Cooking with Gas

Ha! Take that, you skeptical utility people on the phone who none too subtly implied that perhaps I'd inadvertently turned off my own gas supply, and that I didn't know how to follow their instructions about checking whether the thingamajig on the whatsit was on or off!

First I had a man pull apart the whole whatsit out in the front yard. Then he announced that it was a Real Problem, pulled out his phone and called in the big boys with their impressive trucks and noisy pumps and stuff, who turned up not long after. It seems flooding from all the rain that fell two nights ago while I was at the Arvo Job had cut off the gas supply from the street. Strangely enough, my young neighbours converged on the excitement and announced that they were also without gas. Given that they're home a lot more than I am, why didn't they get the ball rolling with the big boys with the impressive trucks?

Anyhoo, the two mud-caked blokes were kind enough to come around the back and get my hot water system going again afterwards. The chook, who has hung around all day cosying up to the cats and clucking with pleasure at my every appearance (it's nice to be appreciated, even if it is only for the goodies I toss her way), amused the blokes by loudly squawking her displeasure at the disruption. It was cute, but I wish she'd get over the idea that she's welcome in the house.

In between all this, I was on the phone with other helpful and unhelpful folk, an automatic voice recognition system that refused to recognise my first name or even the spelling of it (obviously not an international version) and doing stuff online, and managed to tick off everything on my list, more or less - some things were set in motion rather than completed. Now I'll reward myself for dealing with another country-living adventure (Falling trees! Floods! Fires! Mad chooks!) by heading off for an evening of readings and chatting at the new local centre for writers, which seems to be getting very organised.