The room brilliantly illuminated once more.
A shaft of lightning, clearly visible through the meagre, home-made curtains, followed by a thunderbolt of clearly very local origin. Then again, and again in quick succession. I clocked the time - around 4am - visible on the green glow of the bedside radio, before a loud click signified the power going out, the time resetting to a flashing 00:00.
The LTLP was not there, working away that night. This was good, as she sometimes gets scared by things like this. I lay in the dark clutching Honey Bear.
Click - the power goes again. 00:00. Honestly, the local services round here are positively Dickensian. Although I do get my power through a lead that comes via Short Tony's house, so he could just have been having a feeble joke at my expense.
Click. 00:00. Click. 00:00. I appeared to be travelling back in time. It is a lot easier than people suppose.
Downstairs, the phone and internet connection melted in a white-hot surge of naked elemental voltage.
Actually, they just stopped working. But that bit made it sound better. The rain poured out of the sparse guttering, drumming on one of the sills below.
I drifted off after a while. (To sleep, not out in to a flood, that would be in poor taste currently given events elsewhere).
When I awoke, the clock read 3:11. I had travelled back in time by almost an hour. However, in the other rooms, time had progressed as normal. This is one of the weird paradoxes of time/space travel, all to do with relativity, and is explained more fully in the song '39' by the band Queen.
But no internet connection still, and also no milk for my tea. I did think about looting the Village Shop and shooting at the Parish Council if they tried to stop me, but again that would have been in poor taste plus I have to go in there every day to get my newspaper.
So now I am virtually cut off from the world. I write this diary entry from a borrowed dial-up connection whilst waiting for the G.P.O. to investigate and repair my fault.
Many thankyous for the DVD advice last week. It has worked, and my plan is back on track.
