Where was Lisa when the Lights went Out?

My grandma had one of those crazy, homespun sayings. If ever there was a power cut, or just if one of the lights needed a new bulb and temporarily threw us into darkness, she would say “Where was Moses when the lights went out”? I don’t think there was any especial biblical basis for the saying – perhaps I should research it more and find out if it’s a quote from some otherwise forgotten book or play. Another name, generally speaking one of the family could be, and often was, substituted for Moses but it only really worked if it had two syllables. One or three, and most certainly more than three, just sounded awkward and unscanned. As my name is Lisa, it works perfectly well. And Lisa is soon going to put the lights out.

     I have got into this habit of referring to myself in the 3^rd person sometimes, more of an affectation than any kind of particularly successful psychological trick. But sometimes I do it without realising. Lisa is going to put the lights out, and not just flick the trip switch. 

     It’s amazing what you can find out on the Internet, and I’m sure that the Health and Safety Brigade would have the proverbial kittens at this, but it was remarkably easy to discover how to do this, and I’m anything but technically minded. Ask my old science teachers.

     I am going to plunge my house into darkness. And of course, that is not all, nor even the main thing. After all, though not entirely satisfactory, candles and torches can serve some of the purpose of light, and it is summer, light early, dark late. It will be a nuisance not being able to cook or even make myself a cup of coffee, but I can handle it. Hair and bodies can be washed in cold water, and some even say it’s better for them. 

     But all of this is only marginal and incidental. What matters is that I will not be able to turn on the TV, and will not be able to yield to the terrible temptation to discover – or, I suppose I should say, to have confirmed – what I already know. 

     I am aware that this argument, too, is flawed. Lisa is both deluding herself and not deluding herself. I still have a little battery operated radio, and though I have firmly told myself, it will only be tuned to channels that broadcast no news, or, perhaps, on occasion, I will (though not yet) listen to the World Service, where there are unlikely to be articles about it, though I can never be sure. I may enter a café or a shop with a TV or radio playing. And then there are newspapers. But I can at least try. Prove those very teachers wrong. Lisa would do better if she tried. Well, Lisa IS going to try, and you might just be surprised!

     It worked. But I am not surprised. There was no magic or alchemy or even any especial flair involved. It was just a matter of following instructions I had printed out and taking it step by step. Anyone can do as they’re told. That’s another Grandma-ism, and it wasn’t always in praise of obedience either.

     Where was Lisa when the lights went out?

It is the third day now, and I suppose the novelty is wearing off. I have already got into new shopping habits. There are candles and batteries to buy, but not much point to buying coffee, or washing powder. There is something both positive and negative about the novelty wearing off. But though I am not really a creature of routine, it is not so difficult to rapidly establish a new one.

     There are things that make it easier. I would go so far as to say make it possible. I live alone. It is only me in the house that the well-meaning keep saying is too big for me. Of course, if I did not, I would have had to lie in the first place and say that the power went off of its own volition, and for a couple of hours they might think it was a regular power cut and then they would notice that the streetlights came on, and would go onto the drive, and see the lights of a house up the road. And then, of course, the partner, or parent, or offspring, or sibling, or just the housemate would insist that something must be done about it. No, they would assume that something would be done about it. The opposite would never enter their heads. I own the house. I have always thought I have no particular interest in property ownership, and I inherited it, but there is much to be said for not having to worry about a landlord or a representative of a housing association “dropping in”. 

     I live in the country. Oh, as I sometimes say (I have a glossary of pre-scripted sayings to bring out when conversations threaten to become awkward) not excessively in the country. There is no need to go down one track through ploughed or fallow fields and onto another, even narrower track through untended woodland to discover the house. It is even on a thoroughfare called Main Road, which is probably quite rare out in the country. But I guess it’s the nearest we get to a main road out here in Lincolnshire. The bus stops here, though only by request, and lorries rattle through to the East Coast ports. But the houses are spaced out along the road. Often, people who don’t know the area, just hearing the name, have this image of a quaint rural village. But it is not. There are no cottages clustering round a church (though there is still a church, half an hour’s walk up the road) and no village shop (there used to be) and no village school (there used to be).

     It is the tenth day. I am not going to come out with all that bilge about a better quality of life and how I envy those so-called primitive communities untouched by the vagaries of the modern world. And yet there are advantages born of necessity. I have learnt to look forward to the hours when it is light enough to read without needing a torch or candle flame, and it will be a while before the year really starts to ebb. I have learnt to value the “safe” radio programmes and to partly time my life by them. I appreciate the coffee I have in town, rather than just being able to turn on a kettle and have coffee any time I like. I am certainly drinking more wine now, but am not going to turn into a hypocritical puritan about that. Old habits die hard. My hand still sometimes reaches out to turn on a bedside lamp, my eyes turn to check the time on an electrical clock. I flick on the kettle switch, unthinking for a fraction of a second, forgetting that it will not switch on. But these are minor things.

     There has been the first comment. Frances on the bus, with whom I have a chat when we are both on, said, “Your house was dark when I went past last night, Lisa, was it a night on the town?” I was as good as sure that she had no deeper agenda in what she was saying. But I decided not to lie, or at least, not to tell a lie that might need legs and that could catch me out. “I must have been out the back” I said, as if it mattered not in the slightest. Now, of course, out the back is one of those handy phrases that actually means precisely nothing, but that people accept. It is also not a brush-off, not remotely rude, but at the same time as signalling that there’s really nothing of any significance to talk about, gives the tiniest, gentlest of hints that the speaker would really prefer not to discuss the matter any further. I don’t know if Frances is the person who is predisposed to pick up the tiniest and gentlest of hints, but she let it go – she was too eager to talk about the doings of her grandson, and I was almost too eager (at least on the surface) to listen. 

     It is the fifteenth day. I don’t know how long I’m going to keep on totting up the days the way I used to tot up the days to going on holiday when I was little (and frankly not so little). Except this is, of course, the reverse procedure. The nights are noticeably drawing in, but not nearly enough to be bothered about, yet. I just light my candles and put on one of the “safe” radio programmes. I am now onto my second bag of used batteries. 

     If I were more houseproud, I might be more bothered about keeping the house clean. Oh, I periodically flick a duster round surfaces, with a pleasant smelling furniture polish, and squirt some lemon-scented cleaner, that, of course, smells nothing like lemon, into the sink, and rub a scouring pad over it. But the carpet is getting grimier. I can’t use the vacuum cleaner. I suppose I could buy a cordless, I could just about afford it, but I can’t be bothered. So I have spells of scraping my foot over the carpet, and it picks up, if I get the edge of my shoe at the right angle, a satisfying quantity of hairs, but makes little impression on what, in our family, and probably millions of others, have always been known just as bits. I am washing my smalls with soap in the basin in the bathroom, but suppose that before long, to avoid comment, I will have to either make a trip to the laundrette or pick up a few new tops. I have discovered that facial wipes remove what seems like a sizeable amount of grime from the tops of my trousers, and yet, oddly, they still seem to be grimy. I have treated myself to a new little gizmo, a solar torch. I find it mildly amusing to play with it, and it’s a handy standby, but the light isn’t nearly as good as the one from the battery torch. I am also thinking of getting one of those wind-up radios, the kind they have in remote places in Africa or South America where there’s no guarantee of power. Or perhaps an old fashioned cassette player I can work with batteries. You can get audio books – talking books, I still prefer to call them – in the charity shop for practically nothing, and I can lie in the dark listening to the soporific voices of famous actors reading to me without any news interrupting.

     It is the thirtieth day. At least, I think it is. I know I have changed over my calendars, the one with the pictures of kittens on it, and the one with Monet paintings on it. There are a couple of blue biro marks I have made on dates, it must have been more than a month ago, and I can’t remember what they’re for. Maybe it’s because my library books were due in. Maybe it’s someone’s birthday. That would be typical of me, noting a birthday, and not noting whose. My habits have changed. I used to make a point of going out every day, now I stock up on candles and batteries and loaves of bread, and things that don’t need to be kept in the fridge. I have thrown out a few things that were in the fridge, though the block of cheese still looked suspiciously edible. The man came to read the electric meter today. I recognised the little van, but he knocked at the door a few times, and then went away, and put one of those cards through the door. He obviously thought I was out. Of course he could not read the meter. I think I am now probably behind with my payments, but not dramatically so. I’ve stopped being so bothered about picking up the post. There’s a leak in the roof of what I like (or liked) to call the conservatory, but of course I’m not going to get it fixed. The post is coagulating into a bit of a sodden mass. 

     I suppose I ought to at least charge my phone. I haven’t bothered with the landline for ages. There’s a way to do it; I’ve done it a couple of times already, the little stone church is generally open to the public and there’s a plug point in there. I can trudge up to the church and charge my phone, and have the charming cover story ready if anyone asks me why I am sitting there, and sees my phone. I will make light (pun unintended) of a temporary power cut and how I am sure Him Up There wouldn’t mind, and I will have a chuckle. People would, I imagine, generally chuckle back. I don’t phone many people. Less than I used to. Sometimes I send texts to radio phone ins, but I’m losing interest in that, too, and anyway, I can’t be sure that radio phone-ins are safe.

     Safe from what? Thinking it over, I’m really not sure. Sometimes I am, when I wake at odd times, or when I hear some words, some reference, that could be a back alley to my reason for being in the dark. But I’m really not sure. It mattered more than anything, and in a way it still does, and yet it doesn’t matter at all. 

     But I’m most certainly not going to have the lights put back on. I have got used to this. 

     It is the fortieth day. Or perhaps the forty-fifth. The clocks have gone back, now. And still a long while to the shortest day. I think.

     Where was Lisa when the lights went out?

     And why did she put them out?

     I don’t know!