I had great plans to write a blog all week only it kept on not happening. Partly I was busily doing all the normal stuff that we do all week, and also because I was writing a talk for today for the kids club. Martin and I went dressed as shepherds, complete with sheep and a campfire, on a day shortly after the death of Jesus, and we reminisced about how we had been there at his birth, and the man he grew up to be. I haven’t seen the photos yet so I’ve no idea how we looked, but it seemed to go OK.
So, having ploughed my way down the list of jobs and activities for today, I thought I’d write a blog this evening. I cut the grass while it was still light, and unplugging the strimmer from the socket, I was met with a barrage of sparks and the house fused. Not only did the house fuse, but the fuse box died in the act of fusing. In Argentina, a very common phrase to hear is “se rompió”; which means “it broke”. Having spent the years of my youth having it impressed upon me that “stuff doesn’t just break itself”, it used to surprise me the ease with which people here say “se rompió”. Having been here a few years, I now know that this is Argentina, and really, things just do break themselves, and the fuse box “se rompió”.
Saturday night is a particularly rubbish time to find oneself without electricity, so Martin went off to fish out our tame builder friend, who in turn rounded up another neighbour who apparently works for EPEC, the electricity company. He came round and gave the offending fuse-box a good biff with a hammer, and now it works again. As Martin says, if we’d hit it, it wouldn’t have worked at all, so we can only assume that this is a special EPEC-trained sort of biff. Apparently this is only a temporary fix and we need to buy some new bits and get it done properly, but hopefully it’ll survive at least to keep the fridge running for the next few days.
And so finally, I am writing the blog that I didn’t write all week, but I’m not going to be writing it for very much longer because it’s after midnight, and we’re planning on driving up to Salta tomorrow for a few days setting off soon after dawn has cracked to make the most of the early morning cool, so, hope to catch you sometime towards the back end of the week when we’re here again.