:: The Wendy House ::

Woke late this morning because my warm cosey sleep was not interrupted by:

• a CD radio-alarm
• the roar of the morning commute traffic nearby at some unearthy hour

When dailight fought it’s way into my room I rolled out of bed, discovered that there was no hot water and washed sparingly in the cold.  Wrapped up warm.  Put on my head-torch,  manually opened the garage drove the car out,  manually closed then locked it.  I skipped breakfast and tea thinking that I coulkd get that at the works canteen.

Drove to work.  Driving when the power is completely out for a city is fascinating.  It works extremely well with the US 4-way stop system everyone knows what to do,  it may be slow,  but its systematic,  rule-based fairness.  The UK would probably rely on politeness and individual based sense of fairness,  which in th UK would probably work and be a bit faster than a 4-way stop.  When I got to work,  it too was powerless.  Just some emergency generators and bewildered employees.  I sorted a few ‘what to do’ type things and looked at some colleagues impressive photographs of their Journey into work,  over and around fallen trees in 4-wheel-drive monsters. 

Cold,  hungry and completely TEA-LESS,  I followed a rumour that there was power in the nearby city of Bellevue.  I spent nearly 2 hours travelling to Bellevue main library.  That’s where I am now.  Warm,  cosey,  laptop powered-up and online.  Still tea-less.  I left my wallet in the Wendy House.  

When normality is resumed I will

• buy a non-mains-powered way of boiling water to ensure I have Tea during subsequent storms.
• a non-mains-powered radio so that I can listen to the news. 

The flick of a pony’s tale is an idiom that conveys time,  the time it takes for a pony to flick it’s tail.  An estimation based on a socially common experience is an extremely good way of communicating a time.  No pre-requisit to learn highly structured metrics (minutes, hours).  Pressumably, when this phrase was in common parlance horses,  ponies, were seen on a daily basis, flicking their tails.  Wikipedia lists some ’strange’ units of measurement.  Within this list are  examples of socially common objects and events to communicate the ’size’ of something.  Examples include:

Length:

• double-decker bus
• football field
• distance walked while smoking a cigarette

Data storage capacity

• bibles
• encyclopedia
• Library of congress

Wonderful words with communicative power.  How would you measure a dose of the flu,  or laughter?