Monday 16 January 2023
We have snow, the really beautiful kind that has settled on trees and plants. All seems peaceful and still outside and the sun is coming up over snowy hilltops. I don’t even have to rush to go out because no one else will be walking where I’ll be walking. It’s probably scuppered our day of errands and shopping as we don’t need to do anything today rather than waiting for Wednesday, but today will be spent largely distracted by the winter wonderland outside every window.
Yesterday, I got up, reset the cooker clock as there must have been a power cut in the night, made tea and made up a flask of coffee (as has become a new habit here), then, instead of writing a blog post, I lay on the sofa to read a book. It was still not fully light outside so I’d turned a light on. Within about fifteen minutes, the light went out and I figured it was another power cut, so kept reading. Chris got up and shouted down that there was no WiFi, I shouted back that there was no electricity either. We learned many things yesterday morning with the power cut. As we sat in the kitchen eating cereal and drinking the hot coffee I was enormously smug about having thought to make, I realised it was even more quiet, the fridge and the WiFi box (it’s a complicated set-up) being hum-less. Outside, there was a light covering of snow and blue sky, so it all looked lovely. I then said I’d go on my ‘patrol’, ie my usual walk around the garden, across a boggy bit of land, down the loggers’ track and along the road back home (it’s around 2,000 steps). On my patrols, I come into range of 4G and phone signal so it was decided that I’d check the local Facebook group to see if anyone else was without electricity and visit the Scottish Power website to log our lack of electricity.
I saw that one of our wheelie bins had been blown over in the strong wind from Saturday night so I started out across what looked like snow and slush on the area where we park. Nope, it was sheet ice, completely uncrossable. I walked around the edge of the garden and across a wet muddy patch and righted the bin. I didn’t know how to get up the garden without sliding across the expanse of ice. It turned out that all ground with mud, running water and grass was fine to walk across, not frozen solid. Any surface that was smooth and had been wet (which is pretty much everywhere) was ice. I was fine going up our steep pathway as there are channels of water running down it, clumps of grass and plenty of mud. The garden was fine and my boggy pathway was fine, though quite a bit wetter than normal. My first problem arose when I got to the loggers’ pathway, a downhill track. As the middle of the track was largely undisturbed stones and snow, it was kind of all right, but a bit slippery on some stones. At the bottom of the track, where it joins another forestry track to go over a bridge across the river and onto our road, I walked through the small streams of excess water, no problem, then held onto the side of the bridge to walk along the edge of the ice, pretty much ok. I then stood at the point where the track leads onto the road and it was just ice.
It was the kind of ice I could smash at three or four times with my walking boots and a bit would chip off. By chipping a bit off, I could step on the road surface below. I had far too far to walk to do that for every step. I contemplated turning back, but I wasn’t at all keen on going back up the loggers’ track I’d just tentatively come down. I mean, really, who says life isn’t exciting in the countryside?! Anyway, I did get home along the road, but it took ages. I had to cross the road a few times because the grassy edge got too narrow near the river below or because the other side was clearer, and every road crossing took ages, smashing a hole in the ice to be able to secure my foot on the ground. I’ve never walked on anything like it in this country. There was no way a vehicle without spikes or chains could have driven on it. And indeed no vehicles came past all morning.
Anyway, the point is that it was icy, I realised we were completely iced-in, no electricity, no WiFi and, as I discovered on that walk, no O2 signal and no 4G. We talked about contact with the outside world. It’s hit and miss whether our car radios get a signal here, but that might have worked if necessary (just to hear weather reports, stories of people stranded without power, etc), ditto charging our (redundant, as it happens) phones in the car. Then we realised that we have a landline and, because none of our electric handsets worked, we had plugged in my old rotary-dial-up phone, which had been working. We got through to my mum; her tech-savvy friend who was staying looked at Scottish Power for us and let us know that Scottish Power knew about it and that we’d be reconnected very shortly.
In the end, we had no electricity for a mere three hours and no WiFi (which is through an O2 SIM card) for nearer four hours. Chris took, arguably, the best approach (though he never really got over WiFi/mobile withdrawal) and read a book. I decided to make use of the lovely light, not knowing if we’d have power restored that day (we have heard that it’s been days without electricity before). I assembled an IKEA Hyllis metal shelving unit, painted a picture frame and mount to liven up a dreary surround to a painting I like, cleaned, tidied and arranged the utility room (again, and far more dramatic than my last tidy-up in there), posted a blog and drilled holes to put up a blind (IKEA Ringblomma – I realise so many people know the names of IKEA products, largely because they too have them in their homes). I also started thinking about what to cook on my Trangia stove. Then the power came on, though my surge of DIY prowess continued; I didn’t do all that in the three hours of no electricity.
Unfortunately, though fortunately in terms of driving and the weather, my friend, Carla, had postponed her visit. We now have high hopes for another friend, Kyla, who’s hopefully coming to stay on Friday, so our first guest just over two months since we moved in.
Chris and I drove to Melrose on Saturday, having never been. We had to turn back and take a very long (ie about an hour-and-three-quarters) detour to get there as our road was flooded and we deemed it impassable. That area of our road floods frequently, but is part of the fastest rising and fastest falling river in Europe (though it might be second; everyone tells a slightly different story) and was as good as clear when we tried (successfully) to get home. We still haven’t quite learned/accepted that a lot of shops close on Saturday afternoon. We arrived in Melrose too late to go to the butcher (we arrived at 12.20, though would have been significantly earlier had we not had an enormous detour).
It’s been a weekend that didn’t go to plan, from Carla not being able to come and stay due to forecasted weather, to not being able to drive either at all or a certain route. We have still had an enjoyable weekend and still have no regrets about moving here. It is cold though, now we’ve realised how cripplingly expensive the heating is if we have it on in the peak times when the cost per Kw/h is three times the ‘cheaper’ rate.