COVID-19

…tells a story.

Well – part of one, at least!

So – what might be going in this particular picture then?

(You might wish to click on the image to see it in greater detail!)

I wrote in this forum a little earlier in the year about the wonderful live-streamed performance that we had enjoyed from the Old Vic in London of the late Brian Friel’s ‘Faith Healer‘ – one of my favourite plays.

Now – The Girl and I usually treat ourselves to a visit to the theatre at around this time of year, usually to take in something of a festive nature and very much as a prelude to the Christmas season itself.

This year, of course, there is not much on offer in this line – for the obvious reasons. The splendid Old Vic has – however – re-staged for live streaming Matthew Warchus’s production of Dickens’ immortal classic – ‘A Christmas Carol‘ – as adapted by Jack Thorne. We eagerly signed up to experience the production this Monday just past.

So – to the right of the picture above you can see our TV, showing the opening scenes of ‘A Christmas Carol‘. This is streaming live from London over Zoom. It is 7:00pm in London – 11:00am in Victoria.

To the left of the picture is our Christmas tree. That in itself has a tale behind it, which may be told in another post.

Through the windows one can see that the crisp morning air is filled with something else. Snow!

It is true that we don’t get much snow in Victoria – certainly when compared to other parts of Canada – but we do occasionally get things like this – a sudden, sharp and highly unpleasant snow storm with vigorous winds.

Now – the temperature outside on Monday was not particularly cold and, as a result, this snow was very wet. It came down hard and the gusting wind blew it into thick drifts covering everything in a short space of time. The snow froze on the branches of the many pine and fir tress in the surrounding areas and – assailed by the accompanying winds – brought down many sizeable branches, not least in our own garden.

At around midday – just as ‘A Christmas Carol’ had paused for its intermission – the power went out! This of course not only deprived us of the TV but also of our Internet connection. After some frantic scrabbling about we were able to watch the second half of the show – huddled closely together – on The Girl’s cell phone. Not quite the experience we had imagined, but we still gleaned enough to be moved anew by this excellent production.

The power was out for some four hours, as crews from BC Hydro struggled to fix the trail of faults that the storm left in its wake as it crossed the peninsula. The power finally came back on at around 4:00pm and – as it was by then getting dark – we breathed a sigh of relief.

Fifteen minutes later we heard a loud ‘bang’ from somewhere down the street. A transformer had blown and we were plunged once again into darkness. It is at a such times that we are extremely glad that we had gas installed in the house when we moved in. Our fire in the drawing room kept us warm and we were able to cook our supper on our gas range – by the light of the new LED headlamps that The Girl had thoughtfully and recently provided for just such occasions.

By the time the power came back on some three hours later the impetus to seize the day had somewhat evaporated, so it was not that long before we headed for bed.

Rather more ‘excitement’ for one day than we had anticipated!