For the last 24 hours I’ve been unable to upload to Blogger. I’m writing this in faith that the problem of the endless spinning circle will be soon fixed by Google - Who or whatever ‘Google’ really is. I picture an anonymous team of bespectacled genius nerds who never see daylight, floating in a cyberspaceship, out there somewhere in Doctor Who-land.
On the ‘help’ page, I discover one anguished blogger after another. Suffering ‘massive inconvenience’, unable to meet deadlines, ‘been trying to upload for eight hours’ ‘It’s KILLING me’ etc...
Yesterday arvo I went into town as usual to meet the school bus. I went 20 minutes early, so I could do a bit of shopping for dinner and mail some letters. The Post Office door was locked and it was dark inside.
Someone said there’s a blackout. I strolled down to the IGA supermarket. Same thing, doors closed. And a group of people hovering outside, waiting for power to return, for things to return to ‘normal’
Over the road, in the gloom of the un-lit health food store they were still struggling along with old-fashioned cash and calculators.
Made me think about all the places in recent months where natural disasters have knocked out power supplies, and plenty of things way worse.
Made me think about how frighteningly dependant we’ve all become on electricity, on internet access, on plastic cards. How fast it’s all happened. When did cash registers stop being big solid machines, manual machines - and become, like just about everything else in the world ( from cameras to cars) - computers? And completely useless without electricity, even though most of what we do to generate electricity is driving the planet to ruin etc
I sometimes imagine the whole miraculous magical fragile invisible web could just disintegrate, like a spiders web in a hail storm. In fact I expect it to, sooner or later...
Fortunately - or perhaps unfortunately - the power came back on before this train of thought was able to go too far. The supermarket doors re-opened, We surged inside, I got my free range chicken, and made it to the school bus stop only a few minutes late.
1 comment:
I have read your latest Posts. So nice to read you, as always. Funny, I just happened to have been in an internet free corner of the world (will write about it). You do seem to have suffered for that :-) I can't believe it.
You live in such a beautiful place, and more important, enjoying it - yea, a bit of moaning too now and then, I must say - that it is a real pleasure to follow your doings and your thoughts.
The original Mother's Day Proclamation is just great. I didn't know it. I too have been of the opinion of Mother's Day as another commercial thing, but I might now take your view for the years ahead.
And you are writing a lot. I am glad to see you like that. Your story on the "Russian Princess" is moving too.
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