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26-Dec-2007: "Christmas night"
Hello, and Merry Seasonal Festivities to all readers of this blog. I have had quite an eventful day so far. It all started on Monday, 06:30, when the electricity went off. I'm on one of those annoying key budget meters and I'd run out of money about 5 days early. The meter had run into its 'emergency credit', when I would normally be expected to add more credit before it runs out. I was not able to do this - I was broke - so the emergency credit ran out and the electricity went off. Prior to the outage, I'd been dozing in the 'orange room', huddled in a blanket, with the heater off to preserve the electricity for as long as possible. I was shivering and after the electricity went out, I continued to shiver and got up to shut down the web server before the UPS ran out of juice. It's supposed to last 30 minutes and indeed it used to, but the battery is old now and it typically only runs for 10 minutes before doing its rapid beeping (means "I'm really short on power") and shutting down. To make matters worse, it has a ridiculous feature called 'Green Power' which, far from being environmentally friendly as the name might suggest, actually forces the user to drain more than 80W from the unit, or it shuts down after five minutes. There's probably some valid reason why this 'feature' has been implemented. I suspect that it's the way of the manufacturer telling me that I should have bought the more expensive UPS instead.
I won't go into much detail regarding Monday night and Tuesday morning - suffice it to say that I was cold, hungry and would have really appreciated a mug of tea. I walked around in the dark, listened to the radio (on batteries) and time passed very slowly. When the morning arrived, I settled into an uneasy half-sleep where I occasionally woke, shivering, pulled the blankets tighter around my freezing feet and went back to sleep - if you can call it that. I finally got up at 07:43 and prepared to go out.
It was Christmas Day, 2007. Ilfracombe was not only a ghost town, but a forgotten, lost ghost town. Of the few pedestrians I saw, a few were dog-walkers, a few were scruffily-dressed men such as myself, and the rest were loosely-scattered groups of teenaged boys. I felt cold, uncomfortable and paranoid. My marching feet took me to probably the only shop open in the town, 'Jack's Dairy'. There, I bought a lot of food and asked the guy behind the counter to put £20 on the electricity key. I stomped off back to the house, inserted the key (really, an EEROM) into the meter - there was a click and the electricity came back on.
My aunt and uncle picked me up at 14:30, and we went to dinner at my gran's. It was great - total nosh: turkey, sprouts, carrots, potatoes, stuff. Sophie (my half-cousin) was given a car as a present! Dom and I totally failed to eat as many roast potatoes as we could (this is an annual tradition that seems to have waned a little) and Julian brought his parrot with him. It's called 'Macy', as in 'Macy Gray'. It's a grey parrot, see?
When I got back to the flat, I wrote a really bad poem:
"oh moose moose oh moosey moose
you're so moosey and so moosy and did I say that you are a moose?
not a mousse, which is chocolatey and smooth, not like a moose
which is leathery and has a bit of a short temper."
There. I have drunk a lot of wine and port today, and eaten a few chocolates. I do not feel very healthy but at least the electricity's on and I am not freezing.
Some pictures:
Not a very flattering view of Dom.
Dom's mysterious present, which turned out to be a visit to a race track (of the automobile type).
I ate approximately 5 of these. I think that might be my aunt Max there.