Well that was interesting. One bolt of lightning and kaboom. Lights out from one end of Tenerife to the other. That certainly inspires confidence in the island’s infrastructure in the event of a real emergency doesn’t it.

This past few months we’ve had a bit of a survivor thing going on anyway watching Les Stroud struggle to feed himself and get a fire started  in various extreme, exposed and uninhabited parts of the globe.  We’ve snorted at Bear Gryls ridiculous efforts to be rugged before nipping off back to his four star for the night and marvelled at Ray Mears’ effortless ability to stay warm, dry and fed in the most unlikely of places.

The 80’s series of Survivors in which 98% of the world’s population is killed off by a deadly virus  attracted our attention for a while. The acting and sets seem a bit jaded now but in a lot of ways it can still hold its own next to last year’s version which finished on a cliff-hanger so all we know  is that after surviving plague, kidnap and a murderous politician, Abbey has now being taken into custody by some mad scientists who are quite willing to kill her to crack the secret of her immunity … oooohhh.

Anyway, you’d think with all that I would be quite well prepared to deal with a couple of electricity-free hours wouldn’t you? I could’ve practiced my skills with my fire key and flint stick, rustled up a few rabbit snares and picked some wild berries and edible leaves. I could have but I didn’t.  Instead I patted my unconscious computer and wandered past the kettle a couple of times before resigning myself to the very mundane task of cleaning my desk. Under piles of to-do lists and Extremely Important Papers! I found my lost ipod shuffle and a bowl of unused sugar sachets. Here’s a picture specially for John who recently cast doubt on the existence of my sugar sachet Spanish stash.

I also walked the dogs and sat for a while watching the clouds gathering in the distance. Though we were anticipating a wild night it didn’t come to much more than a downpour in the early hours of this morning and the sun was out again by the time I took the wee ones to school this morning.

Even so, half the little guy’s class didn’t show up and his teacher led in the fila muttering under her breath about those who were afraid of a little bit of agua.