Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re in actual Europe and not some far-off developing nation run by a mad general in gold braid. But we are. We’re in actual Europe. I mean, this is the continent that launched a man into outer space in 1961, and I can’t switch a fucking light on in 2018.

As an eternal optimist (*cough* bullshit *cough*), I live in hope that next week, next week, we’ll have a whole luxurious week with uninterrupted electricity. Place your bets now, please.