Published in On Our Selection News, October 27, 2016

Blackouts make for a dark time.

Losing power during a storm has a lot of negative consequences some trivial (not being able to see in the dark) and some not so trivial (not being able to charge your phone).

Take, for example, refrigeration. I have a very strong memory of our freezer dripping with blood after a blackout like something from a low-budget remake of The Shining.

We had recently bought half beast – no doubt thanks to the incredible bargain sniffing of my father – and the power was out for far too long. Kilos of meat thawed, got warm and oozed out their thick, red juices. It was pretty devastating, especially so for my mother who is practically a carnivore with glasses – she has been known to gnaw on bones and I once caught her eating raw mince. It obviously hit the family hard because someone thought it significant enough to take a photo of this bloody freezer (and this was back in the day when you had to take your film into the chemist and have it developed). It might have been taken for insurance purposes, but we still have it for some reason. If you riffle through the Maguire Phamily Photos you’ll eventually come across this confusing image which would no doubt raise suspicions if the Criminal Minds team unearthed it.

Blackouts are inconvenient, kind of creepy and make it very difficult to shower. And because the first person to walk away from the group during a blackout in a horror movie is the first one to have their spleen ripped from their body, power outages usually result in whole families gathering in one room. And herding several stressed, scared and slightly smelly people into a confined space doesn’t sound like a good idea.

But (and I say this with full access to electricity) there’s something kind of nice about the power going out. Because the Internet modem is off, videos of Sister Act choir performances you planned on spending your night watching take too long to buffer and you end up putting down the phone and breaking out a deck of cards with the family.

And depending on how many siblings are currently sponging off our parents, this can get quite loud. I would probably describe the sound that comes from our house as a cacophony  – which, incidentally, is the collective noun for cockatoos.

People say that getting away from technology is a good thing because once we disconnect with the Facebooks and the Instygrammers, we start connecting with each other. But in our case, being glued to screens is really an act of maintaining a peaceful society.

Because when left to our own devices, we revert back to our childhood selves. One of my sisters will ask penetratingly personal questions, another will start talking over someone, another will start talking over everyone to rouse on the person who was talking over someone, I’ll overshare, mum will say something laced with innuendo (sometimes wittingly, other times accidentally) and my father will have a mini aneurism. It’s great fun.

When I say blackouts are dark times, I mean so more for the neighbours – who can’t turn on the radio to drown out the noise.