More Power Please!

    

 

 

When my parents bought their first semi-detached house together it was built on a green-field site in Rumney.  When we as a family went to visit, it was basically a field with Michaelmas daisies, a few poppies and lots of grass.  Eventually a rough road was cut into the site, and the outline of the proposed streets began to take shape.

     Foundations were laid and building work began.  But not on our plot!

     We were given various reasons for this delay, the most convincing one being that our plot was a sort of roundabout and roadway for the trucks and lorries serving the site and therefore could not be built on until much of the basic work on the site had been done.

     I had moved schools from Cathays to Llanrumney to accommodate our move into the new house.  Which wasn’t there and continued not to be there as I started Standard Three in Glan yr Avon Primary School.

     The great advantage of buying a new build is that you have some say (as far as the money stretches) to add extras, and so we were able to have double the allocation of power points in the kitchen and the living room.  And, as I recall a fancy tiled fireplace.  We could not stretch to a garage.  I love the way I say “we” as if my seven-year-old self could have contributed anything in the way of actual money to the enterprise!

     By the time that we were fully established in the new house it was the early 1960s and it was rapidly becoming clear that even with double the electrical outlets the power needs were outstripping the sockets available.  This was even more clearly the case in the kitchen where, in our previous home, the only regularly used electrical item (apart from the washing machine with mangle) was the toaster – whereas in the consumer driven 60s more and more electrical aids were deemed essential to the modern home.

     Nowadays so many of the devices, desires and gadgets of ordinary existence have batteries and need feeding on a daily basis that there are never enough outlets in which to plug to keep life going.

     I was going to continue by listing how many things I could see from where I am sitting that need power, but having seen two radios, three fans, a computer, a printer, three lights – I am disinclined to continue before people wonder what else is lurking in the morass of ‘stuff’ on my desk, and how the hell I manage to get anything done in said chaos (cf. earlier blogs!)

     This means, of course, in rooms that are studies, you will always find the ubiquitous trailing socket sprouting an unhealthy (and dangerous) accretion of plugs which, if all were utilized at the same time would probably short out most of the neighbourhood.

     I have to admit that I am guilty of trying to get around the dearth of sockets via the powered raft approach to electrical supply – but the offending articles are usually out of sight, under desks or behind furniture and therefore out of mind.

     Considering that I am surrounded by highly flammable paper in the form of books, magazines and my writing, I like to think that my word production is at least on a par with the danger inherent in moderate mountaineering.  I laugh to scorn electrical adversity!  Right up until the first spark.  And I don’t mean of imagination.

     The only thing that is running ‘hot’ on my desk is my Mac Mini which, with its base giving me more outlets looks as though it is powering a small city.  As a concession to safety I have taken out one of the power drains on it, where it was powering up a mini power bank!

     How many years do I have to regress before I can remember a time where I did not need extra electricity, where the power kept the light on and I needed nothing more? 

     I can still remember the birthday when I was about six, when I woke up to find my present had been placed in my bedroom when I was asleep, a wind-up record player with a very small collection of 78 rpm shellac records for me to play.  My parents were woken from their slumbers by the first of (many) playings of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (a tune and song they came to hate, as I never wearied of playing it) until the needle wore down and had to be replaced.

     I had no radio, or phone, or computer, or television, or ipad, or camera or anything that was electrical.  The most sophisticated thing that I owned was a Raleigh Star Rider bicycle that I was given for passing the 11+

     “The Good Old Days”?  I think not, it’s a meaningless question, there are far too many variables to consider for it to be useful.  But different certainly.  And something to think about.

At least the hoover works

Well deserved

The major advantage to studying is not a belief in the idea that ‘to live is to educate’, but rather the relief that you feel each time you complete an exercise or essay.  It is like a headache; you don’t realise how delightful normality is until pain shows you what non-normality can be like! 

However much you enjoy the learning process, there are few things to beat the sheer relaxation that comes when the proof that you have completed a unit of learning has been sent off to the powers that be and there is nothing further that you can do except wait.

            I am now in that honeymoon period of waiting for a response and I am going to make the most of it.  I am ahead of myself as far as the reading that we have to do is concerned, so I can give almost my full attention to my poetry.

Poetic justice?

In what I am sure could be seen as a fairly grotesque metaphor for something or other, our robot hoover ate its own power lead.  At least it tried.  There is, luckily, a fail-safe system that kicks into play when the machine tires to consume something more substantial than dust.  So, when Toni came back from his walk the poor machine was bleeping plaintively in the middle of the living room with the power lead firmly in its innards.

            Don’t worry, I rescued the poor thing, disengaged the lead and it is now feeding quietly and will roll into renewed operation when we go off for lunch.

            This time I will put the power leads well out of its way – and check the receptacle at the end of its time to check that it has actually been doing what it is supposed to do.

Beyond a joke

In the lead up to the Spanish election, the bunch of morally bankrupt thieves and liars that have hijacked the government have sunk to a new low.  The Minister of Justice (sic) has decreed that people will no longer be termed imputado when they are accused of a crime, they will be termed investigado instead.  Why?  I hear you ask!  Well, a large section of the ruling PP party are totally and completely corrupt, as are their friends and paymasters in banks and businesses.  So many of them have been imputado that they have had to find a way to make it sound a little less, uh, criminal in the run up to the election that they have resorted to the desperate expedient of changing the word: semantic hiding of criminality.

            The unspeakable horror who has come out of retirement to stand for PP as a possible candidate for Mayor of Madrid should be ashamed to be seen in public.  She is a hit and run driver and virtually all her past colleagues are either in prison or are awaiting prison.  She, however, remarkably, astonishingly, unbelievably, alone-ly amongst all her erstwhile criminal colleagues is pure and untainted.  As if!

            And she is not alone.  Every day there is a new scandal about the way PP are ruling (I use the word lightly) the country, or some new revelation about how the PP wealthy backers have been milking cash from banks and companies.  Few of them are in prison and I have little belief that Justice (whatever that word means in Spain at the moment) will prevail and that the droves of thieves and liars who daily parade themselves on our television screens will get their comeuppance.  But I live in hope and trust that Podemos will get a healthy showing in the election and force the established (and corrupt) political parties to pass laws which will bring some degree of transparency to political life.

Continuing lunch

Tomorrow sees Irene arriving to join us for lunch.  We will have to go somewhere different to boost Toni’s blog.  It’s hard work enjoying yourself.