You know what, I do talk alot about how much I love living without electricity, the candles the simplicity, the magic…. but I’m finding our limited acess to the laptop really, really hard.
We have an invertor in our car, which charges our phones from the car battery on the school run, but doesn’t leave any time for charging anything else; we sneakily charge the laptop if we visit a friend…but …that gives us an hour and a half use of an evening. An hour and a half.
I love this blog, I love writing here, and knowing that you guys are actually reading it, and sometimes commenting (I especially like that.) But it’s challenging. I’m also trying to write some more articles and some other projects, (currently drafted in longhand by candle light, which is fine, honestly) But at some point I need to transfer them on to the screen, and research things, and check my emails, and hell, even reply to a few. Then of course Hugh needs to check a few things out, like the price of batteries and solar panels, specifically, and Freddie wouldn’t mind downloading a bit of music too……
So I’ve started to visit internet cafes on one or two of my three child free mornings a week, and I drink copious amounts of three mint tea and studiously ignore the cappucino. But sometimes I have no transport and can’t get to the internet cafe, and am at home with free time and NO COMPUTER.
So I pace up and down and imagine all the writing I could be doing and waste lots of time huffing and grumbling whilst putting some buckets of laundry on to soak, before I remember to look out of the window. It’s beautiful, sunny and warm, and I do have a pen and paper if I really need to write, but there are steps to be built, paths to be dug, raised beds to be planned.
So I build steps (no pics yet as camera battery needs charging) chop wood, and walk in the wood and it feels good and spring like.
But I still want to get on the computer!
Well, this evening Hugh brought back a beautifully charged laptop for me, no one else wanted to use it, and anyone would have thought I’d be delighted, but instead I wanted to lie by the fire in the cosy candle light and read. It seemed a bit 21st century to start turning computers on. Briefly, as I lay there, I considered giving it all up and just donning a shawl and several layers of petticoats and forgetting all about modern nonsensical ideas such as blogging.
I may have even voiced this thought.
I got short shrift from the 13 year old among us, sighed, and turned the wretched thing on, the laptop I mean, and got on with it.
I did write something for the current issue of Juno, but that was when we had endless electricity,