I didn’t intend to spend my Sunday hacking at gargantuan weeds with a half-broken set of pruning shears in the rain.
But the universe – or, more accurately, a unique combination of bad luck and stupid decisions – had conspired against me, leaving me with no phone, no internet, no power, no money and nothing to do but tend to my overgrown garden.
I am known to be a forgetful person.
Among things I have lost are keys, wallets, bike locks, prized jewellery, hats (many, many hats), jackets, library books and credit cards.
So it didn’t exactly bowl me down with surprise when I awoke on a Saturday morning to the realisation that at some point between a gig, an Uber ride and a late-night board game, my iPhone had gone missing.
This was the fifth phone I had lost (four domestically, one at a Rastafarian bar in the northern foothills of Thailand).
As such, I’ve become accustomed to periods of accidentally enforced phone withdrawals, and don’t consider myself a social media junkie.
I took the temporary loss of my connection to the outside world in my stride, spending Saturday cooking with my housemate and wandering the park with my dog.
I even found myself thinking with some sense of humble reverence how nice it was to “switch off” for a moment and appreciate the little things – a child playing with their mother, a community sausage sizzle, my dog bounding across an oval with his tongue lolling out.
What I didn’t expect was waking up on day two without a phone to a major power outage, courtesy of an ancient house with old wiring and a bucketload of rain overnight.
Suddenly, my other technological devices were rendered useless. How was I supposed to idly scroll Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on my laptop? How was I supposed to stream bad reality tv on Netflix?
How was I supposed to Google random things – like the last time Carlton was in a grand final with Collingwood (1988), or the price of Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina candle (approximately $100)?
As a millennial, I straddle the divide between dial-up internet and the explosion of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
I still remember getting my first mobile as a prepubescent child - a red flip-phone that I adorned with gems and used primarily to play the retro Nokia game Snake.
Even in those days, technology was rife in my life, from my Nintendo DS to nights on MSN and Club Penguin (if you know, you know).
Now, I had found myself in a Survivor-esque situation, or something like one of those shows where they send families back to the 1800s in Victorian-era clothing.
To make matters worse, my bank card had been missing for about a week, tucked in a rarely used bag or jacket, I had assumed, and I’d been relying on my phone’s digital wallet to pay for everything in my life.
And I’d allow my car to run almost completely out of petrol.
So here I was, a Rapunzel locked in my tower as the contents of our fridge slowly warmed to room temperature and rain pooled into mud-piles in the yard.
But I could do this! Nay, my housemates and I could do this! We set to work, sticking a candle into one of the previous night’s empty wine bottles and positioning it in the toilet so nobody would be required to poo in the dark.
Gazing at the flickering wick, burning softly by toilet paper rolls, and the slow trickle of water from our semi-broken latrine, it almost looked like a highly valuable modern art installation.
“The Fountain of Youth,” a housemate whispered.
For the first hour, I was determined to make the most of a bad situation. I began a 1,000 piece puzzle, completed the edges and read the newspaper from front to back.
I cleaned the house, emptied the bins and brushed my dog.
By hour three, I had begun vacantly roaming the halls, dreaming of the adrenaline hit of a Twitter notification or an Instagram like. The world could literally have entered into nuclear war, I thought, and I wouldn’t know.
By hour five, I had lost it. Distraction – I needed it desperately. My dog and the house were pristine. There was no other option.
I grabbed a pair of shears and boots and hit the front yard.
Sopping wet, with a slightly mad look in my eye, I hacked away, as dog-walkers walked by with umbrellas and telephones and, probably, working power-points.
The universe had tested me, and I had proven it right. I went to bed.
That night, with the power finally restored courtesy of a very kind electrician who mysteriously went by “Mr White”, my housemates and I sat in the kitchen and completed the puzzle together by lamplight.
We barely spoke but for the slotting of a tricky piece, when we’d cry out in exultation. We were too focused. I didn’t think of my phone once.
