Power cuts and a walk round my village

When I lived in Cornwall, we used to have frequent mini moment power cuts.  For me, the worst ones were at night.  They took out my alarm clock and running a Bed and Breakfast I needed to be up early to get ready for breakfasts.  We also had longer cuts, which necessitated camping gas lamps being hung in the two halls so family and guests could find their way when the electric lights were not working.  I always worried about having candles in the guest bedrooms as you can’t control how other people are with safety. 

I remember calling the fire brigade to ask for a fire safety check on the property.  A lovely fireman came out and checked out my house and confirmed that everything was fine but that I hadn’t needed a check as I took no more than six guests at a time.  To me, that was completely mad as I can’t see the difference between two people being in residence or eight if the building is not fire safe.  We had potentially five family members in the house, not to mention the friends that my teenage children spontaneously brought back, and who I didn’t know about until I found them sleeping on the settees in the sitting room when I went up to do breakfast. 

Well, on Sunday night there was a mini moment cut here in Brittany, which means that my Sky box cuts out and I have to wait a couple of minutes for it to reset, such a nuisance if I’m recording a programme.   It’s just like being back in Cornwall.  We have lots of such power outages here, sometimes five or six in a day or even within a couple of hours.  I can never understand what causes these extremely short cuts in power.  I can understand a long cut of several hours, when something has clearly gone wrong with a cable and it takes a while to repair, but short and very frequent outages are beyond my comprehension.  Obviously in summer power cuts are not such a pain because it is light later, but for the winter I now have candles everywhere around the house, with an adjacent box of matches, for such occasions.  Although it’s annoying to lose the television, the laptop keeps going for a while on it’s fully charged batteries and I quite enjoy the candlelight.

I wandered out with my camera for half an hour this morning, just round the village.  The butterflies are really enjoying the warmth of these mid November days. Here are two Red Admirals, which were on my vine this morning, just basking in the sunshine.

The second butterfly really is not at her best with her very frayed-at-the-edges wings.

Gorse is already flowering and looks lovely in the sunshine.

My neighbour's horses were nuzzling around in the fallen Autumn leaves.  I accidentally touched the single electrified wire bordering their area as I was blundering about with the camera up to my eyes.  Luckily for me, the electricity was not on.  It was a good job that the horses didn't know that.

I always think I have a very, very good stock of logs for the woodburner, but just look at these piles!  I think that the Bretons compete to have the largest store, it's more interesting here to have a huge log store than an expensive car or a seriously smart house.  I think they're probably right.

Three things I like:

1.   The way that clicking my tongue makes the horses walk over for a stroke even though I'd forgotten the apples.

2.    Digital cameras and the special memory card (which my oldest son gave me) in my camera which downloads my photos automatically when I switch on the camera near my laptop. 

3.   Looking at Purrdy's tummy and finding that, at last, her sterilisation scar has healed.