Back online...

...it seems. I mentioned earlier today that we had a power cut, which was quite serious. My mother and I went to a local shopping centre (just to get out) and most of the shops were closed because of it. I sincerely hope the vandals responsible are brought to book for inflicting so much boredom on me - I think that labour camps should be brought back for such people. It was one of those days where I felt completely disinclined; I did virtually no work today, not even a Latin translation (which I am extremely fond of doing) - and worse still, no Tolkien. I looked up the word Boredom in two dictionaries of Philosophy and Psychology that I own (published by Oxford) but strangely they had no entry.

It is strange how boredom affects us. It makes me angry and irritable. My usual method of dealing with it is by going to sleep for a few hours, but last night I couldn't sleep because of the alarms going off relentlessly (and with much noise). I looked out bleakly over a sullen world; it was the middle of the night, and it was not really dark, in spite of the street lamps, but was heavily overcast and the atmosphere seemed to have a brooding, dull-red hue about it - with much throbbing on account of the alarms. I went downstairs several times, and wandered about - patted my sleeping dogs, the elder one making a loud noise to indicate she was trying to sleep, so I left them alone. There was no vanilla ice cream left worth eating. I drank lots of water, and then went back to bed, with much tossing and turning in evidence. There was no light to read by - I wanted at this point to read something profound to take away the throbbing.

Years ago, when I was little, power cuts used to be exciting adventures - my mother would rummage through the cupboard and bring forth tealight candles, and we would all gather in the living room to play a board game or something. We don't have board games in the house anymore. Before I went to bed though, my parents told me that when they were younger in the '60s and '70s, power cuts were more frequent and scheduled - and people just used to go to bed earlier. Sounds terribly boring to me, but what do I know?