There are not many things I can say with certainty. Yet I am in this instance convinced of my perspicacity. Humanity as we know it abruptly alters upon a power outage.  At the moment for example I am staring out the drawing room window into utter darkness. The sky is black with only an occasional glaze of grey.  In the distance are the isolated headlights of one or two automobiles meandering along the country road. This is a huge power outage affecting every foreseeable residence in town and the country estates beyond. Even the upriver Village of Appleton appears to be entirely in abject gloom.

What is keeping me going on this particular literary venture (pardon, if you will, my elevation of this modest undertaking from mundane “blog”) is a Personal Hotspot from my iPhone. Reportedly it “can provide internet access to other devices signed into your iCloud account without requiring you to enter the password”. Personal Hotspot is but one more incomprehensible miracle of Apple as far as I am concerned.

This outage and most peculiar event – on what was otherwise a uniquely brilliant spring day – has transpired on the day of our return from South Carolina. There was just enough late afternoon sunlight to permit me to empty my suitcases before having to abandon all else.  Specifically we reunited with our beloved Almonte around 1:30 pm.  I know that because I proceeded immediately to wind the grandfather clock in the hallway and the carriage clock on my desk.  The hour then was precisely 1:40 pm which I recall because when I wound the grandfather clock the hands were already stopped at 1:40. I then remarked  – by glancing at my Bulova wrist watch – that it was the exact time of day!  Just a coincidence naturally. But I love those things!

After winding the clocks the first matter which preoccupied me upon entering the apartment was to remove the bubble wrap and heavy brown paper surrounding the acrylic painting we had purchased upon our arrival on Hilton Head Island over one month ago.  To my initial dismay there was unequivocally nowhere to hang the painting.  Quite literally the walls of our tiny apartment are already replete! We found a place nonetheless. It did however require distinct preservation of the gallery-style of wallhanging; which is to say somewhat augmented beyond the norm. The only available spot was located above an existing painting. And not in the drawing room to my regret. Its heightened position requires adjustment of one’s vision above the customary eye-level mandate. But it is not without its approval; and, the result has still managed to avoid the look of a bar room cluster of trashy faded photographs or magazine ads retrieved from a bygone auction house.

With that decorative duty accomplished the next and more immediate requirement was to reconnect our various and numerous electronic devices, everything from computers to chargers for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, hearing aids and Theragun.

Then it was a hurried glance at the covers of a bundle of Country Life magazines, the arrival of which had already been monotonously heralded in the tiresome and repetitive emails about Pocketmags.

Naturally there was old fashioned mail to review, most of which was completely unnecessary and uninteresting except the notice about the re-opening of a hearing aid clinic in town “celebrating the release of brand new ground-breakng hearing aid technology”. I intend to visit it tomorrow because a small plastic wire on my device has broken off. I will speak to the Hearing Instrument Specialist. The subject of hearing aids is by the way currently one of considerable debate surrounding the latest ads by Bose® for example. The technology for hearing apparatus must surely be one of major currency.

And if all this were not enough, and if I hadn’t already driven long and far enough in the past four days, it behooved me to extract myself from home territory once again to visit Halo Car Wash® in Stittsville for the purchase of another 3-month membership and to wash/vacuum the car.  There I was greeted by one of my several favourite attendants who not only arranged the new membership but also very kindly removed the windshield sticker of ZIPS Car Wash on Hilton Head Island.

Yesterday just after 6 pm, Mississippi Mills suffered a power outage that affected  customers in several communities. Mayor Christa Lowry indicated on Facebook that both Hydro One and ORPC customers in Mississippi Mills were affected.  The power cut hit all of  Almonte, Pakenham and Blakeney. Communities from Arnprior to Westport were blacked out. The incident is under investigation but Hydro one has indicated that the cause was a pole fire. For updates consult Hydro One Outage Map http://www.hydroone.com/power…/stormcentre-outage-map  and Ottawa River Power Corporation