everything is just dandy.

As a rule I sleep really well as unlike Mike who is a jumping jack all night. In recent years we have promised each other through times of insomnia that we will stay put to avoid wondering around the house playing with computers, watching television or doing the ironing, and the latter being one of my weaknesses.  It was with a bit of a surprise then that I found myself jolted out of sleep with a distant beep interrupting my dreams and as I became conscious I realized that the electricity had gone off and we had no way of knowing what the time was. It is deeply dark in Brevands, the solar garden lights are blinding in such blackness and as we peered out to see if the rest of Brevands was blacked out all we could see was the drive lit up like a fairy’s party and that meant it was middle of the night as these light exhaust themselves when dawn is about to break. The beep was my UPS saving my computer from a crash but by the time I got downstairs it sensed I was anxious and crashed the computer anyway so my careful walk down the stairs guided by the warm glow of the computer’s on off button which extingusished and both Mike and I were left in total darkness to make our way back to bed to sit the power cut out. I tossed and turned and was unhappy that the power had not magically come back on so in total darkness I made my way back down to check our main breaker and I was quite right it was us alone in power cut whist the rest of Brevands slept with alarms and clocks still ticking away. Mike tried to click us back on but it was having non of it so now suitably armed with torches we went around to all our appliances and when I unplugged the dishwasher the breaker jumped to life and the house was full of light and appliances resetting themselves. I dumped the awfull thought that the dishwasher was broken and went back to bed. In the morning Mike took a look and declared it out of bounds and I started the day with the prospect of clean hands and a wet floor around the sink area. The saddest part of this tale is that for the first time since we moved out of the UK we really miss the convenience of a quick trip into John Lewis to choose a new device, put it on the account and pay for it over a few months. Also for the first time since we left the UK we do not have the funds available to buy a new dishwasher, so it is clean hands wet floor, crystal clear glasses, because the washer was past it and sometimes performed badly.  And around every dark cloud there is a silver lining, I am now back in the habit of switching I-tunes on to listen to a classical piece of music whist I toil away at the sink..not all bad then.

The squashes and pumpkins are doing well and I have a healthy crop of 15, I have no idea what to do with them but they look fantastic and that is good enough at this point. I will use most of them as currency and swap veg with our friends. I have already sent one off to the UK with Linda on Wednesday. I will stuff one tomorrow and we will make a lantern for November 5^th as we are doing the firework party this year. 

And finally,  what a lovely boy then…The hens are laying again and the swan is chilled out so all in all everything is just dandy.