It's been a difficult week...

My electricity account is a month in arrears which basically means that I missed a payment and now pay the arrears amount to keep my service connected until I can bring the account up to date. I realised on the weekend that I had forgotten to phone and ask for an extension to pay but knew that they wouldn't disconnect me on the weekend. On my way through to work on Monday I stopped off and paid the arrears amount. I phoned to tell the relevant authority that I had paid and was asked to fax through proof of payment which I did and which went through at 7.51am on Monday, 26th. On Tuesday, 27th in the afternoon some time we were switched off and only discovered this when we all went home in the evening. Well we are somewhat prepared having been through 'load shedding' last year. Dael had already retrieved the gas braai from the garage which we use without the skottel attachment, just usually putting a pot of water straight onto the gas jets. We survived the night fine although with some irritation. When you have to light a candle to see at 5am and have to go to work without a nice hot bath, it causes some frustration especially since I rushed to pay to avoid just this situation.

When I got to work and phoned again the lady said that the proof of payment had not been received (?) but that the actual payment was now showing on my account and that she would put through a reconnection instruction. Imagine my complete horror when I arrived home last night to find that the electricity was still not on! And being that the authority closes at 4.30pm there was still nothing to be done. I had placed all food in the fridge and freezer in close proximity to the ice so luckily it was still frozen but I knew that it wouldn't be by the next day so everything (luckily only about 4 bags) had to be taken down the road to my mom's fridges (also overflowing) to be stored until the electricity went on. No baths again and Dael is working a dirty job where he needs to shower every day. Got to work and phoned in again. Accounts dept. advise reconnection put through. Reconnections dept. advise that power was reconnected yesterday and that I have to put down all my switches on my DB board and put them up again one at a time. And that I should know this because I have been disconnected before. But previously I didn't have to do this extra technical step because the power just went back on when reconnected. Go figure.

Anyway there's no one at home to do this so I will have to make a special trip down the hill to do this and see if I can restore power to my home at long last. We are also in the middle of a two day (so far) tropical downpour of rain as well which doesn't help. I suppose we should be lucky we haven't got snow! Hope to have good news to tell later - if not and these plebs have broken my electricity - I will just have to pretend that I am camping!