Last night we were settle down after dinner – Country File was over and we were waiting for The X-Factor when the lights flickered. We thought it was a bulb about to go had a quick look around but couldn’t figure which one was it, when everything went dark. Well Grumble!! Luckily it was still a little but bright out but only just – it was 7.15. So a quick run around to find the torch while himself was lighting the candles on the mantle piece.
Once that was done it was a case of so what now? I went outside so I could hear all of the house alarms a bit better and the thing that struck me most was the sound of excited children – we have a lot of young children in our area and this is the first major evening outage we’ve had. Anyway along comes the neighbour from upstairs so he rushes in to check on stuff and we’re chatting to the girlfriend – the big joke is if the electricity doesn’t come back soon we’re going to have to chat and we’ve been putting that off for years!
Back inside I grab my transistor radio – the one I got all those years ago ’cause we were always getting power cuts when I was littler. It was just a pity that there wasn’t anything entertaining on BBC radio 4 – only current events etc. I suppose we could have retuned it but we decided to go for a walk ’cause it was really dark 🙂 It’s amazing how no street lighting changes you whole surroundings – cars with their dims on are still blindingly bright and all of a sudden you notice there are loads of cars! However we were more interested in looking in at peoples candles – it was almost like Christmas looking in at the lights. We didn’t stay out for too long as the little bit of bright that had been outside had vanished.
When we got home it was out with the torches to see where had we put the cooker kettle!! You see we could have coffee ’cause we had the happy combo of gas cooker & cooker top kettle! A few years ago a friend in work said she didn’t have an electric kettle but a cooker kettle and I thought the idea was fascinating so I got one too for events like last night. So coffee is ready what else is there to do? we could watch a DVD ’cause the laptop still had battery power – Internet if only I could find the mobile broadband thingy (which I did this morning) or better yet we could continue watching House! er no on the House suggestion – it is on my hard drive and that needs to be plugged in. It would seem that there is so much you could almost do but this electricity lark always pipped us at the post. In the end we ended up playing board games well the Agatha Christie one ’cause it’s the only one I stand a chance of winning! What a pity neither of us plays cards – maybe it’s something to look into. I almost suggested sleep at one ridiculously early point in time but I knew I’d be wide awake again by 2am so we hit the hay and watched DVDs on the laptop – to be precise we were watching High Life with Alan Cummings, Forbes Mason & Siobhan Redmond – hadn’t seen it in ages so it was very funny. After that I went to sleep – only to have the telly come back on along with a load of lights at 11.45. That sounds like I got up to knock it all off – erm no I rolled over went “oh lights” and promptly fell back to sleep.
So here I am with all of faculties / utilities back and with some quick thinking from somebody else on a forum I’ve put the immersion on ’cause the clock for the heating is out by just over 4 hours and there would have been no hot water! However it should be ready & I can also use my hair drier – very important these days.

Just an after thought if this had gone on for a while there is no way to heat the house – this is an estate without chimneys so lighting a fire is out of the question – I think this is something we’re going to have to give serious thought to!