Just in, from an intrepid hike across the yard, through torrential rain, to the chook-house, I clumped back in, wearing someone else’s, too big, Red Band gumboots and felt inspired to blow the dust off my blog, and write something down.
A couple of months ago, I discovered a song titled, ‘The Things I Wish I'd Done’, by Keywest.
I loved it, for the story it told, about a real man, met on a bus. The band took the song back to him, once it was done.
And how does this link to my wishes?
At 3am, I woke to the realisation the power was out.
Friends keep describing this home we’ve lived in, for more than a year now, as remote. We love it. It’s a river valley; the mighty Aorere River valley, and the valley’s sides are flanked by the most glorious mountains.
It’s only 25 minutes to the nearest small town, and a most beautiful selection of beaches. 45 minutes to the biggest town in this bay, and about 2.5 hours to the closest small city, by car.
There’s an airline, Golden Bay Air, and they get us over Cook Strait to Wellington, and two different ferry services that run from Picton, through Marlborough Sounds, across the strait and, again, to Wellington. Cook Strait is the watery section of State Highway One, the highway that runs the length of New Zealand
We have Fulton Hogan and Sollys trucking companies, bringing freight in and out but more than that, putting the Bay back together after the big rains. We’re fortunate that they operate, with ease, in the region. And it’s just another day in the office, when it comes to hauling load over the Takaka Hill .
We have cheese-makers, trained in the French cheese-making world. Kervella Cheese has made leaving all my European cheeses behind, bearable. And Kokalito, offer organic fruit and vegetables from their market stall. We’re also fortunate to have Golden Bay Organics, and our Fresh Choice supermarket, both keeping supplied with almost all we might need when it comes to organic products.
It took me quite a while to find Home, after returning to New Zealand … years really. But here I am, just over a year into living in this ‘wild’ place, and loving it.
However, this morning and those things I wish I’d done, prior to the power cut.
I wished I had gone to bed with all my devices fully-charged. But I have real books, if my beloved Kindle is low, so this was survivable. I have a fully-charged battery charger, so my phone was going to be okay, as long as the power cut didn’t go on forever.
I wished I had showered before bed because, once the power goes out, so does our easy tap-access water supply. What can I say, I was lazy.
I wished I had cooked my meat, I’m eating a lot of it at the moment. It would have been better cooked, and thrown in the fridge, so I only needed to warm it on the fire top today, rather than starting from scratch. Using the fire to cook is perfect but last time the wetback on the fire, heated our hot water to boiling point, with no easy way of dealing with it at that point, besides letting the fire go out.
Note to self: disconnect from the water-heating if the fire is required. Hopefully, we will live and we learn.
And then there was the wish I had thought to fill a thermos with hot water, in the mostly unlikely event of a power cut. We have a coffee plunger, if there is no other way of making a coffee.
You see, we were on a weather warning, despite this being one of those corners of New Zealand that can receive 5 meters of rain in a year. 150-200mm’s was the ‘warning’, and I should have paid a little more attention. As I sit here, writing this, it’s sounding like it might be true. The rain is heavy..
I listed all those regrets, and then …the power was back, at 6am. I’m usually up around 5am … no longer a night owl, I’m whatever the creature is that wakes ‘that’ early, even in the heart of winter. Anyway, it turns out that the power providers here are either superhuman or very resilient, courageous and gifted. I cannot imagine going out in the weather we’re having, to fix faults.
I blew out the candles, turned on the coffee machine and made an espresso. I found the new favourite breakfast, the Organic Farm sausages, & started them cooking them, along with my eggs. I got the porridge made too; boiled the kettle and filled the thermos.
And then I showered. It was the best shower ever, as I was suspecting this power cut could go on all day, based on the ferocity of the rain. I’m clean again, saved from my lazy ways.
I love this life. You stay close enough to Nature, that a power cut isn’t the end of the world. There are only those small regrets. I would have been fine.
