12:17

I was poised to publish a column on Estonia’s oldest freedom postal, a tiny, stubborn survivor of history that’s outlasted the attention span of even the savviest marketers. (I wasn’t surprised; I’ve been the unofficial ambassador for overlooked relics for years.)

Then, as if on cue, my screen blinks: “No internet. Check your router.”

The digital equivalent of “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”, humanity’s greatest technological troubleshooting achievement.

Router: flatlined.

Landline: as responsive as a stone.

Mobile: channelling its inner mime.

Oven clock: blank, as if time itself had left the building.

Main switchboard: stoic, unmoved, as always.

A few Morse-code-level calls manage to slip through daughter, family and the ex, whose voice remains unmistakable: an adolescent timbre trapped in a man’s frame, Roman nose and all. Sirens start their overture, wake and waile, and alarms add their shrill harmonies.

The birds, naturally, remain unperturbed. The sea eagles, if anything, seem to find our panic amusing.

16:35

The morning had already felt off. Was it the collective hangover from last day’s excesses or the neighbour I found wedged between two dustbins, looking like he’d lost a brawl to the local waste management team? Eighty-some years of survival, only to end up a casualty of entropy or bad luck.

The streets were uneasy as if the air itself was holding its breath. Even the stray dogs seemed to be waiting for a punchline.

18:40

First came the frantic calls, the comparisons, the wild speculation. Then came the waiting. And then the silence.

Not the ancient hush of forests or the contemplative quiet of cathedrals, but the peculiar, unsettling silence of a world barely fifty years old: the silence of blank servers, stilled networks, and the digital hum that has become our collective heartbeat.

This is the hush of a civilisation built on silicon and code, a world that believes itself immortal until someone, somewhere, pulls the plug.

Of course, Bob the Builder is undeterred; his construction racket persists, a reminder that some things, for better or worse, are blackout-proof. The birds, as ever, remain unimpressed.

Remember, you don’t mess with Mother Earth, your mother-in-law, or Bob. And, apparently, not with Putin’s dacha or a Chinese hacker farm.

19:38

I set off to check on my daughter’s grandparents. Alarms still wail, but there’s no pandemic-era panic. Children play football, families laugh in their gardens. The only open bar is the internet multipreneurs’ watering hole, screens dark, spirits undampened. I skip it; the dust devils and a stack of old books offer better company.

20:20

Battery: 4%.

Birds and sun receding.

Preparing for a night without Facebook, Instagram, or audiobooks.

The silence is almost seductive.

Perhaps next time, I’ll finally tell you about that Estonian postal artefact. Assuming, of course, we haven’t regressed to communicating via smoke signals by then.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S Perfect Pitch & Rocco & L’EXAIS 

Don’t be afraid, there’s a light in your heart

Dusk till dawn, world gone dark

Trust when I say all it takes is a spark

We will survive, world gone dark

We will survive, world gone dark

Don’t be afraid, there’s a light in your heart

Dusk till dawn, world gone dark

Trust when I say all it takes is a spark

We will survive, world gone dark

We will survive, world gone dark