There’s never one around when you need one…

… no, I am not talking cable needles here, but generators. Periodically, the local rag puts out a warning about dodgy traders. Normally described as speaking with an Oirish accent… and purporting to sell tools or generators. Said items are supposedly of shoddy character. No paperwork changes hands… etc. etc.

So, this morning I am out in the garden with Nell. A strange car draws up. Two youngish men inside, one gets out but leaves the door open, and the  other remains at the wheel, engine running. Alarm bells ring, especially when my unconscious brain notes the studied mode of dress, which is informal but ostensibly respectable, though cheap. The corduroy jacket looks out of place on this warm and sunny spring day.

Laddo engages brogueish charm: they have an exhibition on in Kirkwall at the present. Just  “power washers, generators and the like…” They have – surprise, surprise – some orders which have not been honoured and so they have a few generators spare, going cheap, like.

I decline the offer, firmly but politely.

He enters my personal space, and launches into the spiel once again. I cut him short, with the same firm and polite “No, thank you”… not to mention a long pace backwards and a look at the dog.

They leave.

I have short discussion with Mr L re: the advisability of locking a few doors for the next few days/leaving the dogs out to roam the Windswept Acre.

I start some pie meat cooking, then I sit down to my knitting.

The power goes off.

The power stays off.

There’s never a bloke around with a generator when you need one, is there?

Oddly, we both had the same thought about this massive coincidence. Would they, we wondered, be apt to engineer a little power failure in order to increase their sales conversion rate?

Anyway – I had soup that I had made earlier in the week sitting in my ‘fridge and I heated that on the camp stove for lunch. We had soup and a sarnie, with the transistor radio for company. The power returned just before 2pm – a tad earlier than the power company’s projected repair time of 3pm.

The sock progresses. I had to knit the heel twice today but am now on my way up the leg. I think we may safely declare that Second Sock Syndrome has not bitten on this pair.

What next? I thought, maybe, these

2 Comments

  1. SpinningGill
    May 8, 2008

    Same blokes came to our place. The exiting thing about the power cut (which we didn’t suffer BTW) was that on arriving at the school to give a cello lesson, I found everyone out in the playground. ‘Fire drill’ thought I – leave off the drill bit! There had been a bang and smoke from the boiler room when the power came back on! Cello lesson didn’t happen. 🙂

  2. May 8, 2008

    Ooh, dear… good job it’s warm weather.

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