A scary Sunday night

My apologies for being offline for so long. The past few weeks have been fraught with techie and other problems, the most scary being last Sunday night when the kitchen lights went out while supper was being cooked and torchlight revealed the fuse box by the front door belching dark brown smoke.

Thank goodness Mr Bookworm was around to cope with the situation. When the threat of fire had been averted, as least for the time being, we sat at the kitchen table reading our books by the light from a French-made Lumogaz lamp which reminded me of the Tilley lamps we used in an isolated house in the wilds of Malay[si]a long ago when we were in our early twenties.

Even in sunny Spain, January nights call for some form of room heating and an electric blanket to warm up the bed. As we brushed our teeth in an unheated, candle-lit bathroom and climbed between chilly sheets, we resigned ourselves to several nights, possibly even a week without the comforts to which we’re accustomed.

For me, the worst deprivation would be not going online early the following morning to read various newspapers and do some research for my current book.

However, thanks to a recommendation from a local builder, the following day an electrician arrived who, in a couple of hours, put things to rights. To our surprise and relief, by late afternoon all was well again.

Other problems to do with my computer still have be sorted out, so I don’t have a complete new blog to offer you. That will come, in batches, as the month proceeds.

For the moment I recommend that you read the first part [there are six in all] of Theodore Dalrymple’s Diary of a Journey Through Europe at the
New English Review. I have long been a Dalrymple fan but discovered these diaries only recently.

More anon. Meanwhile a special word of thanks to the husband of a reader whose first name begins with N. When she mentioned my problem with inactive December links, this nice man took the trouble to look at the code and suggest a cause. I’m fairly certain he is right but haven’t yet worked out a way to correct it.

Back soon.