Shocked by what I’ve just seen, I walk back to the brow of the hill where sometimes there is mobile reception. I shelter from the wind in the lee of a ruined barn here and I phone the woman who looks after the cottage. She lives in a village a few miles to the south. Does she have any idea how long the power may be off for? And how wide an area is affected? She’s apologetic about the power cut, saying that it only happened after we spoke last night, otherwise of course she would have warned me. But all the villages and houses on this side of the estuary are still without electricity, though she’s just heard the power’s back on in Harlech. She’s talked to the farmer next door, they’re saying it could be back on by nine o’clock this evening, but they can’t promise that. They know where the problem is, apparently, and there’s a whole team of guys working on it. I tell her I’m staying at Megan’s temporarily, but there’s another problem in the cottage below – the power sockets have been blown out, so even when the electricity is back on elsewhere I’m pretty sure it won’t be on there. She says it could have been lightning from a week ago, it’s happened once before at the cottage. Anyway, again she’s apologetic, and then she gives me the number of a local electrician who’s done work at the cottage before, and understands the old-fashioned wiring.
I return to the cottage, feeling my spirits lift a little. The human need for reassurance, I suppose. Armed with the knowledge I’ve just received, I decide the next priority is to get food and petrol, and if the power’s back on in Harlech that will mean the shops are open again. As I walk up the track to the car the rain begins again, as if angry at having been left out of the night’s entertainment. Welsh rain now, horizontal sheets from over the mountains, darkening the skies even more. As I edge down the track in the car, I see another oak tree completely uprooted, but luckily it’s fallen into the field and not across the track. At the bottom gate, in the few seconds it takes me to open it and then close it behind me, I’m totally drenched. I reach the main road and turn right. Only one other car passes me in the next ten minutes. The only sound the manic flapping of the windscreen wipers, on maximum speed. Clearly everyone sensible is inside, waiting for this battering weather to pass. Finally I see the small town ahead, and with relief notice that the street lights are working, so the power is definitely back on here.
I park outside the little Spar and run in. The owner looks up as I appear bedraggled in the doorway. She tells me, not very warmly, that she’s closing early today, actually in five minutes, so I’d better be quick. My inner hunter-gatherer takes over. I grab a basket and shovel in anything that could be useful. Bread, bacon, butter, beer, biscuits, batteries, milk, cheddar, carrots, soup, eggs, more candles … And at the till I spy a half bottle of cognac, and can’t resist. The woman releases it from its high shelf, and, with a little sigh of disapproval, adds it to my bill. Faced with such puritanism I smile even more widely, take my change and tell her to keep warm and cosy tonight, to which provocation she responds with a scowl. But I’ve got what I need and head back out into what seems like dusk now, but it could just be the black clouds and rain still teeming down. I get petrol on the edge of the town, at what must be the most expensive garage in the whole of north Wales, but needs must. Driving back, crossing the invisible border of power to powerlessness, but now with supplies, I wonder whether I’m not actually beginning to enjoy the consecutive challenges that the last twelve hours have thrown at me.
Back in the cottage, stove revived again, a mood of greater realism takes over. I do what I usually do in difficult situations – plan for all scenarios, but always starting with the worst. Then you can only be pleasantly surprised when this doesn’t happen – and usually it doesn’t. So, if the power is off for another twenty-four, or forty-eight hours, what should I do? Or even longer? What then? How long will my sense of novelty in my powerless state last? How long can I go without a shower or a bath? Or without properly cooked food? I decide on thirty-six hours – and if the power’s not on again by the second morning I’ll head back to London, and put this one down to experience. I find a jar of chutney in a cupboard and head back to the warmth to eat some more bread and cheese. With the decision I’ve made I feel I’ve taken back an important element of control here. I’m no longer simply a passive recipient of whether energy is released back into cables or not. I make some coffee; no ability of course to grind the beans I’ve brought with me from London, but the instant coffee I’ve unearthed from the back of another cupboard is not as unpleasant as I remember. I return to my window and pick up my pen again.
*
After a minute or two I look up and see a lamp on the other side of the room is glowing. It takes me a moment to realise the full meaning of this. Silently, unexpectedly, the power has returned! I let out a wild whoop of delight, and rush through the cottage turning on every appliance I can find, as if not believing the evidence of the single lamp. Later I reflect that the power had returned at almost exactly the same moment that I had accepted my state of powerlessness.
But now, in the small amount of daylight left, I need to go down and check if the electricity’s back on in the cottage where I usually write. Five minutes later I’m down the hill, clicking the switches again. No, still nothing. Bugger. It must be connected to the burnt-out sockets, just as I’d thought. Without much expectation of getting through, I ring the electrician’s number from the top of the hill. Gwyn Davies answers on the second ring, and even though it’s a Saturday, the end of the afternoon, he agrees to come out immediately. He’s not far away and he’s just finished a job, it’s virtually on his way home. And a few minutes later a white van appears over the brow of the hill.
Gwyn is in his thirties, tall, friendly in a bluff kind of way, and has that air of confidence that comes from solving practical problems. My electric socket diagnosis is soon dismissed on the very reasonable grounds that they aren’t electric sockets at all, but phone sockets – he shows me the wires and tells me that lightning often finds its way down phone cables like this. But anyway, that shouldn’t have affected the electricity. He asks me to hold a torch and starts testing the supply. He makes a face. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there is electricity coming in at the mains; the bad news is that it looks like the main fuse has gone, and this type is not very common, and all the shops are now closed until Monday. I pull an agonised frown, explaining that I’m desperate to start writing the next chapter of the book I’m working on, and I can only really do it in this place. This seems to have some effect because Gwyn then says: ‘Hang on, I’ve just thought of something. Come with me, you can open the gates, it’ll be quicker.’ And soon we’re heading up the track at a speed I wouldn’t dare to drive. He asks me what I’m writing about, and I give him a summary, deciding to omit the fact I’ve been working on this for fifteen years – I don’t think this would impress a man like Gwyn, used to solving problems in a matter of minutes and hours, rather than years.
Having closed the gate, I get back in the van, and he then stuns me with this question: ‘Tell me, do you think there’s a relationship between grief and poetry?’ It takes me time to respond. ‘Well, I … yes, I think there is. I think the reason might be that in the days and weeks of intense grief we feel more alive than at virtually any other time in our lives. But why do you ask? Do you think there’s a connection?’