Black out!

Wednesday 16th December 2009

I was at a friend’s house at 11am in Panteli helping her clean up her computer. The over-filled sort of computer clean-up. With three children from 16 down to 11 it’s not difficult to fill a hard drive. The power went off. This is not particularly unusual in Leros and this had been preceded by a thunderstorm of pretty grand proportions. We had had a night and early morning with Gale Force 8 and 9 winds and now this. Her son casually got out the large torch and continued his card game with his friend in its light.

The power came on again and we started transferring her pictures from her camera onto her computer which she had been unable to do for some time. Re-installing the driver fixed that. The power went off again just as she started to copy the pictures. Sigh. We chatted about her impending trip to Holland whence she hails. Power on again. We finished with her pictures and I was finishing my coffee when there was an enormous crash and bang outside as “something” was hit by lightning and the power went out again, not to return while I was there. By then it was hailing. And raining. And the thunder crashed and the lightning flashed. Boy was the rain heavy. I was supposed to be going to another friend’s house to introduce Tzouma to her dog – Christmas Day invitation… do the dogs get on? I phoned her. “The driveway is under water and we’ve got towels under all the doors but the rain’s still pouring under”. Another day we decided.

Puddle-jumped home and the dog was practically swimming they were so deep. The streets are all old riverbeds in Panteli. What do rivers do?

Good news – the power was on at home! Not for long however. At 11.45 off it went, only to return at… get this… 4.30pm. It had been half-on (Richard calls it a brown-out) for an hour or so before that. Never mind, we thought, it’s back. Flashing light on freezer, hmm, everything still frozen thank goodness. 5.15 oh no! Off it went again. At 7pm I’d decided I simply had to make something for supper on the gas ring – you know, one of those little camping rings perched atop a gas cannister. No house should be without one in Leros. See power out if you want to see my first experience here of this. So with the rechargeable torch (oops, not charged enough, it went out) and the gas lamp I went to work.

Having bought hamburger rolls and frozen them a couple of days ago, having home-made burgers in freezer, having frozen chips (no oven chips in Leros – which wouldn’t have been any good anyway as the word “oven” implies electricity, hmm) the meal was almost inevitable, short of salads and it’s kind of cold at the moment.

So, burger buns in a plate on top of the gas fire. This is a 10kg tank inside a metal box. It has three flames but we very rarely need more than one. Works seriously well. Next, having allowed the buns half an hour to defrost, a large frying pan on top of the ring with some olive oil and burgers in. Then some chips. All going well. We had some home-made monkey-gland sauce which I whipped onto the ring when the burgers and chips were done. Howzat! So.. we had just cleaned our plates when, need I say, the power came back on. By this time it was 8.30pm.

It’s now 10pm and the rain has started again. I wonder if the pow…