A new experience

For a while I thought I was back in SA. We received a letter to say we would be without electricity for 45 minutes last night and again early this morning. Here the similarity ended. As we got ready to take Douglas to his meeting we noticed a large truck off loading a huge unit next to the substation at the edge of the open piece of land opposite our house. We then realized that this was a temporary substation that would be in operation while they upgraded the permanent one. 15 minutes after the allocated time we lost power but after another 15 minutes it was restored. Unfortunately it proved to be a long 15 minutes for me as the alarm siren decided to scream the whole time. I ran around trying to deactivate it but had no success nor did Douglas when he returned from his meeting and there was another dip in the power. He was lucky though as it was just a dip so did not go on as long as it had earlier. (A reward for him as he had turned down the offer to chair the festival committee meetings.) When we retired to our room for the night we were hummed to sleep by the gentle sounds of a generator coming through the open bedroom window and so we once again thought we were back in SA. This morning we had the rude awakening of the alarm screaming again and so we knew that the time for the switch back had arrived. Fortunately this was for less than 15 minutes and again we were reminded that we were not in Africa.