Best Foot Forward - withstanding the storm

The cutlery has never been so clean.

Apparently, that’s what you get when you hand wash it – unlike the dodgy results from my aged dishwasher.

This and many other revelations hit hard during the recent storm-related power outages.

Like the hard work it takes to wash said cutlery.

I had to stoke the fire, go to the bucket that was catching water from a leak in the carport guttering and fill up a pot, put it in (not on, due to sloping top) my woodheater until hot and then use the pot as a container for washing up.

As someone who enjoys camping it wasn’t a totally foreign experience, but unlike a camping trip I did not have the time to drink two red wines while I waited.

I’d already spent about an hour looking for head torches, and despite having about six I could only find two, and one had flat batteries, the other was held together with tape and rubber bands and the actual head band had stretched so it slid down on my head and ended up beaming in the wrong direction around my neck - lighting up my face like some kind of deliberate childhood scary story effect.

Two candles flickered lamely nearby, and a few camping lights were hung in the kitchen but I still nearly poured oil into the washing up water instead of dishwashing detergent.

Cooking dinner was even more fraught, due to my gas cooktop, which had been a saviour for several days, becoming useless when the gas bottle ran out.

Getting it off the copper connector is never easy and then the replacement had a stuck plastic bung – and rattling around in the dark in the shed for tools and attempting to pry it out wasted another hour (I later found out, having bought another bottle of gas that I couldn't pull the bung out of, that the bung simply twists out).

The aforementioned pot, now holding potatoes, ended up in the fire again to boil them – and I was willing to let the plastic bits melt away just so that I had spuds with my re-heated stew.

Oh how we rely on electricity!

After the power went out it took at least 24 hours to stop flicking on light switches, taps and trying to flush the toilet.

When the two buckets of collected water had been using for flushing, the thought of walking across the paddock to the leech-infested dam like Jack and Jill without Jack, did not appeal.

Off to the neighbours and relatives I went every second day, soap and towel (and several phone chargers) in hand, hoping they weren’t paying too much attention to the water restrictions that were being imposed.

I rediscovered the laundromat – who knew they were so futuristic! No coins or detergent needed, just a computer degree to operate the touch screen and a willingness to listen to the robot voice from the tap-and-go payment station.

My kids asked me what on earth did everyone do to fill in time before there was power and television and handheld devices with social media.

Admittedly I was having Netflix withdrawals when I grumpily said, “read” – and waited for the laughter to subside.

But really, when there’s no power, there is no spare time!