I.

I am on an island 8000 miles from home, looking after my mother’s house, a bulimic cat, and two toy poodles. 

A wind storm has knocked out the power all over the island.  The wind blew so hard that it broke the brand new dock, and the ferry captains are refusing to carry cars after dark.

My one telephone that actually plugs into the wall seems impossibly old fashioned, but it allows me to receive “power updates”.  A message assures me that personnel have been despatched to assess the damage and that if I see power lines on the ground I should assume they are energised and keep clear.  If I think public safety is at risk I should hang up and dial 911. 

Although I would very much like to have internet access (among other things, like light and heat) I resist the urge to cruise the island’s streets looking for energised power lines.

Nevertheless, as I did not achieve my daily goal of having a single face to face conversation with a creature without a tail I am a little tempted to dial 911.  In fact, as I did not even achieve my secondary goal of having a single telephone or internet conversation with a creature without prejudice to tails, since on the phone or internet they are hearsay, the 911 option is looking pretty good.

Any readers of this blog from its early days will know that when I am on this particular island 8000 miles from home I hang out with firemen, and if I dial 911 I will probably have familiar faces mustering on my lawn.

Because I am a responsible citizen, instead I stumble around in the dark, find a torch, light candles, round up the animals (wouldn’t you know they are all black?) and retreat with them and a bottle of wine to the warmest space to wait the wind out.

My computer has power, for a while at least, though no internet connection.  I can write in the dark since I am a pretty good touch typist.  I have a story about learning to touch type.  I might as well promise to tell it one day.  Tonight I don’t have anything but promise.

II.

I am on an island, 8000 miles from home.

Yesterday, before the power went out, as I walked the poodles in blustery winds and the pouring rain, my elder daughter (the day before her 26th birthday) called my cell phone to say she felt really, really sick and was in bed in her father’s house in England.   She had a sore throat and a fever.  She didn’t have the energy to get food or medicine.    There was no one to look after her.  She didn’t know where anyone was who could help.  Why did I go away and leave her?

I made reassuring noises.  I said I would call her back.

I telephoned her little sister (my 17 year old Baby) and asked where she was.  She was in her father’s house in England.

So from 8000 miles away I organised one child to walk down a flight of steps to deliver medicine to another child.  Since that seemed a really trivial achievement I also sent the younger one the five minute walk to Starbucks (hurrah for globalisation). 

Acetaminophen and frappacino are still the best swine flu cures I know.

In my last job at Oxford, which ended in August, my informal title and official email address, was Webmaster.  That’s how I feel now; only a few months ago I got paid.

I am beginning to think that conversations with creatures with and without tails are overrated.

III.

Lunch time next day I still have no power.  The computer is nearly out of battery.  I am getting very cold.  The power company phone number tells me that it will give me an update and let me know when normal service might be resumed if I provide my 10 digit meter number.

I am 8000 miles from home.  This is not my house.  I do not know my 10 digit meter number. 

So I think I will just see what happens if I hold the line and do nothing.

A very cross voice shouts at me, first in English, and then in Spanish, THAT IS NOT A VALID RESPONSE.

I’m just guessing that that is what the Spanish says, but I am probably right.  Everyone knows that if you shout loud enough, anyone can understand a foreign language.

IV.

I have, completely informally you understand, and without burden on the public purse, consulted a fireman, and am now privy to a switch that makes my propane stove spring into life, supposedly without benefit of Puget Sound Energy.  My fireman friend said, I’ll just turn it off, and you can try turning it back on, so you are familiar with how it works.

So I flipped the switch, all by myself. 

Though I am still just a wee bit sceptical, because by then the power was back on.

V.

Here on this island, 8000 miles from home, I can get the internet again, and the BBC is all about floods in the Lake District – weather conditions, they say, that come up once in a thousand years. 

It’s raining in my heart and raining all over the world.

I could go on, now that I have computer and internet and Wikipedia and light and heat and all, but after writing nothing for months I fear I am getting a bit long winded, though I always remember that it never rains but it pours.

To get the low down on what’s happening on the Island, my advice is, take a walk with a fireman.  Actually I am beginning to think it might be hard to take a walk without a fireman since all the men seem to have signed up.  Anyway, after my walk I know about the controversy surrounding children of the feckless poor playing in the fire pond, and that the guy who called 911 (999) the other night is just fine, and the sad reason for the power outage on Sunday morning.

This is America where, it seems, walks start with drives, and on the drive to the walk we swung by the fire pond next to the low income housing to see if kids’ toys were still there. We parked in front of the sign that said, “Fire Lane: NO Parking”.

“So you are going to park here?” asked the firefighter’s wife. (Not the firefighter who got me into my locked house. Different firefighter, different wife.)

“We are the fire department,” said her husband, which wasn’t strictly true, but the spot was conveniently close – clearly we weren’t going to waste any walking on the driving part of this walk.

On the walking part of the walk he mentioned he’d driven the driving part of the walk the night before, responding to a call out.

If you dial 911 the firefighters will come right over.  In the old days they were called out by a siren from the fire station.  Nowadays they all have pagers, but the siren still blows, waking the whole island along with the firefighters.  The next day everyone goes around asking everyone else what happened until everyone knows. 

If you ask a firefighter he won’t tell you, on account of the Vow of Silence or something, but their wives are good sources of at least the outline details, like, “Oh somebody just took their medicine and then got worried when it worked.”

I used to think this was a remarkably accident prone island since the siren blows a lot, but it turns out it always blows on Thursday evenings to summon the firefighters to their regular meeting.  Or when they go out on manoeuvres, which they do pretty often, boys being boys.

The previous night’s emergency was a guy feeling dizzy, apparently.  The paramedics came, said he was okay and everyone went home.

The dizzy man was the fire department’s second call out in 24 hours and that’s when I learned that the reason we had no electricity was because an eagle brought down a power line on the shore road.  The poor bird lay – I guess this is the right moment, if ever, to say spread-eagled – dead on the ground, its wing span as long as a tall man.  The firefighters closed off the road and, as my firefighter friend put it, “secured the scene” until the power department came to fix the cable and the county took the eagle away.

Except for my next door neighbour, the Fire Chief, these guys are volunteers with other jobs  – or in the case of my walking companion, retired.  And judging by the way he huffed and puffed up the hill, I would say this really is a land of opportunity, where every little boy can grow up to be a fireman.