Writings on the Storm
I’m sitting here, alone, in relative darkness. A nightlight burns — carefully, out of duvet corner’s reach. This is the third power cut this evening, during Storm Arwen.
I can feel the house rapidly cooling, it’s not even 8pm, yet I am in bed, I am aware I have 28% battery on my phone. The absence of even a fridge humming or the boiler clicking into action, makes the house oddly silent. No TV, radio or music. The raging noise outside certainly does its best to make up for the indoor quiet.
I am mindful of how dependent I have become on my devices, the internet and google. Pen in hand, I’ve written only three lines and yet I have not trusted my brain to remember the correct spelling and name of the storm, nor whether ‘nightlight’ is hyphenated. (Edit: US ‘night-light’ UK ‘night light,’ no-one uses ‘nightlight’)
Is this the price of admission? Has our attention span diminished, our facility to remember facts, our concentration all but disappeared and have devices now left us in an endless state of mild distraction?
Big questions in this big dark, wind battered house.
Two centuries ago, I would have had a basic wick and animal fat candle, ready by my side, a log or peat fire if I was lucky, hopefully I might be able to read and have a book too. I would have risen with the dawn and slept shortly after nightfall. I would have packed so much into the daylight hours, unlike us, who defy the winter darkness, lighting our workplaces, streets, homes or the road ahead with full beam.
- Jings! I think my dormer bedroom window sounds like it could rip off! Maybe I shouldn’t be up here in the roof and go sleep downstairs?
… I’m downstairs in the guest bedroom, here, things feel more solid but being closer to the ground, I can hear wheelie bins and unidentifiable objects being hurled round the garden and slammed into walls. A slate smashes on the ground, somewhere uncomfortably close.
So much more relaxing…
I am mindful of still days. Still, calm days with blue skies and gentle tides that lap on my nearest beach. My hair might mildly inconvenience me, by softly blowing across my eyes. We have had so many of those kind days, this summer. Tonight it seems as though the same sweet blue sky has regretted its balmy pacifism. Now she is angry — in fact, quite piqued and is now exploding it all out, in one almighty, violent tempest. The sea rages twenty metres from here. Where do the birds go? I think of them and visualise them like yellow rubber ducks being tossed up and down on spiky waves.
Morning will come (sleep, not so much) and that intensely important candle of the night before, will be a mere burnt piece of string, stuck in wax, suspended like an insect in amber.
The power may come back on and ‘normal’ life will resume. At first there will be celebration, new appreciation, followed swiftly by a complacency chaser. (Not unlike the feelings after a pandemic lockdown ends.) I imagine I shall mindlessly return to being lazy, looking up details or spellings instead of trying to remember, scrolling instead of reading. Blue skies will return, the storms and winter will recede, I will again forget where the candles and matches are kept, until once more I’ll be surprised, suddenly finding myself plunged into blackness, stumbling around, to rummage blindly in cupboards and drawers.
How simple, yet important a candle can be, burning in the dark.
