Outage

Last night we had a power cut that affected the entire street. 
It's been ages since I've sat through a proper power cut.  When I were a lad (uh-oh, cue the Hovis music) power cuts seemed to happen so much more often than they do now.  Mind you it was the late seventies, I guess, a few years earlier it was petrol shortages and three-day weeks!.  Indeed, one of my early random memories is from a power cut, with my mum cooking dinner by candlelight in the kitchen (at least we had a gas stove, eh?), whilst we listened to the Top 40 on a battery-powered radio and "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" by the Carpenters was in the top five, if that helps to date it for anyone.  Actually that made that song take on a whole other spooky quality with the whole house shrouded in darkness, lit only in isolated spots by flickering candle light.  But anyway, enough of the sepia-toned memories, back to the now baby.

We didn't even realise that the electricity had gone until a neighbour knocked on our door to enquire whether our power had gone off "as well".  After all it was quite early in the evening so no lights were on, and it was a bit of a family gathering for the lad's fifth birthday which meant the telly was off, so we had no way of knowing the power had gone.  But when we looked around, all the clues were there.. no lights on the front of the Sky+ box, no time being displayed on the cooker or the microwave.  Yup this was a power cut.

Whilst the sun was up it never really bothered us, but as evening went on, we began to realise that a) it could be a while before we got the electricity back and b) we were totally and utterly unprepared for not having any lights.  We had no candles in the house at all.  And, seeing as I have quit smoking, even if we did have candles we had no means of lighting them (we'd used our last two matches lighting candles on a birthday cake earlier).  Hell, we didn't even have a torch.

Before total darkness set in, I was despatched to the local supermarket to purchase candles and matches, and a torch.  Before long we were all sat around with the whole house shrouded in darkness, with isolated areas of the front room lit by flickering candle light.  Unfortunately the battery-powered radio had gone, and even if we did have one I doubt very much we would have found any station playing the Carpenters to fully recreate the late seventies power cut experience, but it was still quite a close approximation