The Sword and the Stone

Thanks to the intermittent power failures which are the norm at Nancy's place, I fell victim to a "Sword in the Stone" moment last night.

The Sword in the Stone, as you may recall, is a Arthurian story. A legend told that the future king of England would be the person who could pull a sword out of a chunk of rock. Thousands of strong men had used all their might, and failed. The young Arthur, unaware of the legend, sees the sword jutting out from the rock, pulls it out gently, and it comes free, thereby settling him in the throne as "The Once and Future King."

So...

The power grid here is somewhat unstable, and to reduce load, they shut-off the power to areas outside Lilongwe, where fewer people live, on a somewhat regular basis - a few times a week - for about an hour or so. But last night, we had a couple of brief outages.

Since our water supply is also known to shut off periodically, Nancy has insisted that we both shower in the evening, in case there's no water in the morning.

I was in the shower last night, half-soaped, when the power went off unexpectedly. Thanks to an almost fifty year familiarity with the dips and curves of my own "terra firma" I was able to finish the shower and towel off, all in pitch black darkness.

I stumbled my way to the bathroom door, recalling that it has a wooden latch, which you pull up with a string, freeing it.

I free it, and pulled it.

It wouldn't open.

I blindly trailed my fingers across the wooden latch, trying to recall the complex mechanics behind it - a string, attached to a slender bar, which pulls up and releases the door.

I pulled the string, and pulled harder, and rattled it , and pulled the string, and pulled the door.

Nancy could hear me - "Pull the string towards you!"

More tugging, pulling, inward cursing, with a far-off sense of panic as I contemplated a night spend in darkness, trapped in Nancy's bathroom. Why, only the day before, I had seen a large black spider and some kind of worm in there. Who knew what else I was currently sharing space with.

Simultaneous to the sudden flash of light, as the power returned, was my break-through moment as I gently PUSHED the door open.