There is no doubt in the world of long sailing trips, that the question of whether a sparky could spark a revolution has been debated long into the night, rolling with the sea and flowing with a rum or a red. Certainly an easy segue from the real life situation of spark plug replacement that instantly happens at the very worst moment that ultimately turns out to be the very besttime and a lesson in marine maintenance.
On water, the afternoon is the continuing dialogue of the course of day.
There are lots of conversations at sea. Sometimes weeks and months of devising, debating, considering.
Often the topic is the perfect murder.
It doesn’t happen in a beanie clad, wet weather geared slurping-beans-from-a-can kind of way. It generally occurs over days or weeks of analytical discourse, a few insults, some frustration and raucous laughter when there’s a comic roll of death and disaster and the oversized shoes you forgot to put weights in.
It’s a debating, analysing, time-folding time that is the luxury of the ocean irrelevant to your cabin size.
A fouled spark plug onboard is always greeted in roughly one of two ways: that it was a bastard of a thing to happen right now because it’s creating a maelstrom that must be contained; or, with the delighted resignation of having something to do for the day that involves tools.
On most yachts there are many, and some are rather impressive.
No point saying ‘expensive’ because everything on a boat is – even when it has no reason to be except that it once lived in a chandlery.
In exactly the same way yachties have far-reaching ties that for many are nautical miles of decades that are felt fathoms deep, electricians can connect to each other in other citiesplug into a stack of knowledge, and speak a language only a sparky truly understands.
That’s a pretty good start to a revolution – closed circuit language. Nerds do it; degrees’ll do it. Regulated parolees do it.
Let’s do it, let’s soar above… let’s give lift to usual conversation and contemplate the power these highly skilled tradies have: literally and figuratively.
Pun intended, these are bright people. No matter the academic level, these are people with a particular thinking process, enmeshed in knowledge and experience that immediately and often swiftly, heads from crisis to corrective to Corona or Carlsberg.
Or something else if it was a close one.
Even a bad electrician is still points ahead in any game or debate of deserted island/limited resources/most useful skills/keep or kill survival ballot.
Just do a Ronald B. McKenzie 6 Degrees of Separation from Sarah Jessica Parker and use the power of social media to discover and appreciate the connections that electricians have, while realising that no entertainment would ever be made without an sparky onset.
That thar’s power right there.
Certainly waaaaay ahead of any brand influencers and dog jewelry designers.
The opportune time for revolution occurs with the convergence of whatever serendipidous situations ignite the fuse that’s already laid, and readily primed.
Consciously or not.
When there’s the bridging of raw, tribal, subconscious understanding there is the creation of some other level of languaging that is code, or jargon, or basically secret.
Couple that with all communication means, and incredible infrastructure knowledge. Master Electricians study for almost the same amount of time doctors do.
Homo sapien is a densely packed pack animal. A community thriver, and a communications driver, because humans are hard-wired for emotional expression in whatever form it takes.
No man is an island, but a sparky will always be voted to stay on that island because they have what it takes to spark ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a revolution if necessary.
Also, the opportunity to structure a sentence like that should never be missed.
We have, just recently, observed or were affected by the cutting of social media newsfeeds to an area or nation. This is a mere inconvenience in comparison to a complete power outtage, which atrophies a city at around the same speed loss of blood supply deadens a limb.
Undoubtedly, worldwide, there have been deaths as a result of the failing of a satellite map, or a twitter comment metaphorically freezing someone’s brain at an unfortunately crucial moment of balance or road sense.
Try surviving a long-term power failure during a heatwave to know how hot heat can be.
The power being unpowered is very, very powerful and it takes an electrician to game it, maim it or tame it.
Texas has suffered the freak loss of power through uncharacteristic and brutal winter snowstorms immobilising its wind farms; two perfectly acceptable things that are never meant to holiday in the same place. It left 13 million people with burst pipes in a blackout that lasted more than five days and claimed at least 70 lives.
A snowstorm in Texas. That’s big.