Electricity will bring a bright new year

January 1999

It’s definitely going to be a bright new year for Mrs. Rena Goff of Duncormick, who is looking forward to having an electricity supply installed in her house for the first time.

As hundreds of Co. Wexford people surf the worldwide web information network each week, this lively seventy-one year old has taken the dramatic step of going ‘online’ in a different way.

She is one of the few people left in the county who are living without the electronic paraphanelia that the rest of us take for granted, such as washing machines, hoovers, clock radios, fax machines, et al.

The pre-Famine thatched house in which she has resided all her life has never been connected to the electricity grid, although that doesn’t mean that Rena shuns modern life.

She drives a 1998-registered car, powers her television by car battery, and has a telephone. She doesn’t have electric light or a fridge though, and relies on an oil lamp during the dark evenings and mornings.

She has remained without electricity up to now because of the high cost originally quoted by the ESB to have her connected. The initial fee requested was £2,500 which she felt she couldn’t afford.

The figure was substantially reduced recently and Rena took the decision to sell some land to cover the cost. Her brother Martin, who worked with the ESB for forty years, and her nephew Seamus have done all the preparatory work and the Duncormick woman is now waiting with excitement to be ‘switched on’.

‘Of course I’m looking forward to it,’ she said. ‘You would be, wouldn’t you.’ She was hoping to be lit up for Christmas but has had to wait a while longer because ESB personnel were so busy in the festive rush.

Last Christmas, when hurricane winds blasted electricity lines all over the country and thousands of people were sent into a helpless tizzy during the holidays, Rena was wondering what all the fuss was about.

All her neighbours found themselves in the same position as she has been for years, but unlike her, they desperately missed all the modern, power-driven conveniences.

The independent pensioner was spending Christmas Day with a relative and loaned her gas hob to other people to cook their dinner on. The irony of it wasn’t lost on her either.

Up to recent years, Rena used to cook on an open fire, the kind that you can stand in and look at the sky through the chimney.

She now uses an oil lamp for light but up to about a year and a half ago relied on a tilly lamp, until the manufacturers started putting some kind of additive in the paraffin which gummed up the needle.

The house in which Rena lives is one of the oldest in the area, a feature which means she is never short of company. Tourists from all over the world call to her requesting the ‘grand tour’, and she is only too happy to oblige.

The two-storey house dates back to the 1700s and is an important piece of architectural history as much as the homely residence into which Rena was born.

She and the house have also featured on a BBC programme dealing with the endangered corncrake. The area around her house was once a wonderland for wildfowl, until the former Board of Works drained the bogland which was their habitat.

As she awaits the arrival of the ESB van which will change her life, Rena Goff, a woman who has never been afraid of the dark, is looking forward to having light at the press of a switch.