Julie Jay: When it comes to parenting minus electricity, it’s a dim prospect

Over the course of the last few weeks, we have been minus electricity on quite a few occasions — too often for my device-driven heart — but always as a result of bad weather, which we can usually predict. Not by watching the weather, of course, but rather by forecasting storms the old-fashioned way: Peeking our head out the window and seeing how long our hairstyle stays in place. This time, however, there were no indicators that we were facing a Saturday sans the Smurfs.

Because losing power is becoming a bit of a weekly thing in West Kerry, Number One was on the case quicker than you can say, ‘How will I charge my phone?’

“Do we have enough firelogs, Mammy?” he enquired, no doubt looking forward to another day when Mammy boils water at the hearth, like a character in the Banshees of Inisheerin. I assured him that we did, but he double-checked just in case, because when your mother has only recently discovered her passport has expired since the summer, you can never be too sure.

Pottering out to the crew — who were tinkering away with the electricity box — with the baby in my arms and flanked by Number One, I inquired of the official-looking men busy at work as to how this would play out.

‘It’ll be out all day,’ one of the men answered, breezily, when asked how long we would be without telly, in a response that was far too chirpy for my liking.

‘All day?’ I nearly pulled a Lady Macbeth and fainted there and then, feeling physically sick at the thought of entertaining two children for the day in the cold and dark.

One man could clearly sense an imminent call to Joe Duffy, so he tried to temper my response by qualifying that ‘all day’ meant ‘five hours,’ which, of course in layman’s terms, means nine.

Already, the chill was setting into the house in the absence of heat, so we threw on extra layers and went about killing time until we could go back to chilling with Cúla 4.

Our first attempt to right the wrongs that the universe had inflicted upon us that morning was going for coffee for Mammy, and for babyccinos for the boys, because the last thing these lads need is caffeine; well, at least not after 11am.

Next up, we headed to the edge of West Kerry for a spin, because nothing makes me feel more connected to Tomás O’Croimthinn, Peig Sayers, and all the other Blasket Island gang than not having electricity.

The trip around Slea Head proved much shorter than I remembered, with numerous chants of ‘I want to go home’ from Number One, chants that eventually saw us landing back into the house a little earlier than planned.

We stayed there for a full five minutes of thumb twiddling, before realising that there was a way to shower — all we had to do was take a trip to our old friend Mr Swimming Pool.

It's a sad day when you have to go to the swimming pool for a wash, but needs must. 

We splashed about in the kiddies’ pool for as long as possible, before returning to the house that was still without power.

Let’s just say it was all starting to feel a little intense as the sun (and by sun, I mean a lighter grey cloud) went down, and nighttime started to encroach.

Even Number One was starting to doubt whether we could survive a night of this and was becoming increasingly anxious about the number of candles we had to light to stave off the doom, being, as he is, a four-year-old who always puts pyro-safety first.

As I was on the brink of stepping off the ledge of sanity, my friend called and kindly went candle shopping on my behalf, but left fairly quickly, returning to her house, which, infuriatingly, had been unaffected by the power outage. Yes, ours was the only street impacted by this electric emergency, which I am taking as a
personal vendetta.

Just as I was about to think about booking into a hotel for the night, purely for warmth (and telly), the surge of power hummed through the building, announcing its return. Instantly, my mood increased tenfold and Number One jumped for joy and was unapologetically allowed to veg out in front of the telly for two hours, to compensate for having been denied these little pleasures throughout the day.

Parenting without electricity is kind of like giving birth without drugs — possible, but not preferable, and certainly not something I want to find myself enduring on a Saturday when my childminder is off duty. I know many parents who survived longer bouts without power, and I don’t know how they did it.

Frankly, I think anyone who managed to get through a prolonged period, minus Paddington Bear, should never have to pay property tax again.

In fact, I plan on contacting my local councillor with this idea just as soon as I get my phone charged. That said, this could take a while, given that though today’s electricity isn’t lost, my charger is.