I wish I never have to fix a plug again!…
…screams the man in the “Electricity, our faithful friend” information film. And Lo! Out jumps Pluggy, an anthropomorphic three-pin plug.
“So you don’t like electricity, eh?” he squeaks, in the manner of a soprano made yet more tiresome by helium inhalation “OK then, mister, I’ll fix it so you get your wish!”
And so all the power goes out. Joy. Presently, usually within another three minutes of film, the all-American berk who wished for all electricity to go away has realised that his radio doesn’t work, that all the food in his fridge has gone off and that murderers, racists, and blacks from Texas aren’t being executed because there’s no power.
“Noooo Electric!” Pluggy warbles repeatedly, until the man gives up and takes back his wish.
This style of film, it turns out, was desperately common in the USA, at one point, to the extent that the Simpsons makes a passing reference to it, and MST3K gets to have a go at an especially lousy specimen in ‘Squirm’.
The point there, however, is that the people involved in such films bring it on themselves. Or rather, Pluggy brings it on them in order to satisfy his own disgusting personal kinks, but the effect is much the same.
Residents of Hafan, on the other hand, have their very own Pluggy, in the form of the management committee of Cwrt Mawr, Rosser and Trefloyne. At this point, really, I should point out that I don’t exactly object to their carrying out essential maintainance on the Hafan sub-station all day today, but it is a bit of a pain. Especially since, it turns out, it’s a bigger job than they expected, and they’re shutting us down again at 0800-1700 tomorrow.
The major drawbacks of this, of course, are no working computers, no working consoles (and no TV, but that’s fairly naff anyway, unless you’re piping games through it) and no kettle to boil water with. OK, you can do it on the gas hob, hooray, but the same can’t be said for the coffee maker. Opening the fridge becomes likewise risky, especially on hot days like today, and – for no logical reason I can see at all – it becomes impossible to get hot water from the taps, despite the fact that to all outward appearances, the gas boiler oughtn’t give a toss what it’s streamlined electic cousin is doing, shut off or no.
Still, it should, I trust, be over by tomorrow, and I can get back to stumbling through Knights of the Old Republic II, and ripping stray CDs recently retrived from Colburn.
I heard from a taxi driver that the University were keen to scrap the Hafan vans. This, it would seem, is something of an untruth, especially since someone came into the van whilst we were away, accepted our coffee grinder from the postman (thus saving me a trip into town to collect it when we get back) and changed the bathroom light from a normal fixture to an ugly clinical strip-light-in-a-plastic-pie-dish affair, which is deeply unpleasant and hurts my eyes.
From this and the mammoth eighteen-hour maintainance work that’s ended up happening today and tomorrow on the sub-station thingy, I conclude they’re not, in fact, going to scrap the vans at all, which is very pleasing. I like Hafan; it’s stupidly roomy in contrast to PJM (never mind Penbyrn) and it’s got grass around it and is generally much more pleasant than you’d normally expect for accommodation on the top of the hill. The lack of electric is a predictable pain in the neck, but hey, it’s mostly in a good cause, and it keeps the money in circulation, which is probably a good thing.
Big ol’ rambling post their; apologies. But I couldn’t just write “The electric is off in Hafan today and now, it turns out, tomorrow,” because a) that’d be dull, b) I’m killing time waiting for Dan & Claire and people to turn up and c) I’m paying myself by the word for my blog entries from now on, and I want to save up to buy a Lear Jet.
Enjoy…