Meds to survive power, water cuts

"You need Ritalin, Prozac or some other anti-anxiety medication to calm you down," affable full-time Liverpool supporter and part-time medical practitioner Melvyn Frankel prescribed as we crossed each other at shul during the final stages of the Yom Kippur service.

A regular reader of The Times, he urged me to lighten up on the tirelessly critical tone of my weekly columns. With less than an hour to go before my fate was sealed for the forthcoming year, I wasn't going to take any chances of annulling the atonement of my sins with a smug riposte, even in jest. Instead, I warmly shook his hand, smiled and vowed to consider his professional advice.

I drove home mulling over Melvyn's censorious comments. As South Africa moved from its rebellious teenage years into adulthood, I reflected, nothing would cheer me more than to frequently write about our triumphs and achievements rather than inefficiencies, incompetence and corruption that were holding us back from becoming a winning nation. But no sooner had I driven through my gates than my dreamy thoughts were replaced by the stark reality of life in South Africa. My family was coming for dinner and we had no electricity.

I am reasonably well prepared for these situations. For some time I've had an Ellies generator that lights my house and powers our TVs and computers, but is not strong enough to feed appliances like a kettle. Still, I was eager to determine the cause of the outage, but after holding on for the entire second half of the Chelsea/Everton game while City Power asked me to be patient as they "experienced high call volumes", I gave up to join my guests for a cold meal.

I let the generator run out of diesel that evening: a big mistake. Although I had a spare tank of diesel, I could not restart the engine. Luckily our guests had already left, but I made a note to phone Ellies on Monday. After a wait of 15 hours, power was restored early on Sunday.

On my morning run, my heart sank. Around the corner from our home I noticed a generator the size of a shipping container was powering our local substation. Mindful that generators require constant topping up with fuel and conscious that the word "maintenance" does not exist in the country's lexicon, I feared the worst. Thankfully for Ellies, my home generator was operational by Tuesday, and not a minute too soon, because, by late afternoon we were back in the dark.

Still without power early on Wednesday, I jogged past the substation to see a truck offloading a new generator. Keen to establish when we could expect the return of normal service, I asked the technician the source of our troubles. For the first time, after days of badgering City Power, I received a sincere assessment. Slouching in the driver's seat, he opened his window and, pointing at the substation, growled: "It's f***ed."

We experienced two further outages over the next few days until the substation was repaired. Apart from losing the contents of our fridge on each occasion we managed to survive, thanks to our domestic generator. We did, however, learn that the people who staff the phones at City Power are rarely kept up to date, and are utterly indifferent to your plight.

More importantly though, I learned I should give up running. On Saturday (two weeks down the line) I breathed a sigh of relief as I trotted past the substation to see it still in good working order, but went into a decline as I noticed water gushing down Arkwright Avenue, 100m or so up the road. A burst pipe had caused huge chunks of the motorway, a major artery to Sandton, to subside, a disaster that will take months to fix. As I write we have been without water for more than 15 hours and, according to Joburg Water, the problem could persist.

So Melvyn, I will heed your counsel, although I'm not one for chemical substances. But you can prescribe Johnny Walker Gold, and I'll be certain to let you know when I need a new script.