A chilly homecoming

So I went as a guest to the International Discworld Convention in Leicestershire, this last weekend (as had long been planned), and had a fabulous time. It was so terrific seeing so many much-missed buddies in a venue that Peter and I had visited before, and where we’d always had a great time, as old friends and fans of Terry Pratchett’s.

The convention went smoothly, insofar as I was concerned (a few fun kaffeeklatches, a Bedtime Story reading of a rather domestic book of the Odyssey), and only one episode where I fell up some stairs in front of a lot of people. (No injury, no big deal, stuff happens…) But that day, that last day of the convention, I came across signs that something offsite had begun to misbehave.

I’ve got a couple of (outside) security cameras helping me keep an eye on the cottage when I’m not here. I’ve also got a bunch of remotely manageable plugs that let me turn lights on and off when I’m not at home. On Monday, I noticed that all those light-management plugs, and the security cameras, were offline.

Once it became plain to me that these effects weren’t due to any problem at my end, I called my landlord and asked him to check the house and see if there’d been a power failure. It could, of course, have been a failure of the broadband router alone. But we do also get occasional voltage spikes that trip the cottage’s main circuit breaker, and then you have to flip it back on physically, and/or go through the house unplugging things to find out what caused the spike.

My landlord wasn’t on site (he was on the other side of the island, visiting friends), but he got in touch with one of his sons who was home, and asked him to check the house Tuesday morning. That was as good as that was going to get. Myself, I was starting to stress out a bit in terms of what was going on inside the fridge and freezer. The kitchen’s got a Bosch larder fridge and larder freezer, and their insulation’s proven good enough in the past to get their contents through short outages without ill effects.

The problem with this situation, though, was that I wasn’t sure how long the power outage had been (not having checked the security cameras or the light controls between the previous Wednesday and the end of the convention). And I wasn’t going to get home until Thursday afternoon.

Cue twitching DD.

Dermot the landlord’s son stopped by on Tuesday and found that the getting-in key he’d been left seemed not to be functioning: so he couldn’t enter to check the circuit breakers. The couple of lights that weren’t on online-device controls weren’t visible to him either… which made it clear that this wasn’t just a router problem.

Cue more twitching.

I flew home on Wednesday, but too late to get public transport home that day. Dermot kindly stopped by the house again and tried once more, unsuccessfully, to get in. I twitched more for most of yesterday. but there was nothing further that I could do.

I got transport back this afternoon, got into the house without any issues (the front door can be a little tricky sometimes…), threw the circuit breaker, and went straight for the freezer… and my heart sank.

Long story short: most of the food in it was at least partially thawed and therefore now unsafe to eat. A few things were still solid. But easily 90+% of everything in there was a loss. (There hadn’t been a whole lot of stuff in the fridge, but some things in there, especially all the dairy, has had to be binned as well.)

(sigh) So. New fresh meats, bought just a couple of weeks ago and intended for use during the next month or three: byebye. Cooked meals, stews and soups and pies and such, some of them made for the Mind Palate site, and frozen to be eaten later: byebye. Imported specialty groceries, frozen to be eaten in my own good time: bye. Roast and smoked meats being saved to be added to pasta and pies and so forth: bye. Specialty cooking fats (specifically Atora shredded suet): soaking wet, ruined. Much other interesting stuff: no longer safely edible.

Four garbage bags full of many pounds of food (some of it cooked for Peter, some of it even cooked by Peter, which I’d been looking forward to eating soon): all gone.

(sigh) Pretty much all that’s left: a loaf of country-style sourdough and a package of ground beef that was miraculously still frozen hard. I foresee a barbecue this evening, if the weather stays nice.

Meanwhile, I need to go out tomorrow and do some restrained shopping with money that had been budgeted for the electric bill that’s going to come due next week. And I’m going to be kicking myself for awhile for not having checked up on the cameras earlier—before or during the weekend—and for not having thought to turn the freezer up to its highest setting before leaving home… which possibly could have prevented at least some of this loss. Peter always remembered to do that.

(shrug) This is just one of those minor household disasters. I’ll get past it and gradually rebuild the freezer’s contents: replace some of the specialty foods, at least, one for one, from their sources. Lay in some more chicken and stewing beef and so forth.

But the one missing factor of this ongoing equation who can’t be replaced, ever, is today very much on my mind.