Witham, the town I live in was without power from 7:15 am to 10:30 pm yesterday. Arriving home to a town in complete darkness, where traffic lights do not work and street lamps were lightless was an interesting experience.

A sub station had caught fire on the other side of town, knocking out all the other sub stations in the area. Trucks turned up with generators on, and were ‘plugged in’ to the generators 12 hours later.

In the house, I could not find a torch, I moved around by the light of my mobile phone.

An interesting, and strange experience. Could not see very well, could not read, could not charge a laptop, or dying telephone….could not cook, could not go to a restaurant locally, could not see to feed the cats, could not walk fast around the house, could not heat water, could not turn heating on, was cold, had to guess where stairs were, could not find candles, could not find matches to light no candles,…in the end I remembered the family caravan ran on battery power….and sat out there in the cold….with light….till the power came back on.

Action Points: Put a torch in the house somewhere, ensure laptop is fully charged on leaving work, ensure phone is fully charged on leaving work……….oh yeah…..I work for APU…home of no power for 3 days…..and regular powerdowns….so much so that some essential servers are now hosted elsewhere………must put a torch in work too!