Way out here in rural Ferry Reach, so very far from Hamilton, we are preparing for the long nights of winter without so many of the basic services that you take for granted in the central parishes. Luckily, no one out here matters, or so the utility providers seem to think. We apparently don't need the level of service that the slick boys and girls downtown require. Which makes it curious that we pay exactly the same for services that we don't receive, as the luckier Bermuda residents pay for services they do receive.

Take electric power, for example. Ferry Reach, that haven of forgotten nothingness, was only off the grid for a few hours when Florence came by. Hallelujah! True, the storm was only Category 1, and surely, given the absurdly high prices we pay for electricity, you'd think the power system would be able to cope with Category 1, because we quite often get storms of that magnitude or greater.

I read with amusement that very fine fellow, Garry Madeiros, the head of Belco, explaining that putting the cables underground would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. Well, we can't do that, then, can we? It was an odd comment, though. He said the same thing ten years ago.

If he'd gotten on the case then, we could have underground cables by now. Think how much lovelier all of Bermuda would look and how much nicer it would be to live in the hinterland. If you were building a house, you'd expect to spend a lot of money for a long time. Are we not building the house of Bermuda?

The power has been on and off in Ferry Reach since the hurricane. Monthly, of course, the metre reader turns it off when he reads the metres. Last time he did that, it cost me $400 extra because I foolishly left my printer plugged in and the surge fried it like a piece of chicken left in the pan to cook for a week.

My telephone worked all through the hurricane. I even received a call from South Africa at the height of the storm. The phone died the day afterward, and has since been on and off more times than a postal worker delivering mail on a motorcycle. To his credit, my Telco man Carlton came by on Saturday, no less, and fixed me up.

On both occasions when I contacted Telco to tell them that my phone was broken, I was asked for a contact number. We hicks don't have cell phones. Who's going to call us? A passing goat? I explained that my contact number was my phone number, which wasn't working. (I have an Internet line, but it's plugged into my computer.) On both occasions, I was told that repair service would be tricky unless I had a contact number.

When I made the long trek overland into town to pay my phone bill for the month ? just the two lines, not the calls ? I was told the monthly cost had gone up to $109. Next month, it will be $112 because I added a message service that I was already paying for, but now have to pay for twice. The service costs $3 a month to take messages when you are talking, and now another $3 a month to take messages when your line is out of order. One day I'll find out I have to pay another $3 a month to take messages when I'm in the shower, only we don't have showers here in the greensward.

Speaking of the Internet, my e-mail has been on the fritz since e-mail was invented. A series of irate callers this week asked why I was ignoring their e-mails. I ignored them because I didn't receive them. I'm on dial-up still, because Northrock doesn't offer us far-flungers anything faster. Two very keen Northrock gents telephoned this week to see if they could help, but they were apparently new to the Island and don't understand.

That only leaves the rotted timbers in the floor by my front door. In January, the landlord said he'd fix it in May. Now it's almost Christmas. It's not fixed. Maybe the guy came to fix it, but fell through the floor and now lies dead in the crawl space. I vaguely hope so.

The landlord is gearing up to sell the property, I'm told, so the floor won't be fixed until after they throw me out of the premises and into the Reach, where a passing speedboat will whip my head off.

What is all this whining doing in a financial column? The answer is: it's apparently no use trying to get rich if you live more than a mile from Hamilton. A friend in Southampton was still without power at her business ten days after Florence. Boy, living in the West End without power: can it get any worse?

I ventured out to that very End last week and tarried at the fabulous Fairmont Southampton Hotel. Quite an experience for a farm boy. It went dark from 4.15 to 11.15 in the morning because something electric blew up. The hotel, which understands what being in business actually means, gave every guest a $100 refund. You won't hear me criticising them.

Northrock, Belco, Telco, CableVision, however ? not one of these "service" providers has offered a refund for the lack of service in the past month. Nor will they. They detest their customers and treat us accordingly.

The bigger point is that we are all part of the Bermuda economy, even us hayseeds. Robert Stewart may have called Bermuda an economy that works, in his book of the same title, but out here, so many hundreds of yards from the plush offices in which the utility executives swill champagne, there is no economy at all.

Yet, we wouldn't live anywhere else, because it's quiet, people are friendly, and being alive actually counts for something.

The best things in life, and here comes the real moral this week, are free.