Life trips us up in a dark space

I’m in a dark place and I don’t blame load shedding. I blame the wetters that stole my house’s cables in the dark of the night when the first load shedding hit just after 10pm.

They stripped seven houses and six are crystal palaces again – but mine… For three days now I feel as if I’m on holiday, boiling kettles on the braai outside, having the odd Portuguese bath and taming my hair with my spit.

Oh, I’m prepared for load shedding: got the inverter, chargers and solar light. But that all comes to naught if the current stops flowing through your laptop, phone, the two small batteries. Speaking of which – we’re on the car battery by now to get a quick Wi-Fi and an hour on the laptop.

“Just log the fault online,” I hear umpteen times a day. Online is the secret word – and when I use precious data, City Power kicks me out, telling me my meter “does not have a valid number”. And if there’s an emergency number a desperate woman can phone, I can’t find it.

But so life trips us up, I realised when I stumbled yet again over my old black dog always lying right where my foot goes.

In fact, I didn’t stumble, I hit the floor with no help from tequila. No broken hips or glasses, thank you for asking; just yet another carpet burn – this time on my knee.

But maybe we need that black dog to bring us down to earth sometimes, because life looks different in the dark. Elon Musk can keep his Twitter: I’ve discovered soft words by solar light around my round table because we can, for the first time in a long time, only talk. Never mind that the words turn harsh as the night gets darker. We’re tripping – but cleansing.

I’ve discovered that depressing but exhilarating book next to my bed and finished it by candle light until sunrise at 6.33am. (Promise, this seeker of light can tell you exactly when the sun shines.)

So much as I want to win the world over with a square grin and a giggle, I don’t mind meeting my dark side. Or the black dog running with me again.

But it was nice sitting in the glare of light tonight at my friend’s place watching her black dog curled up next to me. Hope springs eternal in the human breast.