The power in my street was off for 8 hours today.
It’s a good job I was planning on staying in bed all day really. If I had actual stuff to do, and had to rely upon an alarm clock or a working shower or silly, insignificant things like central heating, the power thing would have been somewhat more inconvenient. Instead, I just put three jumpers, two scarves and a pair of gloves on, and then got back into bed. As it started to go dark, I added to that a head-torch so I could carry on reading.
To be honest though, that’s a little bit of a lie, because the initial realisation that the power was off was greeted by panic. I think it’s because of my upbringing that I assume every power failure is a sign of imminent social revolution; worse still, one that I would be unable to follow on Twitter.
I did some yoga breathing and told myself to think rationally about what ordinary folk used to do before the internet, so I went to the shop and bought a couple of Sunday papers, feeling guilty about all the dead rainforests, but then weighed up all the tree murder against a day of no central heating. I appeased myself quite quickly to be honest.
And here is the point of me writing all this stuff down: How good are Sunday papers?
Answer: Very.
The Times had a feature on how people who discover Cormac McCarthy through the film version of The Road (coming out on Friday), should keep reading, because he’s so amazing.
The Observer had an interview with Dominic Cooke from The Royal Court, who has had one of the best 2009s of anyone in the theatre world. I’m going to see Enron and Jerusalem at the end of the month, as they’ve both got West End transfers.
There was a thing about cultural apps for the iPhone (Observer). I don’t even have an iPhone and I still loved that article.
There was a thing about Ian Dury (The Times), who I’ve always thought far less important that the rest of the world, but it was interesting to read a bit about his idea that the Blockheads should be a band of ‘cripples’.
Of course, it’s taken me all day to read these two papers, and I’m still not entirely finished with The Times. When term starts again in a week, Sunday will return to its usual position as the-day-Meg-does-a-week’s-worth-of-work-in-10-hours and so this kinda of lazy Sunday won’t be possible. And, there is that big sign above my head that reads “TREE KILLER”.
