Electric Halloween

There's something of an irony in the title of this blog entry as Halloween almost didn't take place at the castle this year due to a power cut. But if you like looking at electrical equipment, this is the Halloween blogpost for you. :-)

our Halloween storyteller - Eileen Budd

The Halloween storytelling event at the castle was scheduled for yesterday i.e. 10:30 to 12:00 on Saturday 2nd November 2024. On Tuesday a letter arrived through the post from Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks (SSE) stating that the power would be off from 09:00 to 17:00 on the very day of the  event. Total sabotage!

I contacted SSE by email and was told that they could not reschedule the outage or supply a generator. I then phoned up and confronted the SSE chap with "You tell me what to do!" because SSE was entirely responsible for creating this problem. Anyhow, the chap relented and said he would send out a generator.

The SSE chap emailed later that the work at the castle was more complex than anticipated and would be postponed to the 26th November. Hurrah! Then the man with the generator turned up. I told him that it was a false callout as the power outage had been postponed. He left swearing! Then he came back. It was my mistake: in fact there were to be two power cuts: one yesterday and one on the 26th.

The chap talked about a transformer and pole upgrade. I mentioned that I might know the very pole as there is a transformer by the castle that looks like it came out of the 1950's!

old castle transformer

I discovered a modern transformer lying on the ground nearby on Saturday - no doubt the upgrade:

new castle transformer

There was also critical work planned on a castle gate lodge early yesterday. The delivery of the necessary materials from Wickes was scheduled for the day before, so there was no slack whatsoever in the schedule, and I was only able to confirm the delivery had taken place late Friday during a walk to the gate lodges in pitch blackness!

Needless to say I have been having kittens in the last few days about no building materials and no electricity! These panics aside, the story-telling event went ahead without a hitch, with top quality storytelling (courtesy of Eileen the storyteller); top quality refreshments (courtesy of Ryan the chef) and a top quality venue (thanks to Balintore the castle).

I met Eileen for the first time at a Burns Night at the castle in January of this year. She revealed she was a storyteller. Balintore is a perfect venue for story-telling of course and yesterday's event was the direct result of our conversation at that time. It's lovely when plans come through, and I am dreaming of the next story-telling event! The photo above gives her other storytelling gigs in November.

After the event, I went round to the take a photo of the SSE generator. This had just been switched off just a few seconds before the photo was taken. Thank you SSE!

the SSE generator that electrified our Halloween event

Some of the locals generally come over around Halloween for a suitably ghostly tour of the castle. This is always a total delight as the kids come too and everyone makes a great effort with their fancy dress. The following alarming spectacle met me on my doorstep late yesterday afternoon! :-)

the spooky Halloween castle tour

And finally, I am sure you would all like an update on our resident polecat Ko-Ko. :-) She has come to sleep with me every so often over the last few weeks. On Friday night, I was woken up by some rustling in my bedroom. This is the normal precursor to  Ko-Ko joining me in bed. But this time she climbed up behind my headboard which has metal bars, until her head was about a foot from mine. She gave out a ginormous "squeak" and then ran off with lots of elaborate tussling. It scared the life out of me, and I was so perturbed I put the light on by my bed so at least I could see what was happening.

I have no idea what was going on: was she just playing with me? Joe, Ryan and I heard a polecat fight under the floorboards of the basement kitchen. It was quite a stramach, with lots of squeaking and banging.  Was it polecat against polecat; polecat against rabbit; or polecat against rat? If the latter then I guess the disturbance is welcome i.e. for polecats to deter rats this must translate into physical action at some stage.