Mum and I had an interesting experience when we went shopping last week. As we walked in, I said “Oh oh there’s load-shedding here!” I could hear the rumble of a generator.
“Don’t be silly Sibo,”mum responded, then stopped, cocked her head and reluctantly agreed.
I smirked a bit because mum hates to be wrong. There seemed to be no problems, so we grabbed a trolley and carried on into the store.
About half way through our shop, the noise of the generator suddenly died and the store went dark.
Dark is not a very accurate description.
It was so pitch black you could barely see your hand in front of your face. One never really thinks about the fact that there are no windows in big supermarkets—there’s a lot of artificial lighting in use.
There were a number of yelps and squeaks. I’m not a fan of the dark either so I sidled closer to mum and hung onto the trolley. Mum, on the other hand, clutched her bag tighter so that nobody could sneak up on her in the dark either.
After a few seconds, people hauled out their cell phones and the pitch black was pierced with random holes of light, which made it less scary. That torch app is pretty useful in a situation like that and if you don’t have one installed on your phone, maybe it’s a good idea to get one. They’re mostly free after all.
The situation didn’t last long. The genny hummed, the lights flickered back on, off and then on again. Everybody resumed their shopping.
“Let’s hurry up and get out of here Sibo,” mum picked up the pace of her shopping.
I was quite impressed with the way that everybody just stopped, stayed where they were and did not panic or do anything stupid. Although I wondered if the shop experienced losses with some dodgy people taking the opportunity to pop items into their handbags or pockets.
I was also curious about what happened at the tills. Did the whole system crash? Did they have to start ringing up everything again?
Being a nosey person, I asked, and the lady at the till said that their system just carried on like normal. It was only the lights that went out.
At least the power seems to have stabilised again… for the moment.
Sending love and light people.
Sibo