Weather | Martyn K Jones

We’re almost home after our sojourn in France, spending our low season visit exploring the Dordogne and Lot regions. We’ve had a long seven hour shank up to Nantes for an extended stay, courtesy of our ferry company changing our booking yet again, because of industrial action this time. After a few tense days we finally made it into to Cherbourg with no further gremlins.

The ferry we traveled on, named the Contentin, carries the more irreverent nickname ‘the coffee tin’. As passenger carrying ferries go is pretty basic, catering to truckers rather than tourists, with fairly basic facilities. But not half so basic as the Cherbourg port staff, some of whom were downright uncooperative. To be fair, the other half were doing their jobs under difficult circumstances, but others, they couldn’t give a damn and weren’t too shy about letting you know it.

Taking an extended break off season is very much the proverbial curates egg. Businesses that cater to the tourist are partially or completely shut down, even though the weather isn’t bad. Bars and restaurants are running on shortened hours and staff,but the plus side is, no crowds, and the whole atmosphere s somehow more relaxed and much less crowded.

As far as temperatures and sunshine have been concerned, it’s been quite pleasant for our Irish climate adapted selves. Little rain, blue skies and after the power cuts we fled from, copious amounts of hot water.

Over the previous ten days prior to our departure for France we found ourselves having to cope with a standing wash from a bucket of hot water, itself made by heating saucepans of water over a wood fired barbecue in one of our sheds. Then taking a bucket wash standing in front of a propane heater. Not totally uncomfortable, but time consuming and quite a lot of hard work splitting logs into kindling that could be used on our little charcoal kettle barbecue.

Then there was the food wasted. We normally have two freezers. A chest freezer in the boiler house and a large combination fridge freezer. I estimate we lost something not far short of four hundred euro’s worth of food. No compensation of course from the power companies. No reduction in our electricity bill, apart from kilowatt hours not used. So it is very easy to feel somewhat disillusioned with said power companies. Even though we always praised the grit and determination of the line crews, who were working outdoors in sometimes atrocious conditions, fixing downed cables and removing whole trees from across the power lines.

One of the issues we face, living out where we do, is the increasing unreliability of the electricity grid, with about one in four households now sporting some kind of backup power, be that by diesel generator, solar panels, wind, or even a mixture of all three, as no one power source on its own can be totally relied upon.

The weather may not be getting worse year on year, or then again it may be, these last two years may be part of a three year low, after which the worst will be over for another twenty or thirty years. Or we may, solar cycles being what they are, be due much colder climates, not the warmer ones we are constantly being threatened with by ‘scientists’, whose continual failed predictions of doom seem more akin to the wailings of witch doctors.

However. Based upon the premise that under the current administrations, with their insane belief (Although evidence suggests that their motives are mostly financial) that humans are responsible for all the changes in global weather systems, our electricity supply will remain unstable, prone to outage and ever more expensive because key systems are not robust enough. No doubt endless pots of public money will continue to be thrown at ‘renewables’, but reliable gas and other fuel reserves will remain untapped and infrastructure not improved.

Therefore at our home we are electing to spend money on a completely off grid power solution, using a proposed 4-6kw/h solar array, a 10-16 Kw/h battery storage facility with a 4-6 kw/h Diesel backup generator for when the sun is not shining. Given that our current electricity usage is about 2,800Kw/h a year, about 1,400Kw/h below average for a house of similar size, that should prove more than sufficient. Frankly I’m inclined to add a local water storage tank and filtration system to make sure our water supply always has enough clean water to work with. We get enough rain, that much is certain.

Our local mechanic, a friend and neighbour, already has a 10kw/h diesel generator with a thousand litre tank which kept him and his entire extended family with the lights and heating on. During the ten days we were without power I could look across two fields to his house and enviously watch the floodlights in his yard all evening, wondering when we too would have the modern marvel that is electricity. Suffering the financial indignity of standing charges being applied even though no electricity was being supplied. A circumstance which seems rather unfair, all things considered.

Our other neighbours managed to get power back after three days, while a small clique, of which we were one, were left struggling in the dark for over a week longer. I have since heard stories that others around Connaught were without mains electricity for over two weeks. Which in the early 21st century, even in the West of Ireland, should be a national disgrace. Notwithstanding the size of our bills.

So the neglect of public infrastructure will force us to invest in building our own. It’s either that or keep suffering the inconvenience.

Independent power and water are what is needed, ergo that is what we will have. To keep up with technology, we’re also looking at getting Starlink for independent Internet, something mere bumbling politicians will have difficulty interfering with. If Starlink mobile phone technology becomes a reality in the West of Ireland, then that too may replace our current cable company supplied comms.

So. while on the final leg of our holiday come road trip. This is what has been on my mind before I revisit the MSS of ‘Darkness’ and make changes so that those who want copies of any of my works can buy them direct.

Living out in county Mayo as we do, we recently had the mispleasure of experiencing a particular storm which left us without electricity from the early hours of 24th January to mid afternoon on the 2nd February, over ten days.

The storm damage to us personally was fairly light. A couple of dislodged tiles, parts of our old famine era stone wall on the western boundary, two galvanised steel gates were seriously bent, a block built fence post shattered, and a number of branches felled. My two bee colonies were destroyed, once neatly ordered combs littering the landscape half way to Donegal and two outbuilding doors damaged. The shed doors and the gates have had running repairs. The felled branches will provide firewood for next year.

However, the electronic fallout was worse.

The resulting ten day long power outage wrecked one of my laptops, a Linux machine, leaving me with my remaining, and increasingly finicky Windows 10 laptop, which drops network connections at the drop of the proverbial hat. The Linux client can be rebuilt, and all data was successfully backed up. Just not for some time. I like Linux as an operating system, but on my current hardware it is unstable and more trouble that it is worth.

However, one of my digital alter egos will never recover. The decision by WordPress to insist on dual logon verification and a similar decision by Google and all the other online platforms means that he is effectively and digitally dead. The blogs in question will remain until the platform we subsist upon disappears, but they will never be updated again. Not unless WordPress and Google release the accounts.

Then there was the rapidly thawing mess left in our freezers, the monetary value of which was approximately 3-400 Euros worth of frozen food. This was hygienically buried in a specially dug pit just beyond the back garden wall. A task which took up time and energy between boiling water for washing and beverage production, temporary fixes to gates and shed doors, as well as keeping our one source of reliable heat, a log burning stove in one front room. Then there was the lack of water when our local water pumping station was without power, it’s backup generator moved to the south to ensure that Kerry did not lose water when the well-predicted storm hit. The brunt of the storm itself hit further north.

In advance of the predicted bad weather I had laid in a supply of drinking water and about forty litres of other water for flushing toilets. For the three days we were without any mains water, that was all that stood between us and some very unpleasant outcomes.

For ten days we struggled along, burning up almost a third of our winter log supply simply keeping warm with none of the conveniences of modern life. Effectively living like our parents and grandparents did in the 1920’s and 30’s without all of their social support mechanisms. Almost a hundred years back in a single night.

Had it not been for the timely purchase of two high storage energy banks to keep our mobile phones charged and a friendly service station with its own generator, then the sense of being dropped through a time warp to the early 20th century would have been complete.

On the tenth day we decamped in abject frustration to county Wexford, en route for France, on a holiday we had booked and paid for last August. On the ferry to Cherbourg, one of the last notifications we received from ESB, Ireland’s electricity generation board, was that our power had been restored. The twenty first century had returned! The heating and security systems booted nicely, so we can now not only control the heat within our home, but actually see who comes a-visiting while we are on holiday in France.

Which is where we are now. Currently in the historic centre of Tours, home to many of the rulers of ancient France, enjoying the sights, even if frustrated by the one way system.

We’re simply enjoying the slightly warmer weather and richness of French food, being reminded that the French are the very monarchs of baking. Which makes the next few weeks something to look forward to.

Given the last ten days, Angie and myself desperately need this timeout for recovery. The relationship between us was recently put under extreme pressure and unbalanced us both. Before we begin moving forward again, we both need to recover our centre, our inner equilibrium. That is what this break is to be about.

As far as writing is concerned I’ve been looking at the manuscript for ‘Darkness between the stars’. Frankly it’s a mess. In the 80,000 words so far, too much has been cut and pasted disrupting the story flows to the point where a complete re-write of the whole trilogy is in order. On the other hand perhaps I might do better disassembling it and beginning the project I first envisioned in 2009 called ‘Earth’s night’, a series of future history style manuscripts where the events of my ‘Stars’ trilogy underpins most of the events, assisting with some of the foreshadowing.

So long as no more storms or major power outages hit, or we decide to move continents yet again, I might actually finish something worthwhile.