Apocalypse now

So there I was, on Sunday at about 1pm, catching up on a bit of ironing, with the tumble dryer rumbling away in the background, when suddenly... everything stopped. At first I though the dryer had blown a fuse but, on checking, I realised it was a power cut. A couple of houses opposite experienced the same, which was somewhat reassuring (though, oddly, none of my neighbours on my side of the street were affected).

I checked the Northern Powergrid website on my 'phone (oh, the wonders of technology) and it wasn't reported so I duly reported it and, shortly after, got a text to say engineers would be on to it pronto. At first they said the repair would be achieved by 4.30pm so I settled down to wait it out. It was, unfortunately, raining hard and blowing a hoolie, so there was no question of escaping for a good walk, which I would have done. 4.30pm came and went and eventually I got a message saying it would be 9.30pm before a repair was done! (At least they kept me updated.)

What do you do? Everything I thought of needed electricity - boiling a kettle, making toast, using the microwave or oven, getting on with some housework. No vacuum cleaner, no iron, no hot water or heating. No TV, no computer, no broadband - so no iPad. I had a book from the library - hurray for reading! Thankfully I also have a gas fire and hob so I was able to keep one room warm and boil water for a cuppa. (They're talking about banning new houses from having gas supplies altogether and many flats, like where my mother lived, are all-electric. What do people do then?)

It started to get dark and my phone ran out of battery. :-(  I made something to eat, worried about opening the fridge as it was rapidly warming up. Daren't open the freezer either, though luckily it's small and was well-stocked so I gather they can last a good few hours without power. I went to church (as planned) and managed to charge up my phone there during the service. When I got home there was a mini-digger out at the back hacking up the pavement, under floodlights, and several chaps with cable tracers, and another message on my phone saying they expected the repair to be achieved by 1am!

So I sat in the dark with a few candles burning and the street light outside shining in and tried to read by the light of a torch, which was hard work after a while. I began to wish I could knit or crochet... But it was strangely peaceful and I was happy enough. Friends and family had kindly offered aid, but it was hardly a life and death situation. When I went to bed, I realised I couldn't remember which light switches I'd tried... and, sure enough, at 12.23 am I was woken in a sudden blaze of light! Then - oh no! - it all went dark again. I got up for a drink and the lights came back on and stayed on. Phew! Eleven and a half hours without power. (If it had been twelve, I would have been able to claim compensation, ha!)

It was not, by a long way, the worst experience of my life but I was surprised by how much of an impact it had. We take so much for granted and yet 'civilisation' is such a fragile thing, resting so much on infrastructure working and people broadly agreeing to move together in the same general direction for the common good. As I've got older, I think I have taken fewer things 'for granted' and I'm grateful every week when the bin-men turn up for the rubbish, the train arrives more or less on time, the light goes on when I press the switch and things mostly behave how I expect them to. Not to mention my brain and body slipping into gear every morning when I wake up (even if the process isn't quite as smooth as it once was!)

But it is increasingly clear that not everyone is working towards the same future (yes, including whoever thought it a good idea to drop takeaway cartons into the newly-dug trench!) It is a little worrying, don't you think, that we now rely so much on electricity, plastic, computer-guided programmes and so on, and have largely lost the ability to get back to basics even if we wanted to? At the very simplest, the toasting fork my grandma used to use in front of the open fire, on occasion (and only for fun even then), would be no use here! It makes me quite fearful for my granddaughters' future, as I suspect change (for the worse) may come rather more suddenly than the gradual advance of 'progress' that I've seen during my lifetime.

A power cut is hardly the apocalypse, but it certainly left me pondering...