After all, "Night must fall" and all that kind of thing, but that's not really what I meant.
I woke up and noticed that the glowing red numbers of the alarm clock's display were markedly absent and, for a while at least, I decided that the power must have gone out and that it would no doubt be restored eventually, and did my best to doze off again...
These are the moments during which I wish that my wristwatch had a luminous dial so that I could reassure myself that it wasn't actually getting up time and I could try my best to stay under the duvet just a little longer.
Later on (but how much later on I couldn't tell you...), I noticed that the little red numbers had still not returned and I staggered out of the bedroom and downstairs to try and remember quite where I'd put the battery-powered lantern the last time I used it.
The entire house was in darkness, the fridge wasn't humming, the boiler wasn't running, and none of the little lights of my life were glowing in the kitchen or the televisual recording devices. Somehow I managed to manoeuvre myself around all of the hidden obstacles that clutter our lives and reach out my hand to find that, for once, the lamp was actually in precisely the spot that I had believed it was.
And so, in a limited way, the light returned, and both of the clocks into which I'd oh-so-recently put brand new batteries were displaying the time which, at ten past six in the morning, was far later than I would usually surface at the weekend.
Slowly... ever so slowly... my mind began to function again and I noticed that things were not quite as dark as I had first believed. There was a certain amount of glow penetrating the gaps between the curtains which implied that the street lights were, at least, still burning brightly.
This made me wonder whether this power outage was more localised than I had at first believed, and that maybe it was just our little row of houses that had been deprived of power, maybe because the overhead cabling which feeds us might have been brought down by external forces beyond our control.
The storms, after all, had been quite awful during the previous few nights...
At this point I needed to find out two things. One: Whether the rest of the row was also unlit (although at that time in the morning, this might prove nothing); and Two: Where the hell the paperwork from the electricity board might be, given that I might have to phone them...
Well, both were problematic.
Despite current trends towards the contrary in terms of our degenerate society, I was not inclined to go outdoors wearing my pyjamas under any circumstances, which would mean that I would need to dress in the dark.
Equally, the paperwork is so chaotic nowadays that there really would have been shouting.
Emitting another huge sigh, I headed up the stairs and paused to look at the nook where the meters lurk, and noticed that, perhaps for the first time in years, the Trip Switch had, er, tripped, presumably due to one of those overnight lightning bolts that had failed to wake me.
So, I waved my lantern, stood upon my tippy-toes, and switched it back to the "on" position and the house was restored to life, and all of those familiar buzzes and hums immediately restarted, and the soft glows of all of those various switches and dials were restored...
Isn't it funny how the imagination (shun... shun... shun...) can create a much larger and far more widespread crisis than it turns out in reality to be...?
Later on (but how much later on I couldn't tell you...), I noticed that the little red numbers had still not returned and I staggered out of the bedroom and downstairs to try and remember quite where I'd put the battery-powered lantern the last time I used it.
The entire house was in darkness, the fridge wasn't humming, the boiler wasn't running, and none of the little lights of my life were glowing in the kitchen or the televisual recording devices. Somehow I managed to manoeuvre myself around all of the hidden obstacles that clutter our lives and reach out my hand to find that, for once, the lamp was actually in precisely the spot that I had believed it was.
And so, in a limited way, the light returned, and both of the clocks into which I'd oh-so-recently put brand new batteries were displaying the time which, at ten past six in the morning, was far later than I would usually surface at the weekend.
Slowly... ever so slowly... my mind began to function again and I noticed that things were not quite as dark as I had first believed. There was a certain amount of glow penetrating the gaps between the curtains which implied that the street lights were, at least, still burning brightly.
This made me wonder whether this power outage was more localised than I had at first believed, and that maybe it was just our little row of houses that had been deprived of power, maybe because the overhead cabling which feeds us might have been brought down by external forces beyond our control.
The storms, after all, had been quite awful during the previous few nights...
At this point I needed to find out two things. One: Whether the rest of the row was also unlit (although at that time in the morning, this might prove nothing); and Two: Where the hell the paperwork from the electricity board might be, given that I might have to phone them...
Well, both were problematic.
Despite current trends towards the contrary in terms of our degenerate society, I was not inclined to go outdoors wearing my pyjamas under any circumstances, which would mean that I would need to dress in the dark.
Equally, the paperwork is so chaotic nowadays that there really would have been shouting.
Emitting another huge sigh, I headed up the stairs and paused to look at the nook where the meters lurk, and noticed that, perhaps for the first time in years, the Trip Switch had, er, tripped, presumably due to one of those overnight lightning bolts that had failed to wake me.
So, I waved my lantern, stood upon my tippy-toes, and switched it back to the "on" position and the house was restored to life, and all of those familiar buzzes and hums immediately restarted, and the soft glows of all of those various switches and dials were restored...
Isn't it funny how the imagination (shun... shun... shun...) can create a much larger and far more widespread crisis than it turns out in reality to be...?
It's hard to imagine life without electricity.But it wasn't until the early 1900's that most houses began to have electricity and many not until 1933 when the National Grid was set up. When I bought my house there was still evidence of gas lighting and only power points on the ground floor.
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