Ijust happened to be working from home last Friday when the earthquake struck. Everyone was home, which was great. What was not so great was that a lot of things shut down immediately, including the gas supply; the emergency lockdown had kicked in. This too was great, of course, inasmuch as it was a sign of safety measures working. But we did have to work out a way to get the supply back on after the immediate tremors had abated, and nobody knew how.

Eventually my mother managed to conjure up images of a device lurking somewhere in the depths of our toolshed. She was also able to unearth a flimsy manual on how to operate the device. Armed with the booklet, my mother and I ventured into the darkness.

There the device was, with a black button that looked more or less but not quite like the one in the booklet. Pushing it would unlock the emergency shutdown, or so one supposed. What if it triggered off something else? What if there were other precautions we ought to have taken before activating the process? It was not quite like making up one’s mind about which wire to cut, the red or the blue, but it felt close enough. I pushed. After a tense three minutes or so, the gas came back on.