Scrabble by Candlelight · Tuesday April 24, 2007 by Abbie
We didn’t spend as long reading in bed this morning, as Ram knew that his Dad was coming over for respite day. But as he wakes at eight these days, we still spent an hour reading.
I could see straight away that Ram was getting back to normal. He was off with the Dxh as soon as he arrived, showing him all the new Lego models he had made. That left me some time to ring the vet and sort out the medication levels for Arrow. Poor thing is 14 with arthritis and Alzheimer’s, although the jury is still out on that one as she has never been blessed with intellectual capacity!
I have spent some time researching what is available and what works for dogs in their later years, rather than just taking what the vet says as gospel. I guess this questioning of everything comes from questioning education. I think once you question one cultural norm, you start thinking outside the box and question everything! Especially if we can make substantial savings by not buying the food and drugs the vet recommends!
We had a lovely lunch together, then I went up for my nap. Just before I did I picked up the travel Scrabble that Ram chose to take on Saturday but didn’t play with, and casually suggested that they have a go.
When I came downstairs again much to my amazement they had been playing the whole time! Ram proudly showed me some of his words. He had started with herd, then added a der, then added sheep in front of that!
The rules were slightly unconventional, in that they had the tiles face up and you could choose what you wanted and swap tiles if you wanted. They had a dictionary out, and a couple of words wouldn’t be allowed in a standard game, but for a boy who not long ago couldn’t read, he did very well! But we must remember to not mention that it is educational or he will go off playing it!
I was hoping to do some more work on the DLA application form, but Ram decided to play on the Bionicle game again. He told the Dxh all about how he lost the whole game. Dxh asked if it was the worst thing that could happen, and he said cheerily, ‘No.’ Which is interesting as when it happened it was! He seems to have got over it now. He was quite proud that he had got 14% finished in one afternoon.
We were looking forward to an evening of educational TV and had just sat down to watch a programme about the Philosopher’s Stone, when we had a power outage! We had one last time I was on blog duty, and I would like to say that they usually aren’t that common but I am afraid they are. We have a lot of overhead lines here in rural areas, so these things happen. This time I was first to report it which was a bit of fun. The nice chap said that they had no indication of an outage in our area, so I pointed out that actually he did because I just told him! He had a good sense of humour and we had a very friendly jokey conversation. But of course Ram was right there asking me why I was laughing. He just doesn’t get people being on the phone. He can’t wait until a call is over, and can’t understand why I can just tell him exactly what I am talking about.
Because I was first to tell them they actually rang me back! I was hoping that they would tell me what the problem was, but all the nice lady said was that they had dispatched the engineers. I did ask from where, and she wasn’t sure. So I said I hoped that it wasn’t from Birmingham or something, but she assured me that not only was it local but that she was local too! It was a nice change from talking to a call centre that hasn’t even heard of our county let alone our village! I shall ring them back tomorrow to see if they will tell us exactly what went wrong. I will use the ‘home education card’ and see if they will give us more information that they usually do.
As the indications were that is was a high voltage overhead line fault, we knew we were in for a dark evening. I suggested Scrabble again only this time the deluxe full size edition that we got for £3 from a charity shop, complete with revolving board. Ram was really excited and we played until 9.30 by which point we were both too tired to carry on.
By then the unintruptable power supply for the computer that runs the house had run out of power, so there was no electrical hum at all at that point. The quiet of the house was bliss. I asked Ram later if he found it easier to concentrate without all the electrical hum in the house and he said he thought so.
It is amazing how subtly noise just creeps up on us. We have an old Amiga running the heating and lights in the house, with a UPS to protect it. Then there is the UPS for the computers in the study adding to the noise. The fridge, the intermittent noise of the oil boiler, and the water pumps that go with is all adds to the din.
But we don’t noticed all this background noise until the power is completely off. It is then you begin to wonder if these children (and in my case adult) who are sensitive to noise, are distracted by this. When we visit people in the city we notice all the background noise of the traffic there too. As an adult I know that I can tune it out, but I do wonder if some of Ram’s problems in concentrating are caused by all this noise.
When we converted the barn we had the opportunity to put in a heat circulation pump. I refused after being to a show home that had one. Even though others couldn’t hear it, I could clearly hear the sound of it coming from the loft, so I am glad I made the decision not to have one, even though it would have save energy. But if I ever convert or build another property, I think I will make sure that anything that takes power is either silent, or is in an outbuilding! Problem is, it would be a pain to have to go outside to get to a fridge!
Luckily the power came back on just as we were going to bed. When the old Amiga runs out of juice, the whole system has to reset and the poor little thing gets confused and turns all the lights on. Still, it was only a prototype that the Dxh hand build and soldered, and it is still going strong at 13 years of age, so we are very proud of it!
I like our little power outages. It gives Ram a taste of how people used to live, playing family games in the evening by oil lamp and candle light. I think it makes him appreciate electricity a little more. It is just a shame that we also missed Horizon and the Time Team Special! I guess home education without electricity would have been very different to home education today!
