i canna doo't cap'n! i just dunna have the poower!

It is approaching the height of tedium to talk about the weather. To mention it in a blog post might just hit that zenith of snore-worthy snoozefest. However... warn't that one hum-dinger-doozy of a storm on Saturday?! Hoo-eey!

From inside my humble little dwelling in Munkey Towers, it might have been mistaken for some kind of Old Testatment Wrath-Of-God type deal. Verily the Lord did flood the lands, and fire and brimstone did fall from the sky! Well, at least there was some mindbogglingly heavy rain (and hail! in February!), and some motherfuckering lighting strikes and claps of thunder. In fact the lightning was so close to my flat that you could hear the zapping electric noise of it flying through the air before the deafening crack as it struck whatever-it-struck. One of the things it struck was a power pole just outside my building.

Of course this had dire consequences for my electricity supply. "Oh no!" thought munkey. "My clock has gone out! Gollygoshdang this storm! I'll just sign on to the Bureau of Meterology Radar online and see when the storm is likely to pass. Oh no! I'm a fool, I'm a damned fool!" Of course (for those readers as absent-minded as me) it's important to remember that in a black-out, nothing works. Well nothing electric, which is practically everything that matters in this day and age. But nothing could prepare me for what was to come...

I decided, since my abode had been zapped back to the Dark Ages, that Oli and I would trundle off to patermunkey's house for good-cheer and electric-goodness. So I packed up my crap to stay the night, bundled myself (through the pouring, teeming, torrentialling rain) and into Oli's safe confines. Ahh here we are in the warm dry car. Safe and sound. Now, to patermunkey's house we go.

I turn Oli's key: *CLICK*! Yes, lovers and dreamers: *CLICK*. No *grumble-grumble-ROAR*. No *rattle-rattle-PURR*. Just *CLICK*.


Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

How could this be?! Has this cataclysmic disturbance in the electrical balance of the universe actually managed to sap the power from poor little Oli's battery?! Has some Buffy-style demon decided to simultaneously remove all power-sources from my life, to enforce a difficult but necessary lesson about embracing the power within? ...Okay okay. Perhaps my battery has been on the way out for a few months now, and perhaps I was in full knowledge of this and procrastinating (as usual) about buying a new one, and perhaps this remarkably inconvenient coincidence is simply fate's CRUEL way of slapping me on the wrist.

Anyway, the RACV man visited me in quicker time than expected - surprising, given the conditions - and I got to patermunkey's house in time to scald my hand with boiling gravy, engage in in-depth discussion with my Aunty-S and Uncle-I, and indulge in drunken phone-calls with a certain lovely boy. So in the end, the storm passed and all was well with the world.