Can't You See?


I’m currently sat in near-total darkness, except for the light from my computer screen and a couple of battery-powered lamps, due to what I hope is a power-cut and not the beginning of the end of humanity as we know it, thanks to the collapse of the National Grid.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my days swapping sexual favours for tins of expired dog food (the favour being a promise not to have sex with the person in question) so I have sustenance to live; or building a barricade around my flat with our furniture to then take turns on keeping watch with my wife in case some renegade punk with a grudge wants to plunder our shizz (I don’t know what any of that means either). I’m not cut out for a fight for survival: I get out-of-breath walking uphill.

If this is Armageddon, my immediate problem is my cat, who’ll probably attempt to eat me if I so much as fall asleep. That’s a risk I’ve faced ever since we got her, to be fair, but it’s far worse when the flat’s pitch-black, as her night-vision's built in.

(Plus she’s always hungry.)

Even if the situation's not as foreboding as all that, it’s still frustrating, as if the power-cut had happened before I packed away our Christmas decorations a few hours ago, I could have seen by the light of our tree. Damn Twelfth Night. Damn it to Hell.

(I’ve just realised that doesn’t make sense, as the lights were mains operated.)

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