post-cyclone

Hello to all!

Another thing I dislike intensely is the amount of things that go wrong AFTER we are told that everything will be back to normal the moment the clouds disperse/ the rain quite/the sun comes out/ you name it. very irritating indeed.

Like the last few days for instance. The rain went on Friday. It immediately got blazing hot. Then it got smelly. So what? That's fairly normal for my part of the country. What is NOT, however, is the sudden downtime of not the power( that's already been there, done that!) but communication tools. Not all of them true, but the one I use most every day for my business.

Living in the country like I do, and hating physical writing, (since my stroke I do not write copperplate any more and that infuriates me, as rightly or wrongly I was PROUD of that!) I missed my computer's access to the outside world something chronic. Not being able to talk to one of my sisters, my remaining brother or sick friends was the most irritating thing that has happened in a long time.

My grown daughter, who does her own thing usually, nearly went stir-crazy. Imagine being in the same house as this usually placid person of 30 years(she'll kill me for that!) with no phone access at all. No Facebook, no nothing. Her father did not help either. He hates Facebook with a passion, and most everything that is not still two tins tied together with a string to talk through( no use using smoke signals either. He panics at the first smell of a cigarette or a fire), so he invented every way he could to add to her misery. I was sure I has going to have plenty of blood and bone for the garden. Mainly his.

Anyway, we have survived. But, honestly, you would think the biggest communications system in the country could have warned us somehow. At the end of my road, there are two elderly people who have medical problems. One relies on the phone. The other needs it. When your road is washed out, your power is not brilliant, and your communications are down, you need more than smoke signals. I have no problem walking the half a kilometre up and the same coming home three or four times a day to check on them( after all, my so-called retired horses could do with Jenny Craig nowadays!), so why not ride once or twice? My husband and my daughter were also delighted to do the same( good way to lose weight), but really. Thank God there was nothing wrong with them each time, apart from sheer frustration, but what if there had been? Both of them are large people and walking over a kilometre with one of them parked on my shoulder was not going to be anyone's idea of fun. As both of them are beautiful people, but absolutely petrified of horses, that wouldn't work either.
Sometimes, I wish these giants would take a little more care of the old and less able.