Power

I have been enjoying a short break for a few days. This has meant a break from the blog too. The next few weeks will be very busy indeed for me and like everyone else I do need to switch off sometimes. That said, now I am here again, it is not a bad feeling. The artist and our daughter are out with another mother and daughter and I am at home with our son. Part of our electricity is not working and the man who came to look at it yesterday is now returning tomorrow. Electricity is one of those things foolishly I take for granted, though I can remember the power strikes we had during my time at school in the chilly north. I may have mentioned this before but it fell to me to go round all the switches in the two main buildings in complete darkness aged thirteen with a torch and switch off everything so that electricity would not be wasted when the power came back on again. I have also spent time in the desert where the sun is your only power, and the water you carry - though it gets very warm, almost too warm - assumes a life-saving potential, which is a power in itself. In the war zone as a young man I was without electricity too. At night this was no bad thing as lights didn't therefore give your position away. (Fires, too, were seldom used.) And the need for power, electricity, petrol, as we all know, is a source of so much tension these days. That said, though maybe I am too laid back about it, I never have a problem making do instead with what one has. Most of us have far more than we need anyway. Mind you, had the cut extended to the sitting room where the artist works, indeed where I am writing now and our son is watching his favourite TV programme, my attitude might be different. As it is, I can make out quite easily for example the piece to my immediate right that the artist has been working on. She has broken through now. A few days ago she was struggling, also with the anti-climax after the first private gallerist came. Now, however, the piece is looking accomplished. I have someone new in mind I would like to see the work. A man who years ago made it possible for me to travel with one of the most famous living painters of the time, only to have him pull out at the last moment because he felt he was being used. Not by me but by his government. It was to have been a trip to one of the great former tyrannies of the world. (Or no longer former?) I was going to write about it for a well know magazine. Anyway, the artist in question is dead now - though his work still features regularly in both the news and cultural analysis - but the man who arranged it is not and I saw him only two days ago. Perhaps if the power is on by then we may well be able to extend to a cup of tea.